Other ways to use the fruit are in drinks, candy, jams, ice cream and jelly. Here's a recipe for a Prickly Pear Milk Shake: 3 cactus pears, cleaned and diced 1 diced apple 1 pear 1 banana 1 cup chopped nuts 2 cups milk 2 tablespoons honey Mix all Ingredients in a blender until smooth before serving. The cactus pear is the most well-known edible part of this plant. But the young pads are also good to eat and are available all year. They are called nopalitos, and are picked when still small and glossy green. Once again, caution needs to be taken when gathering the pads. Pick them off carefully (shielding the hands with a bag) or try scraping off the spines and glochids with your knife before picking. To eat, each pad must be cleaned of all its spines and glochids. Peel the entire pad with a potato peeler, starting with the margins and working your way toward the center of the pad. Be sure all the glochids are removed before you begin to eat the cactus. Once the skin Is peeled off, dice the pad into pieces and try it in a salad. For a new breakfast taste, eat the cactus with eggs. First dice approximately 2 cups of peeled cactus pads and one onion. Cook in butter until the juices are released. Continue cooking until the juices have evaporated and the cactus has turned from a bright green to a 1ight brown. Add eggs and scramble and cook until done-as-desired. Serve the cactus-egg mixture on a hot tortilla and cover with green chile salsa. Excellent! Another interesting use for the prickly pear is as a hair conditioner. Add about ½ cup at the small chunks of diced cache to 2 cups of warm water and stir. Within minutes, the mixture gels. Strain the cactus chunks and use the juice as a hair rinse. by christopher nyerges
The prickly pear cactus, one of the most commonplace cacti in Southern California has surprisingly delicious fruit. It is easy to recognize-fat fleshy pads bearing numerous spines and dusters of fuzzy hairlike glochids that are more wicked than the spines themselves. In the spring, these cacti flower in beautiful shades of yellow and red and as summer draws to a dose, fruit develops and ripens to a red, purple or yellow hue. When fully matured, the cactus pear is delicious and juicy. But be careful-it also is covered with the minute glochids that are very irritating once they're in your skin.	One successful method for gathering the fruit without touching it is to surround it with a brown paper bag, tug on the fruit and let it fall safely into the bag. When you're ready to eat it, grab the butt and with a fork and scrape off all the glochids with a small knife. Rinse well, and cut the fruit in half lengthwise. Scoop out the insides and eat as is-it's a real thirst quencher on dry mountain trails. The inside of the cactus pear is usually red, very seedy and has a taste and texture similar to watermelon.

Page Index	Prev	Page 8	Next	Issue Index