So I was on a hike a couple of days ago and I found a huge stand of cactus and
it's the Opuntia variety where you have prickly pears.
And I said I have to come back and I have to take you guys with me to do a
little bit of urban foraging. So prickly pear is a beautiful, delicious fruit.
You can make jams out of it, you can just eat it fresh.
A couple of things you gotta remember if you're going to pick them.
So let's go ahead, hit up this canyon.
Beautiful light out right now and let's go see if we can get ourselves some
prickly pears. Before you even go out hunting,
you need solid gloves. So these are from Vermont Glove,
double stitched, hardcore leather.
The prickly pears are going to mess you up if you don't have any kind of glove
on. So don't even begin unless you have some kind of protective coating.
Cause I've definitely gotten spiked before and they're deceivingly small,
these little glochids on the prickly pears. So our mission,
should we choose to accept it, is to get over to that bridge,
come down on this side over here,
go under the bridge and then right over there is where all the prickly pear is.
So here we are at the start of the trail. You can see crazy,
crazy nasturtiums going on. A lot of stuff going down in this canyon.
So before we get to the prickly pear we might as well take a little bit of an
Epic nature tour. I mean seriously,
just look how big the leaves of these nasturtiums are and look how many there
are. It's unlimited over here. Wow!
So now we're underneath the bridge that we just walked across.
And as you can see if we look right over there,
you can start to see them peeking out and waiting for us. There it is, baby.
So here we are. We've got to get up this kind of muddy hill. Uh,
so there's so many, there are so many.
So we're going to have plenty. We're going to have more than we need.
Let's go ahead and collect these guys right now. We made it guys,
take a look at the fruits of our labor. Quite literally.
Oh my gosh. There are so many here.
And it just doesn't stop. So I don't want to take more than I can use,
but there are hundreds on just this one stand and there's another stand over
there. There's another stand over there. So totally, totally fine to take some.
Gloves on, maxed out,
double strength,
and then you just want to come through and give them a nice twist.
Just twist them off just like that. And we're good to go.
So there's some post-processing that needs to happen. But for now,
let's go ahead and fill our bag a little bit with some of these delicious,
delicious, abundant wild fruits.
It really is as simple as just coming through, giving it a nice little twist.
Voila. Beautiful.
So I've got some prickly pears, not a ton, like I said, but that's totally fine.
Because if I ever want more,
there are plenty to come back to. It's getting dark. I've got enough.
Let's go ahead and walk on home and let's talk about how to get these ready for
consumption because you can't eat them as they are right now.
You're gonna have a really, really bad time. Alright,
let's see our bounty here.
Not bad at all if I do say so myself.
So you've got quite a few from our bounty.
And the last thing we're going to talk about is how to prepare these so you can
actually handle them without spiking your life away.
And then we'll cut into one and see what it looks like on the inside and give it
a little bit of a taste test. So we're just going to turn our burner on.
And I've got kind of like a little shish kebab roasting it almost like a
marshmallow and you can see it's starting to burn off.
And you can see the little bits of heat right there.
And you want to make sure that not only do you get the glochids,
but you also just get the entire exterior of the flesh because there's spikes
that's just hang out on the surface that will still get you if you don't burn
them all the way off. And so that's really pretty much it.
I like to bring it off the heat a little bit and bring it back on.
Make sure that I didn't miss anything. Cover the angles a little bit.
Almost like roasting a marshmallow.
And now we're ready to cut it open and see what it tastes like. Okay,
let's cut it open and we will see what the interior looks like.
Look at that.
So you can see there's like an inner flesh right around here and the skin
somewhat separates because when we take a spoon and come through,
it's actually going to come out really nice and easy.
So we just come in like that and then just see how the skin just immediately
peels away. So you can almost just run a spoon like that,
then come out and you just have your piece right there.
So let's go ahead and taste test it.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me guys. Let's see.
Now the seeds are kind of hard, so you want to watch out for those.
Don't bite down too hard. But man, nice light,
mild fruity flavor. Does
remind me a little bit of a dragon fruit, but it's definitely sweeter,
just naturally sweeter. And there's so much that you can do with this.
You can turn into a jam, like I said, jellies, ice creams. Uh,
I think I might actually make a shrub,
which is a drinking vinegar that you can then mix into alcoholic drinks.
So if you'd like to see some of that, definitely stay tuned. But again,
thanks for coming on the foraging journey with me.
Make sure and hunt down some prickly pears if they grow in your area.
Until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.