Karen Schneider’s topping macaroons with them, while Cocoon developer Gianugo Rabellino is crushing them into pesto in a marble mortar. (Gianugo’s blog, by the way, is not the Italian subsidiary of Elsevier, so put the torches and pitchforks down.) I wanted to toss some into our first post-e-coli spinach the other night, but found we didn’t have any and used crushed walnuts instead. I don’t know whether the mountain pine beetle, now marching on Edmonton from the north, threatens the simple pine nut, but I sure hope not, because walnuts are no substitute.