Pesto Pilgrim's Progress and the Pine Cone Park

I've been stalking this park for three days, since I realized that the entire quarter mile loop of paved walking path was studded with pine trees. So what, you say? So PINE NUTS. See, once upon a time I went to buy some pesto, and lo, that shiz was expensive. Verily, said I, hell no. I'll make my own. And if it's expensive because of the ingredients (basil and pine nuts) I'll grow my own. Turns out you can grow your own pine nuts, because they grow on pine trees. Inside pine cones. Who knew? (Not me, that's for sure. I thought they might grow on bushes like peanuts.)

Originally I had no idea where to find pine trees, since in my neighborhood I've never seen anything but acacia trees, carrotwood, jacaranda and eucalyptus--largely, the ornamental one tree per lot the developers of my suburb threw in when they clear cut the native plants and scraped all the topsoil off our lots. Once I had it in my head to look for pine trees with closed brown pine cones though (green cones haven't developed their seeds yet and open cones have mostly had their seeds stolen by squirrels and birds) I started seeing them everywhere. Along the side of the road. In canyons between the streets. In the undeveloped land between the neighborhoods. And here, in a nice community park where I happened to start walking last week. Since pine trees are native to California I realized they were the remnants of the native plants that must have been here long before the developers got it into their heads to build tract homes here. In fact, for thousands of years the native cultures of the southwest--the Shosone, Paiute, Washo and Ute peoples--subsisted through the winter with the high caloric density (over 3000 calories per pound!) of pine nuts gathered from native pine trees in California, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Two thousand years ago a family might gather around 1,200 pounds of pine nuts in the fall, which would feed a family of four for about four months. The men would either use simple poles to beat the tree branches to make the cones fall (did they wear helmets? This seems precarious when you're underneath) or a more complex tool with a forked hook at the end to pop the cones off their branches. The women would gather the cones and heat them on the fire until the cones broke open; then the cones would be put into bags to be beaten until the seeds shook loose. Finally the seeds themselves were heated to crack and release them from their shells and finally get at the pine nut itself.

I don't have a complex stick with a forked hook. I literally have a two foot long stick I found on the ground, one I am ready to discard at a moment's notice should I attract the attention of the other denizens of the park so I can blend into perfect suburban blandness and disappear unnoticed. If I only had a maxi dress on and had straightened my hair! I'd be practically invisible.

There's a pack of Fit Moms (Memes?) barking at each other in a Baby Boot Camp Walk Run Circuit Training Station Class at the other end of the park. They're unpredictable--despite their coordinated-but-not-matchy-matchy cropped capri workout pants-tops-cross trainer combos and perfectly straightened sleek blonde ponytails, their state of the art military grade running strollers mean they're ready to be on the move and running short laps around random points at any moment. At the moment, they're doing squats. Hmm. Circuit Training. I'm doing Circuit Training. I flex my legs experimentally before aiming a jump at the low-hanging branch with my stick. The cone I had my eye on pops off and lands at my feet. Huh.

I pause not far from Zen Chick, who is meditating silently, eyes closed, legs tucked under her in the grass, her ipod speakers softly playing Chinese flute music. There are three cones hanging temptingly from a long hanging branch, again, just out of my reach, but I don't want to knock them out with my stick for fear I'll disturb her. I can just reach some of the drooping needles and from there I can catch hold of a stick, then a thicker branch, then I can finally pull the whole bough down low enough to get all three cones. I congratulate myself for my cat-like reflexes and my plus to move silently right before the pine cones, too big for my one-handed grip, pop out of my hand and fall with a loud clatter to the sidewalk. "Sorry!" I whisper urgently and hurry on. I almost run headlong into Pokemon Teen, flip-flopped and phone-handed. Staring at his screen he stops short right in front of me and backs up before quickly changing direction, muttering "Vaporeon." When he pauses at a random spot in the grass and flicks his thumb upwards across his screen I know I've escaped his notice for now. I hear him quietly swearing behind me; hopefully he has enough pokeballs to keep trying to catch whatever he's found before he looks up and notices me, since I've now abandoned dignity and have jumped up to swat at the branches where a particularly plummy cone is hanging. There are needles and crumbly bits of decayed cones caught in my curly hair.  My hands are black and sticky with crusted sap; I have to make a physical effort to restrain myself from wiping the super-gluey goo on my shorts. I wipe a dangling pine needle from where it hangs down in my face and I can feel the swipe of sticky sap across my cheek.

