Harvesting

Well I went back to the mountain on Monday and harvested some pinyon pine nuts. I even ran into the Japanese couple that was out last Friday. They were much farther up on the trail and invited me to come pick nuts under their tree. So nice of them to offer, but I was just stopping from time to time to pick up a few nuts, since Finley had come along and needed some walking action. I thought I would be hacking into a lot of pine cones, but the nuts were all over the ground in some spots. This was a good thing because the few cones I did wrangle left me covered in pine sap which was a boondoggle to clean off. The gloves I brought, I ended up wearing home to keep my gluey hands off of everything. Hence no pictures from the day either. My fingaz were too sticky.

I had wanted to go further along on the trail to scope it out, but once again the weather was not going to let that happen. As soon as I got on the backside of the mountain, clouds rolled in, rather creepy too I must say, and then one drum of thunder was enough to make Finley wimper. I even wore my vibrams out on the trail and honestly, I think I could prolly run that trail in vibrams. There'd only be about 10 percent that would require extra caution. I did manage to chaf my heels though. The older vibrams had some issues.

I came home and put the nuts on a cookie sheet to go through. We baked them for 15 minutes after soaking in water, but many of the nuts are still soft inside the hard shell. The taste varies between nuts. Some taste really good, while others are really bland. If I had to do it over I think I'd bake them longer at a lower temp to keep the monosat fats intact.