“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.” ~David Mamet
Well, I’ve had my success in the mystery photo game this time. Now if you all get the last two right, it will be fine because I completely tricked you on this Number 3 picture. I really thought you’d get it, and while most all of you were in the kitchen hunting something to eat, you didn’t hunt the right thing. Bacon came in as the most popular guess. Some of you were pretty certain you were right. A few of you picked pancakes with syrup and without and Sandi said waffles which is nearly a pancake. Emily said peanut butter sandwich and Lauren and Connie said cake that Patty had chocolate frosting for. Pretzels got a few votes and chocolate showed some of us have a sweet tooth. Several saw wood bark or shingles, Amy thought it was a chair back spindle. I had to admire Eileen’s imagined mud with tracks in it and again Marji came up with a great imaginative guess – my granddaughter’s bangs. Maybe I’ll try that next mystery photo game so keep that in mind. You were right to be hunting through the kitchen pantry for an answer, but you never hit on the right one.
So, do you say PEE-can or puh-KAHN?
I’ve tried it both ways, but puh-KAHN sounds right to me. After my daughter moved south a few states she said she had a PEE-can tree in her back 
yard because that’s how the folks around her said pecan.
However you say it, I love pecans when I go to cooking desserts. I just picked a zucchini out of the garden. I can make a zucchini cake and load it down with pecans. And I love a good pecan pie. When I used to go with my husband to a lot of church dinners on the grounds when they had more of those with gospel music in the afternoon, I always looked for the pecan pies on the dessert table. It’s hard to go wrong with a piece of pecan pie.
We used to have an older lady at our church who made hickory nut pies. She picked up the hickory nuts and cracked and picked out the nuts for those pies. And we loved her for it. Well, we loved her lots of other reasons too, but we did get in line early for those pies at our own church dinners. Mom made those pies with hickory nuts too because thrifty country women didn’t buy pecans. They picked up hickory nuts and substituted.
Another really good use of some good pecans is in Mexican Wedding Cookies. One time when my granddaughter wanted to make something different while she was visiting, we found a recipe for those wedding cookies and she found a new favorite recipe. Those things are so good you can eat a dozen without thinking twice. Maybe you are thinking twice. Thinking about how delicious they are. I could share the recipe for the pecan pie, but you can buy a bottle of Karo syrup and there it is. At least that’s the one I use. So to celebrate my nutty mystery picture success, here’s that Mexican Wedding Cookie recipe.
MEXICAN WEDDING COOKIES
1 cup butter, softened 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla 3/4 cup of chopped pecans
Cream the butter and powdered sugar together. Add flour and salt mixture. Then stir in vanilla and chopped pecans. Chill if dough is too soft. Make 1 1/4 inch balls and place on parchment paper or ungreased backing sheet. Cook at preheated 400 degree oven for 10-12 minutes until cookies are light golden-brown. Remove from oven, cool slightly and then roll in powdered sugar until evenly coated. Then cool cookies completely on wire racks.
Now it’s your turn.
To throw your name in my giveaway hat for the chance to win a couple of books, your choice of one of mine and a grab bag book, just make a guess. Doesn’t have to be a right guess although I don’t think this post’s picture will trick you as good as Wednesday’s nutty one did. One more mystery picture on Wednesday and then next Sunday I’ll pick the winners and contact them by e-mail. So deadline to enter is Saturday night, July 18, 2020 at midnight EST. Each time you guess on a new mystery picture you get a new entry in the drawing. And if you have some pecans in the cupboard, make something yummy. Or just eat a few right out of your hand. That’s what I did with these. 🙂
What is mystery picture number 4?
And how do you say pecan – PEE-can or puh-KAHN?
Comments 38
I have said pecan both ways, because I was never sure which way was correct. You have another tricky photo…at first I was thinking maybe it is the fur that you cut from Marley but also can almost see an animals nose in the photo. It has got to be fun for you tricking us all! 🙂
A cat’s eye. Good one on the pecan. I’m terrible at guessing.
This looks like the nose of a dog.
