I just wanted to past this along to the group....I bought these
great pralines off line.
They were really good. And they gave me a chance to remember the
GOOD things about
New Orleans. Get yours and pass this along..

http://www.geocities.com/katrina_survivor504/

What is a New Orleans Praline?

The New Orleans Praline is a candy unique to New Orleans,it reflects
the rich gumbo of cultures that creates of the life of New
Orleans.....

Indeed, the praline - like New Orleans itself - started out with
aristocratic French roots but grew into something quite its own here
in the South.
Sweet treat immigrated from France to the banks of the Mississippi
River

There are many variations on the story of how the praline came to
be, but most of them revolve around the manor house of the 17th-
century French diplomat Cesar du Plessis Praslin - a name that later
morphed into the term for the candy. A chef in the kitchen here
developed a technique for coating almonds in cooked sugar which,
competing stories hold, were used by his courtly employer either as
a digestive aid or as gifts to the ladies he visited. In France and
elsewhere, the word praline is still used as a generic term for any
sort of candy made with nuts.



These early confections traveled with Frenchmen to their new colony
on the banks of the Mississippi, a land where both sugar cane and
nuts were cultivated in abundance. In local kitchens, Louisiana
pecans were substituted for the more exotic almonds, cream was
added, giving the candy more body, and a Southern tradition was
born.

The candy's winning flavor has led to worldwide popularity, and, as
such things go, varying pronunciations and hybrid recipes. For the
record, the local and proper pronunciation is "prah-lean," while the
nut most commonly used in it is pronounced "peck-on." Just remember
that, in New Orleans, a word pronounced "pray-lean" means nothing
except, perhaps, a posture the supplicant faithful assume while
petitioning God.



Even before the Civil War and Emancipation, pralines were an early
entrepreneurial vehicle for free women of color in New Orleans. In
1901, the Daily Picayune (a predecessor to today's Times-Picayune
newspaper) described in nostalgic terms the "pralinieres," or older
black women, who sold pralines "about the streets of the Old French
Quarter." They were often found patrolling Canal Street near Bourbon
and Royal streets and around Jackson Square in the shade of the
alleys flanking St. Louis Cathedral. And in the 1930s, the Louisiana
folklorist Lyle Saxon, writing in the book "Gumbo Ya-Ya," documented
praline sellers "garbed in gingham and starched white aprons and
tignons," or head wraps, fanning their candies with palmetto leaves
against the heat and bellowing the sales pitch "belles pralines!" to
passersby.....



So as you enjoy your New Orleans Praline you'll experiance the rich
culture and history of

New Orleans....



Then you will know what it means to miss New Orleans!!!



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