Nut Crackin'...

I used to love pecans. But after this...

...not so much. No, it's not just a picture of my hand. Do you notice the blister on the middle of my ring finger and the huge red splotch from broken blood vessels on my index finger? These are the cause for my great dislike of pecans.

So this last Friday I took matters into my own, very sore hands. I had already hand cracked 1 1/2 plastic grocery bags of pecans, had one gallon size zip-loc bag full, and still found myself staring down two more bags...just waiting to be cracked.

Yeah. No fun! Remind me why I'm doing this again? Oh. Right. They're FREE!

Now let me introduce you to my new-found friend: the Pecan Cracker...

The simplicity of this machine blows my mind. After all, I'm all about Simply Being Kari. (har, har)

Simply put, the pecans are poured in here...

...and a cute little lifter pulls one pecan up at a time and drops them here...

...where a metal bar RAMS into the pecan, cracking the shell. The cracked pecan then falls into this tub...

Fifteen minutes later all three grocery bags, forgot to mention I went out and picked one more bag-full before I left, containing seventeen pounds of pecans were cracked!

Can I just say that simply pulling the pecan shells off is a whole lot easier than cracking them....W-A-Y easier.

So now I have TWO gallon-sized zip-locs full of pecans just waiting to be sugar coated, baked, and gifted. AWE-SOME!