Happy National Pecan Day!

Pecans are my MOST favorite nut. 

They rank even higher than almonds and English walnuts for me. Here's the scoop on the nuts 

(that I was able to glean from the Internet):

Calhoun County (Illinois) pecans alongside tiny store-bought ones.

The pecan is the only nut tree native to North America. 

It's name comes from the Algonquin, 

meaning "all nuts requiring a stone to crack". 

The largest pecan producing state in the United States is Georgia, with an average yield of 75 million pounds! 

The pecan capital of the U.S. is Albany, Georgia, 

which is home to more than 600,000 pecan trees. 

I love them eaten plain (out-of-hand), sugared, generously added to cookies and brownies, lavishly sprinkled on waffles, or in good old-fashioned pecan pie.

But I always think of nuts as a fall food.  

So why, I wondered, is Pecan Day celebrated in the spring?

Well, it seems that our friend Thomas Jefferson 

(whose birthday we celebrated yesterday) 

loved pecans and sent some to his buddy George Washington.  

This is the day that Washington 

first planted pecan trees at Mt. Vernon.