Flower Power

Many things are blooming all over the yard.  I'll show you two items that are growing in the back yard and have a strange, but beautiful quality to them.  The first is a cactus.  Check out the beautiful yellow flower!  I'll show you a better picture further down.

Each year, Tricia harvests the 'paddles' off this cactus, cutting the sharp little spines off that cover it, and cooks it.  Nopalitos, they're called.  It makes a slime, sort of like okra does and you cook it with corn.  We always enjoy it.  The flower on this cactus is just stunning!

A friend gave me this plant and I put it out near the honeybees.  It is called the Coralbean, but here in Louisiana, it's called Mamou.  Would you just look at the "electric" red blooms on this plant!  I watched hummingbirds visiting it a couple of days ago.

Here is a close up of the Mamou blooms!  They are so bright it almost hurts your eyes.

In addition to the beautiful flowers, this plant is used as a medicinal plant and is known for treating anxiety, insomnia and muscle aches.  The roots are anti-microbial.  Seminole tribes used its bark to make a tea to help with pain and digestive issues.  According to what I've read, the seeds to this Mamou plant are very toxic!  They are used in Mexico as a rat poison.  Interestingly, if you boil the flowers, the resulting tea has narcotic properties.  I think we'll just enjoy looking at the flowers!

Cactus. It's What's for Dinner

We have some prickly pear cactus growing in a pot out back.  It is prickly and grows quickly.  I can remember my father-in-law telling me that in south Texas it would get very dry.  So dry that their cows didn't have much to eat on.  Cattlemen would get propane blow torches and burn the spines off of the cactus.  Once they were burned and the cactus pads were blistered, the cows would devour them.  They had a food/water source all around them, they just needed a little help!

We have the cactus around us.  We'll kind of use the same idea to make a dish called Nopalitos.  The cactus in our back yard pots put on fresh new pads that are green and tender.  Tricia harvests a bunch (about 3 pounds) off the cactus and brings them inside.

Very carefully, she slices the edges off the nopales.

Then, even more carefully, she scrapes the spines off the pads with a sharp knife.  You want to get them all off!

Then, the cactus are diced into cubes.  They are easy to cut, believe it or not.

Now that your main ingredient is ready, it's time to put the dish together.  Here is the recipe:

Nopalitos

3 Tablespoons oil, heated
3 lbs. nopales, cleaned and dried 
1 tsp salt

Saute for 1-2 minutes, then put the lid on the pot.  Cook with the lid on for 20 minutes until the liquid evaporates.

Cactus, when cooking ooze out a slime similar to okra when it cooks.  This goes away as you saute.

After 20 minutes, add 2 cloves minced garlic, 1/2 cup onion, 2 ounces chilis, 2 cups whole kernel corn and cook for 3-4 minutes.  After that is done squeeze 1 tablespoon lime juice, put the lid on and cook for 3-4 minutes.  Then, you are ready to eat.

If you have any leftovers (big if), this is great in quesadillas.  Enjoy!

A Prickly Supper Situation

I can remember my father-in-law telling me a story about ranching in South Texas.  He told me that there were times in the summer time where it was so hot and so dry that the cattle didn't have much to eat.  So they would take propane torches and burn the cactus.  Once the outer spines were burned off and the tough outer skin heated, it exposed the soft-watery inside of the cactus and the cows ate it up. 

Have you ever eaten cactus?  I hadn't until a year or so ago.  Tricia introduced me to it.  Cooked cactus is called nopalitos.  My wife got the recipe from Pati on PBS, specifically the recipe at this link: Pati's Nopalitos.  You can click on that link, but I'll just show in pictures what we did.  We have a prickly pear cactus growing in a pot by the air conditioning units.  In the past, we've shown you the pears that we get from this thing.

Tricia picked some of the young, tender cactus "paddles" and brought them in and washed them.

Here is a washed cactus on the cutting board.

Russ took a knife and cut the edges off.

Then he scraped the outer part with the knife, making doggone sure there were no cactus spines left!

Then he used a knife to dice up the cactus into cubes.

And here we are.  Diced nopales - ready to cook.

Put oil in the bottom of a pan and add the nopalitos, some salt, and sautee.  The cactus will emit a gelatinous liquid.  If you keep cooking, it will evaporate.

Add chopped onion, garlic, corn and chili peppers and a squeeze of lime juice and continue to cook.  Ready to eat!

Pretty doggone good!  No cactus spines in my tongue.

My First Time Eating Tuna

Alright, not tuna fish.  This is another kind of tuna.  Stick with me and I'll explain. We've had a cactus growing in a terra cotta frog that was my grandmother's.  This cactus is the easiest thing to grow.  I never water it.  I never do anything to it.  It prospers growing out of the frog by the air conditioning units.  Each year it puts out the most beautiful flowers previously shown in this post and later puts forth beautiful red fruit.  The fruit on the cactus are called... you guessed it, tuna.

Tuna on the Opuntia ficus-indica

I've always wanted to taste the pears that grow on the cactus and this year was the year to do it.  I did some Google searching and found that the name of this cactus is Opuntia ficus-indica, but it goes by many names, including Indian fig opuntia, cactus pear, and prickly pear.  The fruit is red.  In the event that my cactus identification on Google is off, I quickly googled to see if any cactus are toxic. (Smile)  I found that all cactus fruit is edible, some might just be tastier than others.

I picked the tuna off of the cactus and brought them inside and chilled them in the fridge.  Google said that they taste like a sweet watermelon.  I also learned that they are full of vitamins and may even fight cancer.  Well what are we waiting for?

Chopped up tuna

I can remember my father-in-law telling me that in years of drought, ranchers in South Texas would use propane burners to burn the spines off the cactus and soften them.  Then the cows would eat the nopales (cactus pads) providing a bit of protein, but mostly moisture content for the animals.  They can also be used for 'people food,' too.  The nopales can be skinned and fried and cooked with eggs and jalapenos for breakfast.  They are said to taste like green beans.

So, here's what I thought: While beautiful in color, the taste was just 'okay.' Nothing special and certainly not like a sweet watermelon.  They definitely weren't bad, but I wouldn't put the tunas in the delicious category, either.  I ate the whole thing, skin and all.  One thing you want to be careful of are the seeds.  The tuna have hard seeds in them that would easily break a tooth if you aren't careful.

Watch out for the seeds!

After slicing them up and eating a few without experiencing hallucinations or any other side effects, I served one to my wife.  She thought the same thing.  I read that they make great jelly and if our cactus ever produces enough, I may try that.  It was an interesting experiment and it is good to know yet one more thing growing outside that is edible.  You never know.  If you ever run out of tuna in the can, there's always tuna growing on the cactus!