Cracking nuts never gets old

Well, there's no way to title this post without chuckling to myself.  Yes, I can be immature and I am dirty-minded!  My brother and his fiancé brought us a big bag of pecans last Christmas from the pecan tree on my childhood farm where my Dad still lives.  My brother, Mitch, actually proposed to Aimee under that pecan tree.  I always loved that tree too.  We were cracking some of the pecans last Christmas and my brother and I just kept going on and on with the dirty innuendos about cracking nuts.  We just kept laughing and laughing about it.  Then, Aimee walked up to us and she said "You're just like your brother.  He never gets tired of jokes about cracking nuts or ones about my chocolate truffle balls."  I don't know about you but I am proud of that statement.  It is so silly and stupid but it makes me laugh just thinking about it.  My brother and I do have a pretty simple sense of humor.  It doesn't take much to get us chuckling.

This is the memory that I was thinking of last weekend when the girls and I were cracking the pecans for our carrot cake that we made which was amazing by the way.  Then, I started thinking about the simple things that are really quite meditative.  Cracking nuts is a great activity to just silence your mind and just be.  When is the last time that first of all you have bought a bag of unshelled nuts and second sat down to crack them on your own?  You have to practice your technique to get out that perfect piece.  It's just like cracking crab legs.  Everyone has to show off getting out the perfect piece.  It takes quite some time to unshell enough to get a significant amount to show for it.  It's a great metaphor.  It reminds me of this great quote by Thomas Edison - "Opportunity is missed by people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

I really enjoyed sitting down with that bag of pecans and teaching my girls where nuts come from and how you get them out to enjoy.  We were all just sitting and concentrating and in our thoughts and silence.  Then one of us would show off a prized whole nut that was pulled out of a shell. I also got to tell them where the pecans came from and how when I was a girl Mitch and I would go out there and eat pecans.  We would get two pecans in our hands and squeeze them together to crack them against themselves.

Cracking nuts really is an art to master.  

It's a simple thing that has gotten a bit lost.

"Cracking nuts" never gets old.