I’ve never been a nut person. If offered salt in snack form, I always opted for potato chips. At a ballpark, I might countenance Cracker Jack, but I never ate peanuts. (And I was shocked and appalled the first time I saw a friend of mine eat them WITH THE SHELLS ON LIKE SIR WHAT ARE YOU DOING!)

I didn’t like nuts in my chocolate. Plain M&Ms, please. I thought it was weird to put walnuts in cookies or in salads. I ate around any slivered almonds that showed up in green bean dishes and I didn’t care about candied almonds at weddings. I didn’t understand why you would put pecans in ice cream—even my beloved grandmother couldn’t make me understand that one.

And yet, somehow, somewhere along the line, someone tricked me into eating pralines and cream ice cream at Baskin Robbins, and I had a new favorite. And then my grandfather went to New Orleans and brought us gifts of actual pralines, praline liqueur, and some kind of ice cream topping. I’ve never gone back on this taste; I love it.

My husband, on the other hand, is a nut fiend, who is “not especially” interested in pralines. I don’t see how this man who gorges on cashews and hazelnuts and I don’t know what all can turn up his nose at a praline, but here we are. It’s fine. More for each of us!

This may also be part of why I love visiting New Orleans and he is tepid on it. (Probably not.) I insist on leaving town with at least one box of the stuff, and he keeps asking how I’ll ever at them all. The answer is slowly, but I will do it!

Anyway, pralines became a sort of entrée into the world of nuts for me. I snarfed cashews, I decided Mr. Goodbar was an acceptable choice of chocolate, I discovered that trout amandine is in fact pretty dang good.

But Baskin Robbins will always be my first choice for nut consumption.