I say puh-kahn. I love pecan pies as well and I love my memories of my Pop and I gathering pecans together in the fall in Cleburne, TX.
Author
What’s not to love about pecan pie. I’m glad thinking on those pecans took you down some fond memory lanes, Lauren. And it appears that dog nose is a popular guess. Wonder if it’s going to be wrong the way bacon was for that pecan? We shall see.
Pecans were a good mystery photo, I never would have guessed right. This one looks like some kind of animal nose, but I have no idea what.
Author
And I really thought maybe people would get that pecan one, Amy. But when you know what it is, you can always see the mystery as less mysterious. Glad you’re playing my mystery photo game.
It looks like an eye of one of your pups! Or maybe it’s the eye of another outdoor critter!
I use to say PEE-can growing up in the south but once I left the South to travel w/ my husband to wherever the military sent us – outside the South, I switched to saying pun-KAHN!
Your Mexican wedding cookies sound like a recipe we call “Nutty Fingers” that Mother made at Christmas. Same ingredients – just different shape+ like a finger!
Author
The fingers might be easier to shape than the balls, Betsy, but either way they are delicious. I think I need to make some, except I’d eat them all and I don’t need to eat them all. The eye of a dog is a good guess, but you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to see if it’s a right guess.
It looks somewhat like a cows eye to me. I say pe Kahns
A peach?
Definitely puh-KAHN.
Pee can does not sound appetizing, lol.
I think it looks like a dog nose.
My guess is a cow nose.
Bird’s breast. I say puh-kahn, either way they are good.
It looks like the eye of a bird to me.. a chickadee, maybe.
I don’t say either pee-can or puh-kahn. I say pee-kahn. Sometimes I accent the pee and sometimes the kahn.. just depends upon the sentence.. I say PEE-kahn pie but that I love pee-KAHNS.
Author
That’s interesting, Emily, because when I looked up about how one should say pecan, I cam across a blog post that quoted other people with saying the same. One way for the nut and another for the pie.
Oh, and a fun guess too. I love the word chickadee. I wrote a kids’ book once where I had the girl love saying that word. Of course, the birds are cute too.
I know I’m right this time ! It has to be the dog’s nose ! I say puh-KAHN . I am reading your new book and I love it !
A close up of a worm? puh-KAHN. Psalm 90:2💜
It’s a sweet, little dog nose! And, I say pa-Kahn!
Thanks for all the fun!
Judi
I’m guessing it’s Marley’s nose.
I say pah-kahn. But when I lived in Georgia I got laughed at for not saying pee-can.
Those cookies sound delicious! My mom liked to make hickory nut cake. Funny story about that….several years ago I gathered up a small bucket of nuts from my hickory tree. I was intending to crack them for Mom and then deliver them. But I was having some work done on my basement and didn’t get cracking right away. I came in from work one afternoon and the bucket was nearly empty. A true mystery since I live alone. But the mystery was solved when I was startled by a chipmunk in the laundry room a few days later. It was a fun time convincing Chip, or maybe Dale to exit my basement! And the fun continued for months as I kept finding stashed hickory nuts all over my house. It’s amazing how industrious one little critter can be. Every room and closet had been utilized! Nuts in shoes, drawers, the toy chest, behind furniture and even under couch cushions. My mom was disappointed that she didn’t get any hickory nuts, but laughed every time I told her about finding a new stash of them. Fun memory. 🙂
I have no clue, this is a hard one.
Puh Kahn Other way sounds like,,🙄
I am completely stumped but I will guess a dog’s mouth. You did a great job of fooling us with the pecans. Our daughter has a nut allergy so pecans was not one of my go to’s for baking In fact no nut was. And I do miss them. I do enjoy them from others when we’re gifted. Thanks for the recipe. Yay, your zucchini is coming in! 😊
One of your dog’s nose they you take out walking.
I say pee- Kahn. You really tricked me with that one!
I think this picture is of a doggy nose.
I don’t have a clue, and it’s puh-KAHN. I’m a transplant to Florida from the midwest. I’m also a nurse. If someone talks to me about a pee-can I will always equate that with a urinal.