There were a half dozen or so around loaded like this one.
As a kid we used to cut the fruit open and eat the flesh. If I can get enough i may try to make some jelly.
I don’t live near these anymore, but I’ve been wanting to eat one again for a couple years now. Those look delicious.
We used to have them in stores sometimes, but I haven’t seen them in a while.
I’m from a very different climate, what is this?
Prickly pear cactus, the red bits are fruit… but covered with very fine spines. So small they are difficult to remove with tweezers.
I once handled this cactus very briefly without gloves, thinking I was being careful and avoiding all spines. Then, later, I realized it had tiny spines too. Painful lesson.
You need a bear claw to pick that prickly pear
It’s just not worth it with prickly pear,.one barb can ruin your day
Is it Opuntia humifusa? I never saw them on the actually plant. In France we call them Barbarian fig them and also Opuntia ficus-indica. I never had the chance to eat the first but if it taste like the second it must be tasty.
I am unsure exactly which opuntia species it is, there are likely a dozen different ones here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Opuntia_species
That’s very nice. Are every one eatible?
Different climates are crazy. Where I’m from a naked land is either a small patch of rocks or it has something very very wrong. The whole soil is covered in herbs. Yet in other climate that aren’t this lush, nature stills provide every thing man needs.
Here the pads, or leaves are also eaten. They are called nopal. According to wikipedia almost all of the species’ pads. No idea about the fruit, I learned about eating them from Navajo friends growing up, we picked them on and around the playground at school. As far as I remember we just picked whatever, I had no idea there were so many different species until a couple years ago.
Is the inside similar to aloe vera?
I have not actually eaten nopales, I see then growing all the time, and in the store. Not I have no idea how to actually prepare them. Maybe next summer I will learn.
