SaltySweetSour

(Opuntia spp.)

One of the trickiest and most painful fruits, but also the most delicious and inexpensive (if you can find them in store) is the prickly pear. If you’re adventurous you can pick them yourself (even in the northeast – yeah cactuses grow here)! I am showing ones I foraged in California. I forgot gloves so I covered my hands with shopping bags, and still got pricked by the glochids! The hair-like glochids in the picture are actually barbed spines. Look at this amazing micrograph from a foxtail glochid:

Retrorse barbs at margin of Hordeum murinum spikelet. Scanning electron micrograph Source: Curtis Clark

1. Buy or forage prickly pears

(Skip to step 3 if the store already removed (most of) the glochids)

2. Burn off the glochids (I use a camp stove)

Try not to cook them – if you do, you will see juice seep out like in the photo on the right.

3. Cut open and scoop out the flesh USE NITRILE GLOVES. Use a knife to cut in half, and a spoon to scoop out the flesh.

4. Eat

Seeds are safe to swallow but hard to chew.