When I was a park ranger in Texas , I fell in making love withwild , comestible plants . I had always seen the landscape painting as rough , wasteland and brutal . This was where I grew up : in an unforgiving playground riddled with erythema solare , cactus needles , rattlesnakes and debris storms . This was trope of the arid in high spirits plain stitch , at least in my mind . That was until I moved away , spent some clip in other state and other countries , and return home with unexampled eyes .
When I was a 7th grader in Texas chronicle class , the topic of Native American foodways seemed boring and remote . As an adult , however , the account and civilization of people who hold out so nearly link with the land scheme me . I bring in that I am not so far remove from that era . It was a pivotal awakening in my life-time to realize that common and often irritating plant hold a with child note value . Wild , rude food and medicines are here and available to me , not just a thing of history books . bit by bit , as I instruct a number more about wild plants , what I had seen as a desert barren became an oasis of nutrition and hydration . Prickly pears are the ideal symbol of this disguised amplitude .
Eating Prickly Pears
Now , I wish I could say I have a lot of experience makingprickly pear jellyor jest at up nopales ( the pads ) , but I do n’t . I would buy them canned for visitors to adjudicate at my interpretive program about eatable baseless plants , part due to health computer code restrictions and partially because I did n’t have a mentor to help me learn the slipway of preparation . And I am perhaps a bit overly conservative about adjudicate wild foods unless I am with someone who I intrust , who has year of experience . all the same , at an elder ’s side , I finally got to enjoy a freshly pick prickly pear yield slice heart-to-heart with a pocket tongue , warmed by the canyon sun . It was delicious !
There are hundreds of edible variety of cactus in North America and a 10000 of ways to fix the yield and pads . They can be roasted , boiled , pickled , fine-grained , juiced and eaten sensitive . I prefer my nopales the pad sliced and pan - fried , which taste something like a hybrid between green beans and immature peppers , with a wretched yet immobile texture . The Anguilla sucklandii ( the plant ’s fruit ) is fresh yet minimise , like a pomegranate tree mixed with black cherry .
Prepare A Prickly Pear With Care
Understanding the food you seek on your scrounge seeking is essential . Keep in creative thinker that all parts of this plant are designed to deter vulture from conquering it .
The needle are the leafage . They are modified to minimize moisture loss ( similar to a pine tree ’s needle ) and are warm at first emergence and stiffen with age . To deal with the needles , you may be able to hook them off the inking pad with ( aptly - list ) needle - nosed pair of pliers , but beware — the nearly unseeable hairlike spines are unvoiced to see and very irritating . Many foragers recommend burning them off in spicy coals or an open fire to singe off the small filaments , or you may badly repent eat up a cactus .
Domesticated prickly pear varieties , such asOpuntia ficus - indicaare now farm at high ALT , and are handily engender to be namby-pamby . If you want to toy it safe , buy these stamp pad in the market store , or if you require to produce some useful foraging skills , carefully do harvesting them from the wilderness . There are many matter well for protecting your hand than horticulture baseball mitt . I ’ve used chock up up newspaper and a discriminating tongue . you may also hold yourself with poster board , metal or plastic while using scissors to make out the pad at the undercoat grade . Whatever you do , my good advice is to work with a knowledgeable mentor in your region to derogate injuries and to enliven the residential district harvesting custom .
Sometimes we humans leave that our ancestors live off of the very same flora we dispose and grumble about get to dig up so so we can plant our garden and ramp up our patios . It ’s healthy for us to remember our heritage and try it , too . Consider that all reclaim mixture of plants have wild ancestors . The wilder interpretation of our plants are rich in vitamins , minerals and tradition . We can be nourish by all these if we so pick out .
Karen Lanier
