Geoff Duncan

I know this admission will make some readers think I'm odd(er), but I've never been a fan of tree nuts. Leaving peanuts aside—c'mon, they're beans, people!—they just don't do it for me. Walnuts and pecans have those bitter skins with a texture which makes me think of eating plastic wrap. And every once in a while you get one which tastes like gasoline—and I am not one of those people who thinks gasoline smells good.

Cashews…well, they're a seed, not a tree nut, but they've always struck me as mealy and unappealing. Leaving aside the dyed/undyed debate about pistachios, I've just never liked them: I shell one or two, pop them in, chew them…and bleh, I'm ready for a glass of water and something else. Brazil nuts—mostly from Bolivia, I gather—have a flavor which seems to lodge in my sinuses for days. I think hazelnuts make a great praline, but I won't eat them straight. Coconut has a mealy texture which drives me dingy, and macadamias (along with avocados and eggplants) may be a good argument for the existence of aliens or some Higher Power because—to me anyway—it's just improbable they could could come into existence without the aid of a sense of humor. (Half a cup of macadamia nuts has about twice as much fat as 4 ounces of hamburger.) I don't get the same sense from, say, the duck-billed platypus.

Which leaves me mostly to almonds (yum) and pine nuts.

Almonds are good. but anyone who has seen me cook—or, really, even talk about cooking—knows I can go a little pine nut happy. Far as I'm concerned, pine nuts, piñons, pignolas (call them what you want) the can go with nearly anything. Spaghetti? Sure! Curried rice? Sure! Salads? Darn right! Oatmeal? Yabetcha. Toasted, roasted, ground up, caramelized with drown sugar or malasses, sauted with olive oil, pepper and, garlic—or just straight down the hatch—pine nuts are my idea of good eating. Sure, once in a blue moon, you get one which tastes like turpentine, but, let me be clear, that is a small price to pay. Over the years, I've probably told hundreds of people that pine nuts are like my Kryptonite, and that if the mysterious "they" made something like Snickers bars out of pine nuts, I'd need a whole new wardrobe because I'd quickly ballon to over 300 pounds and (happily) subtract years from my life.

For the record, yes, I have long known Superman doesn't go around telling everybody that his big weakness is Kryptonite. Because, you know, someone might act on that information.

So imagine the surprise, delight, and elation—followed by the alarm, fear, horror, and utter abject terror—I experienced when the nice postman delivered a mysterious package from one of my clients. In the package: a selection of piñon candies from Señor Murphy, Santa Fe Candymaker.

What's that sound Homer Simpson makes when he thinks about food? "Mmmm. Pine nut candy. Garrrghghghgh." That's me.