It’s time to put this nutty national debate to rest.<\/p>\n
We can all agree that the pecan is a noble American.\u00a0 A species of hickory, the pecan is the only major native North American nut, and has been an important food source for centuries.\u00a0 Native Americans brewed an alcoholic beverage called Powcohicora, from which we get the word “hickory.” American colonists valued pecans highly; both Washington and Jefferson had wild pecan groves. But despite this history, the species was one of the last plants domesticated by humans beings.\u00a0 Georgians began planting the first groves of “improved” pecans in the 1880’s, Texans followed in the 1910’s.\u00a0 Today, the United States produces about 90% of all pecans worldwide.<\/p>\n
With such a treasure, why can’t we agree on how to pronounce it?\u00a0 Is a pecan a “PI-KAHN,” or is a pecan a “PEE-CAN”?\u00a0 To find out, we visited the website of the National Pecan Association, which provided us…nothing.\u00a0 No position whatsoever on how to pronounce pecan.\u00a0 (You can only imagine it’s a pretty hot topic at the Association, if they can’t even address it on the website…)\u00a0 Undeterred, we consulted the almighty Google.\u00a0 And found multiple sources that explained the word “pecan” comes from the French “pacane,” which in turn comes from the Illinois word “pakani,” meaning a nut that requires a stone to break.\u00a0 Sounded pretty definitive.\u00a0 And then you throw in the common joke, told by southerners – that you eat a “PI-KAHN” but you keep a “PEE-CAN” under your bed so you don’t have to go to the outhouse – and you have a solid argument.\u00a0 Case closed: “PI-KAHN” it is.<\/p>\n
Satisfied, we kicked back in front of the TV, tuned to the Food Network.\u00a0 And there she was: Paula Dean, southern food expert, who was born in Albany GA and lived most of her life in Savannah GA.\u00a0 She was pulling together all the ingredients for something delicious.\u00a0 A dish comprised of pecans, corn syrup, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla.\u00a0 A true southern classic.\u00a0 And then she said it:\u00a0 Yep, Paula was putting together a “PEE-CAN” pie.\u00a0 Dang.<\/p>\n
We gave up.\u00a0 We whipped up her recipe.\u00a0 Took a bite.\u00a0 And realized: pecans are for eating, they are not for saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s time to put this nutty national debate to rest. We can all agree that the pecan is a noble American.\u00a0 A species of hickory, the pecan is the only major native North American nut, and has been an important food source for centuries.\u00a0 Native Americans brewed an alcoholic beverage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[884,925,929],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-nut","tag-paula-dean","tag-pecan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}