Cookin’ on Hwy. 1

Cookin’ on Hwy. 1

By Tim Acosta, Advertising & Marketing Director

Pecans are everywhere during theholidays, including my own backyard.

There is a wild pecan tree right next to our house that was here when we built. It is about 70 feet tall, with a trunk about four feet around, which means it is at least 80 years old, possibly 85. There is also a small grove of pecan trees in the back behind the cane field that is about 30 years old.

As I write this, the pecans are just beginning to fall. I was surprised to learn that it can take anywhere from seven to 10 years before a pecan tree will produce a bumper crop. After that, the tree can continue to bear pecans for up to 100 years.

I used to be the chief pecan picker-upper at my house, but now I enlist my grandkids to do it. They think gathering them is fun,

especially when they get to use those little rolling nut harvesters to do it. I have a bench with a makeshift nutcracker bolted onto it, and I make good use of it. I crack all of the pecans, or at least par-crack them, so the kids can finish them. It’s like starting a crab.

Pecans are a big part of our holiday cooking. You can’t have a sweet potato casserole without them. My youngest, Cody, and his wife, Vanessa, make a pecan pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. It’s one of my wife Cindy’s favorite holiday desserts. I like it à la mode, with Rouses Vanilla Ice Cream, but it’s delicious enough to eat à la nothing.

I’m not the only pecan grower around here. Pecans are grown all over the South, though commercially they’re mainly in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia. On average, pecan production adds about $12 million to the Louisiana economy each year, and $10 million to the Alabama economy each year.

About 90% of the pecans we sell at Rouses Markets come from Bergeron Pecans, which is the largest pecan-shelling facility in Louisiana. Bergeron Pecans have been on our shelves since our very first store back in 1960.

Last year, we sold nearly 100,000 packages just for the holidays — I bet we do even more this year.

Bergeron is based in New Roads in Pointe Coupée Parish, which is the top pecanproducing parish in the state. Like so many local businesses, Bergeron started out as something else. Horace Joseph Bergeron was a merchant and a farmer. In 1910, he opened a trading post for locals to come trade or hand-crack pecans in exchange for merchandise and food items. His sons built a pecan-shelling plant next door in 1941, and the family began shelling and packing pecans from farmers all over the state, as well as their own orchards. Today, Bergeron processes 5 million to 7 million pounds of in-shell pecans a year. Like

Rouses Markets, Bergeron is led by a third generation of the family, Lester Bergeron. Our produce team works directly with him.

You can use Bergeron Pecans or your own handpicked pecans in my son Cody’s recipe for Pecan Pie.