This is the most remarkable invention! It's a "pecan picker upper" - no kidding, that's the name of this weird looking gadget that my friend was using to pick up pecans when I visited her earlier this week. I was absolutely amazed at the ease of picking up pecans with this "thing". You just roll it over the ground and the pecans hop inside the circle of metal coils until you have about 2 quarts of nuts. Then you hold the metal expanded circle over a bucket and pull the bottom rings apart and the nuts come tumbling out. I was in a hurry that day so my friend suggested I come back later and use the pecan picker up to pick up some pecans for my use.Today I called to see if she was at home and asked if Jim and I could come pick up some pecans. I could hardly wait to show him this remarkable "machine". I told him I'd love to have one for my birthday coming up on Nov. 25, but he reminded me that we don't have any pecan trees. Oh, well .... I could gather mushrooms from the lawn or pick up practice golf balls. I'm sure I could find a use for it.
We should eat some nuts every day for good health. Just don't add too much butter when you toast them, or cover them in chocolate--yummm. I like to put pecans in salads, casseroles, on top of desserts, etc. You have to keep pecans in the freezer. They become rancid in a short time due to the fat content. If left in the shells for a long time, they dry out.
And of course you need lots of pecans for the Christmas cakes. It is fruit cake weather right now - freezing temperatures but warm in the afternoons. I enjoyed an article a fellow 
AARP member put in our Christmas Memory book a couple of years ago. Her mother's friends baked fruit cakes every Christmas and competed with each other to see who had the "heaviest" cake. They all used large dishpans with a glass in the center to bake their cakes in. Then they would take them to the country store to have them weighed. That was a "first" for me. My mother and grandmothers made fruit cakes and wrapped them in clean white cotton flour sacks, put an apple in the center of the cake and then soaked the cloth with homemade wine (my aunt used brandy or whiskey and her cakes were the best!). The cakes were stored in the old ice box to age for Christmas day feast. We peeled oranges and grapefruit and boil the peelings in sugar water to "candy" them. Dried figs were used for dates. There were other cakes, including fresh coconut and lane cakes, but the fruit cake was "Top Dog". I think I will make one this year just for old times sake. It probably won't taste anything like I remember, but I bet the aroma of one soaking in wine will refresh my memories.
AARP member put in our Christmas Memory book a couple of years ago. Her mother's friends baked fruit cakes every Christmas and competed with each other to see who had the "heaviest" cake. They all used large dishpans with a glass in the center to bake their cakes in. Then they would take them to the country store to have them weighed. That was a "first" for me. My mother and grandmothers made fruit cakes and wrapped them in clean white cotton flour sacks, put an apple in the center of the cake and then soaked the cloth with homemade wine (my aunt used brandy or whiskey and her cakes were the best!). The cakes were stored in the old ice box to age for Christmas day feast. We peeled oranges and grapefruit and boil the peelings in sugar water to "candy" them. Dried figs were used for dates. There were other cakes, including fresh coconut and lane cakes, but the fruit cake was "Top Dog". I think I will make one this year just for old times sake. It probably won't taste anything like I remember, but I bet the aroma of one soaking in wine will refresh my memories.
This is a photo of the famous Corcicana's fruitcake. They are almost as good as my mother's, but a big chewy and too sweet. A Texas friend usually sends us one of these every Christmas. I share it with friends who come by to visit during the holidays.
You can just imagine how much I enjoyed Truman Capote's "Christmas memories" on TV several years ago (the TV movie Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, with Patty Duke and Piper Laurie, was a 1997 remake, directed by Glenn Jordan) when he (Buddy) helped his
Aunt Sook gather things for her many fruitcakes she made to give away every Christmas. Then there was the play (Capote narrated his The Thanksgiving Visitor (1967), a sequel to A Christmas Memory, filmed by Frank Perry in Pike Road, Alabama. Geraldine Page again won an Emmy for her performance in this hour-long teleplay. I catch these re-runs whenever I can. I connected to these stories so much. I really would like to own these two TV plays someday. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Memory
