A handful of pine nuts

A handful of pine nuts, their scent and taste, brings back memories of my grandfather.  He would take my cousins and I to Yost, Utah to harvest pine nuts.  We would place tarps under the trees, then knock down the pine cones.  I was young, but I seem to remember that the cones had to be warm to open up wide enough for then pine nuts to be harvested.  I remember the pine sap being sticky and hard to get off your hands and extremely difficult to get out of clothes.

Now, I harvest pine nuts by purchasing them from the grocery store.  I found some today at the Valley Market.