Of course I snagged a Pecan Praline at most every opportunity! They are quintessentially The South and they are beyond description delicious. Several of my fellow passengers and I went looking for The Best Praline recipe and we agreed: this looks like it! But all did agree on this: you must have a candy thermometer for best results.
******BEST Louisiana Pralines Recipe
These Louisiana pralines are the best sweet tooth treat because they're sweet, filling and so addicting. A mix of cream, vanilla, and pecans combine perfectly to make this easy bite-sized candy.
Prep Time5minutes
Cook Time15minutes
Total Time20minutes
Ingredients
1 1/2cupchopped pecans
7tbspsalted butter
1cuplight brown sugar
1 1/4cupgranulated sugar
1tbsppure vanilla extract
1/2cuphalf & half
Instructions
Combine the butter, sugars, and half in half into a large saucepan, then turn the heat up to medium.
Bring the candy mixture to 240 F, and let the candy mixture cook for about 5 minutes without stirring.
After the five minutes, add in the vanilla extract, and stir.
Remove from the heat.
Toss in the pecans, and fold in.
Grab a wooden spoon, and stir the hot candy mixture until it thickens.
On this trip down the Mississippi, I carried a small notebook and scribbled notes furiously. Visiting this national park, I was especially overcome by the enormity of this battle. The notes are mine and the facts as I understood from our guide. After the battle, some 17,000 Union dead were buried in a cemetery near the battlefield, now part of the Vicksburg National Park. We were told that the upright stones were for the identified soldiers and the “stubby flat” stones were for the 13,000 unidentified. The Confederate dead were buried in trenches. The Vicksburg National Military Park was established on 21 February 1899 to preserve and protect the areas associated with the defense and siege of Vicksburg. The park covers over 1800 thousand acres. During the battle, the hills were stripped of trees. During the 1930s, the CCC men replanted many trees. In 1917, veterans were invited to return to the site and point out just where their units stood and fought and some 8800 showed up! Ma...
Duff Green, 1791-1875, was an American teacher, military leader, Democratic party politician, journalist, author, diplomat and industrialist........ and he lived in Vicksburg. He made a good part of his fortune as a cotton broker. He was sympathetic to the Confederate cause but was a realist............ I quite love to learn the story-behind-the-story, especially in American history, and the story of Duff Green's mansion is one such story. The above photos show it as it is today and was during the Civil War. Duff Green built his mansion in 1856 high on a bluff using skilled enslaved labor and bricks that were fired onsite. The grand home survived the Siege of Vicksburg because Green designated it a "hospital" where both Confederate and Union soldiers were treated. Our tour guide in this mansion was the current owner and her love of this old house was evident. This red-walled photo was of the dining room where dinner was a 6-13 cou...
On this particular trip, I didn't see very many cemeteries but always and of course, those I did see made an impact on me. Top Left: A typical rural cemetery near New Orleans. Bottom Left: Take from a book on New Orleans, a typical city cemetery. Right: The final resting place of more than 17,000 Union dead at Vicksburg National Memorial Park. Look closely and you'll see some upright stones and some flat stones. The flat ones were when the identification of the soldier was unknown. Scanning the whole scene, it was so sad to see how many flat ones there were. The park signboard on the right also shares this: "At hundreds of Civil War battle sites the remains of fallen soldiers lay nearly forgotten, scattered in woods, fields and roadside ditches." Now did they gather those up to bury here??? Burials in cemeteries in New Orleans are tightly packed together and above ground. Why? The water table is too high for in-ground burial. The deceased are n...
Comments
Post a Comment