Travel just about
anywhere in the southern United
States, and you will find pecan trees. The ''nut too hard to crack by
hand'' the derivation of the pecan's Algonquian name is one of the most
successful native agricultural crops of North America. So popular are
pecans that Thomas Jefferson once wrote home from Paris for a supply,
while many people today consider their holidays incomplete without a
pecan pie.
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Jane
Manaster's Pecans,
updated from its original 1994 publication, explores the natural
history, cultivation, and uses of the pecan tree and nut. Her engaging
account pieces together a fascinating mosaic of the peoples caught up
in the pecan story Native Americans, Spanish explorers, European
immigrants and their American descendants, African Americans, and
Mexican Americans. |
Manaster also describes the life cycle of the pecan tree, the
development of many cultivated species, and predators and diseases of
the pecan. She chronicles the successes of commercial growers in
extending the pecan s original range eastward from the Mississippi
basin to Florida and westward to California; and she charts the growth
of the commercial pecan industry, especially in Georgia, Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona.
Not
forgetting the pecan s popularity in candy and baked goods,
Manaster includes nearly two dozen traditional and modern recipes for
such delights as pralines, candied and roasted pecans, pecan pie, and
pecan logs. With such a wealth of information in so readable a format, Pecans
will find a wide audience among pecan lovers and growers
everywhere..
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Pecans
The Story in a Nutshell
by Jane Manaster
Texas
Tech University
Press,
2008
Order
a copy
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