the pine cones around Lake Tahoe are pretty much all opened up, but I managed to find an unopened one floating in the bay. heated it up next to my Bushbuddy Ultra as I was cooking some rice for lunch. sure enough, the heat caused the cone to loosen up, and I was able to peel off some of the pieces (leaves? dunno what the proper term is) to reveal two pine nuts at the base of each, with each nut loosely attached to a "sail" or "wing" similar to that of maple seeds. once I saw that, I realized that these nuts are all over the ground, many still attached to their wings.
then there's the near-impossible job of extracting the nut meats from the shells without smashing them to smithereens. more heat to the rescue: placed the nuts on the pot lid onto the fire, and they started cracking, tossing themselves off the lid onto the ground as they did so. now it was a matter of splitting the shell along the crack to extract the whole, partially-toasted nut. I'm successful about half the time. all in all, probably too much work for the amount of nutrition obtained, but a fun experiment nonetheless.
last updated 2013-09-28 19:46:16. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com