An adventure in eating wild edibles focused on nopales, the pads of the prickly pear cactus. Harvesting the young pads off the plants was fairly easy, but removing all the glochids (small spines) was quite a task. I used a small knife to remove the ones on the sides and cut off the perimeter of the pad including the numerous glochids there. The stickiness of the cut nopales also made the preparation process difficult.
Finally, after cleaning about a dozen nopales, we coated them with olive oil to grill. We sliced them and ate them plain and in tortillas with falafel and tzatziki (culture blend!).
They have a tender crunch with a tartness like a tomatillo, but they are a little mucilaginous like okra. It's nice to eat wild food, but I need to find a faster way to get rid of those glochids!
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