While putting up the Christmas tree this year, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” came up on the merry playlist. Maybe this is weird, but I used to run to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and it still properly hypes me up. Whole thing’s a bop!

I also used to collect nutcrackers growing up (definitely weird). None of them were particular unique, but they were all freaks and were fun to dig out of the Christmas decorations every year. None of them were functional nutcrackers, but that didn’t bother me since I avoided nuts anyways.

As a kid, I would accept nuts without too much groaning only when a sweet treat like a brownie or cookie would be, unfortunately, speckled with chopped walnuts. Occasionally I would crack a peanut or two and somewhat enjoy the recognizable flavor nuggets, but in my mind, peanuts weren’t nuts like walnuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios, and all their friends were nuts. These were all ashy on my tongue, wrong in both texture and taste. I just didn’t get it.

But I totally get it now that I’ve sampled nuts in novel applications (except for texturally distasteful almonds which I continue to take issue with, don’t @ me). I get how pine nuts and fresh herbs whizzed into a pesto can deliciously dress up pasta. I’ve experienced the sweet duality of walnuts, how they can create a rich, savory, almost chocolate-like sauce for fesenjoon and an equally alluring, pepper-blushed dip like muhammara.

Blending up cashews to make a “milk” for butter chicken made me feel like a proper home chef for the first time. Peanuts have adorned many a brilliant Southeast Asian salad and created savory flavors and crunchy textures that I had been subconsciously missing my whole life. Bags of peanuts are also permanently stocked in our pantry as we must always be prepared to appease our crow neighbors.

Pecans and I have known each other forever - a productive pecan tree towered over the corner of my Mamaw and Papaw Lee’s barn and dropped fresh husks that I often collected but rarely tasted. Now I properly respect them as the element that composes a true masterpiece: Arkansas possum pie. Fittingly, the pecan is also the state nut of my homeland, Arkansas. Oh, and it should definitely be pronounced pih-kahn according to the indigenous Algonquian who christened it as such.

Nowadays, I use nuts regularly, and they have a designated place in my fridge (you should keep your nuts in the fridge, btw). Without much fuss or a recipe to reference, I made a standard pesto the other day using the reserved carrot tops from our Thanksgiving carrot dish, a handful of pine nuts, a dash of salt, and a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice and found myself a bit in awe of how simple it was considering the pay-off. I never recognized nuts’ well-deserved place in savory dishes until taking this cooking thing seriously, and I’ve blessedly come a long way from feeling like nuts only diminish desserts.

Maybe it’s time to invest in some serious nutcrackers…?

Is there a similar food that has grown on you over the years? Am I a freak for not respecting nuts ‘til now?