Pinoli!

I had to do a bit of a double-take when I was walking past a fruit and vegetable stand the other day. Amongst the apples and the eggplants was something strange: a pine cone. Hmm, I know pine nuts come from pine cones, but I've never seen one for sale!

Well, I had to give it a try. Three euros later, I had 3 rather large pine cones. Ideally, they go into a warm oven for a few minutes until the cone starts to open. (This is where I went wrong. As a first time pine nut gatherer, I left them in for far, far too long.) Then, you have to pry it open to get the nuts out.

We're not done quite yet. After the nuts are out, they still need to be shelled! Popped out of the black shell, we have the finished product: a pine nut.

Pine nuts are known for being incredibly expensive, and I can completely understand why! They really are a pain to collect (especially if you don't know what you're doing) and there weren't any more than 20 nuts in each pine cone. Now, let me show you all the results of all my hard work.

Ta-da! That's all of them! And here I was, ready to make 2 or 3 dishes with pine nuts....

I'm still going to make them, but maybe with store-bought, ready to use pine nuts!