Pine Nuts!!!

Yep!! pine nuts !!!!

  What is it ?? well it's basically a pine cone with whole bunch of nuts inside, you probably wonder how does it looks like right ??  well here's a picture of it

So afterward i decide to collect all the cones that laying on the ground, because there're plenty of nuts inside the cones (i called it the left over from the squirrels) and this is what i got after collecting them, by the way  don't forget to wear gloves if you decide to do this too, the sap from the pine cones is really sticky to your hands and leaving the dirty sticky dark marks on your hands afterwards, and trust me it's not easy to wash it off.

 Here is some of the pine cones got picked from the tree, they're still closing, but most of the nuts from these cones are guarantees to have the pine nuts inside the seeds (the seed shell)

And you probably wondering how to open them up with out hurting yourself ?? Well as you all know that if you leave the unopened pine cones in the sun long enough, the heat from the sun would makes the cone open up, and you can pick the seeds out of the cones, but didn't i have the patience to wait for days for the cones to open up, so i decided to put the cone into the heat (which is fire) to roast them up .

Just in a few minutes, like magic the pine cones just open up by itself , and here is the picture of a pine cone that got roasted

Here are the nuts from harvesting from pine cones, it's tedious work because you have to pick each seed out of a pine cone, it can be a fun things to do for the kids. Oh yea, don't forget to wear gloves when you do anything with the pine cones or the pine nuts, because the pine cone have the sticky sap and the pine nuts have the black dust in them, make sure you don't touch those black dust it  will get to your hand you might end up with black lines all over your face. 

So ... what should we do to get rid of the black dust before we open up the seeds ???  light bulb!! .. aAhhh water ... water will make the seeds wet and help to prevent the dust flying all over the house or the face, so i soak them in water, to clean them up. 

After soaked it in water and washed 'em up, if you have a hammer you can use it, i didn't have any around at that time so i chose to use the meat tenderizer to crack up the shells and take the nuts out, inside the seeds there will be a pine nut, you can eat the nuts raw, or slightly roast the nuts and eat it, i haven't try to roast it yet only eat it raw, the taste of pine nuts just like peanuts with the aroma of pine, it;s just something different and delicious!