I arrive back at the car with my cloth grocery bag full of pine cones, still feeling itchy that someone might be watching me and waiting to take back my bounty for--what? Do pine trees need the cones to sprout new needles? Are there endangered native squirrel populations that depend on the nuts for survival? I'm suddenly certain I've heard that you're never supposed to remove pine cones from public parks under penalty of law and equally certain that the maintenance truck with City of San Diego that stops right in front of me is filled with Park Cops waiting to tackle me to the ground and wrestle away my cones. The driver adjusts his City of San Diego ball cap further onto his face and I'm bracing myself to answer back with all the indignity I can muster while readying myself to run to the car, relying on my keyless entry for a quick getaway, but he just gets out, tips his hat to me like an old-timey sheriff and starts adjusting a broken sprinkler.

This is ridiculous. I feel like I've just gone through the Pesto Pilgrims Progress. The task before me, the baking and shelling, is daunting, according to Penniless Parenting, who says in her blog about harvesting pine nuts both "Now I know why these things are so friggin expensive" and "Don't try this if you want to keep your sanity."

Instead of putting the cones into the fire, Shoshone style, I put them into a 350 oven (with tinfoil to catch any sap) until the scales popped open--I set the oven for an hour, then let the cones cool in the oven. The house smelled pleasantly ("like getting smacked in the face with a dry cedar sauna", said my grinning husband) like pine.

Both air freshener and spa facial in one. 

The cones popped open and a ton of the tiny seeds just shook loose, looking like the whirly birds or helicopter seeds I used to see as a kid under some kind of tree that grew near my grandparents' house in Wisconsin.

Most of the seeds shook loose but I could see them inside the cones and didn't want to waste the ones that were still in there; so I went whole hog and smashed them with a hammer, Shosone style.

This cone is nice and open and you can see the seeds tucked in at the base of the scales. The cones in the top picture going into the oven are tight and closed like dragon eggs. 

Energy invested so far: enough to hatch five separate Pokemon eggs or, alternately, walk the Rock and Roll Marathon (for foraging) plus Cross Fit with Shake-weights (for hammer smashing). Penniless says you can gather the nuts themselves under the pine trees in September and October as they shake loose from the cones as they open naturally; but the lack of cones on the lower branches and the number of squirrels and rabbits and birds I saw in the park makes me think it'll be a daily pilgrimage to root around in the pine needles and avoid suburbanites to get enough pine nuts for a decent batch of pesto.

For the final step, cracking open the seeds and getting to the pine nuts, Native Americans "parched" the seeds over coals and then cracked them; Penniless used her teeth to shell them like sunflower seeds. I took a look at my bowl of blackened, hard seeds and thought about how proud I was of my dental work, then went and got a pair of pliers. The first shell I opened was empty. So was the second. And the fifteenth. There was a nice, pleasant nutty smell of roasted pine nuts but the shells were completely dry inside. I realized in my desire to make sure all the cones opened enough to shake out the seeds, I'd parched the living hell out of my pine nuts too, and basically rendered the fat completely out of those lovely, fatty kernels. I was able to find one pine nut, intact, and all the rest, I'd desiccated into dust.

Yay. Success. I can now make a thimble-ful of pesto for one noodle. 

If I was depending on my foraging prowess to feed myself I would literally be dead.

Well, Pilgrim's Progress is all about the journey--right? Win on finding cones, on shaking open seeds, and on shucking the kernels, I just roasted them too long. Would I do it again? Maybe. It was fun looking for pine cones when I was out walking anyway; fun smashing them open; I enjoyed the nice piney smell of them roasting in the kitchen. It might be worth a second try--note to self, roast ONLY UNTIL CONES OPEN. In the meantime, though, as much as I like to be sustainable and local, I think I might just bite the bullet and buy the pine nuts.
Basic Pesto Recipe
2 cups packed basil leaves
1/2 cup grated parmesan
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts
2/3 cup olive oil
kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper
Combine basil, garlic and nuts in food processor. Add oil and pulse until smooth, season with salt and pepper, and stir in cheese.