Instructions: Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, stir first 5 ingredients until well-blended. Stir in pecans. Pour into pie crust. Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

Only sissies skip pecan pie

Pecan pie is not a health food. Im sorry, but its not. I have stacks and piles of low-fat, low-sugar, low-taste cookbooks, and not one of them offers a slimmed-down recipe for pecan pie. It cant be done; it shouldnt be done.

Pecan pie should slowly sludge through your veins like rich, dark, tacky molasses. It should cause your heart to pound like an old, two-stroke "poppin John" tractor plowing through thick clay.

Eating pecan pie is an ethereal exercise. You should lie down right after you consume it and wait for the sugar surge to lift you from the sheets.

Those who forgo pecan pie for pumpkin are sissies. It is a pure, simple fact.

Pecan pie and pralines are, for me, the only reason to bump into a pecan tree, then back off and bump it again. I dont want pecans on my salad, I hate them mixed up with little pieces of oranges and shredded coconut.

Ambrosia, my foot.

I like them in a creamy praline or a rich, sticky pie.

A lot of people like them that way. Now, in the throes of the holiday season, a lot of pecans will be consumed. It just so happens this is also the season of their harvest.

At Weatherfords public market, just east of the Parker County Courthouse,

there are sacks and sacks of freshly harvested pecans stacked like cord wood.

They will be used for pies, cakes, breads and candies. They are bought by the pound in little paper bags, or by the hundred weight in strong, plastic gunny sacks.

Two shellers work endlessly under the protective cover of the market. The machines, sounding like muffled jackhammers, delicately peel away whole sides of the pecan shell so that the fruit is visible and easily extracted.

"The Pawnees come off the trees first every year," says Debra Woodruff of Walker Produce. "Weve had them since mid-September." They are a sweet, thicker-skinned, solid pecan, she points out.

The Choctaws have a thinner shell and a meatier flavor. Cheyennes are smaller, have more oil and are good-tasting. Kiowas are semisweet, light textured, thin shelled and Woodruffs personal favorite.

Each variety has its own unique taste and quality, Woodruff explains, the ones with the most oil are best for baking. They dont dry out and become brittle.

The varied tastes are subtle. But Woodruff and her co-workers allow you to

judge for yourself. Along the rows of bagged pecans are sample sacks. Like

a wine tasting, you can wander down the aisle and find your favorite flavor.

"These pecans are all from South Texas," she says. "They are from irrigated orchards, and it makes a big difference in the quality of the product."

She buys some pecans locally, and many of them are good quality. But many are also native pecans that bear much smaller fruit. They taste good, but you have to work twice as hard to get half the meat. Woodruff says she doesnt want any pecans that dont yield at least 55 percent, meaning you should get a little more than half a pound of edible meat from a pound of whole nuts. and the meat should be solid, not filled with tiny air pockets.

You can buy your pecans three ways. They are $3.25 a pound in the shell, $3.45 with the shell cracked, and $6.50 completely shelled. The shelled pecans sound awfully expensive, but when you see the plump, clean pecan halves packed in their clear plastic bags, they are terribly enticing.

If you want, you can also find chocolate-covered pecans, toffee-covered pecans and spiced pecans. There are baskets filled with them. "Pecans are great Christmas presents," Woodruff says. "And you dont even have to go to the mall."

There should be a good supply available throughout the holiday season, she said.

NOTES : This is probably one of the most often used recipes for pecan pie.

It is from the folks who make Karo syrup, probably the most often
used syrup in pecan pies.

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