Do Life Right

Due to popular demand from my “Enchilada Casserole” post, here is my Vegan-Friendly Prickly Pear Barbeque Sauce recipe. Once I realized that we were going to be able to get a large harvest of prickly pear fruit this past summer, I started reading up on various things people do with prickly pear fruit. [...]

Here is the last of Zoë’s series of Haiku poems for the summer of 2008. Certainly she’ll write more later.
Click here for PART ONE and here for PART TWO.
Tortoise
Turtle, terrapin
It is neither one of those
The desert tortoise

Coyote

Howls out my window
Even though they’re far away
They seem very close

Barrel Cactus

Sunset red flower
Short and [...]

We’ve been fortunate enough to actually see wildlife eating the pads of some of our prickly pear cacti. We especially love watching the rabbits eat it. They take a bite into the outer rim and then eat only the inside part, leaving a circle behind. Bugs, on the other hand, eat it [...]

Prickly Pear Jelly
I haven’t had the greatest luck in the world preparing jelly, so here is my “What to do when the recipes don’t work” directions.
Prepare syrup as pectin package indicates. Basically you need a lot of sugar, the fruit itself, and pectin. With this made, you supposedly just need [...]

Vegan Prickly Pear Ice Cream

2 cups vanilla soymilk
1 cup prickly pear syrup

Stir into a Stainless Steel Midas Non-Motorized Ice Cream Maker. Stir (or whisk) after 15 minutes. Stir after another 10-15 minutes and serve. This handy bowl makes perfect ice cream, sorbet, gelato, or Italian ice every single time. We absolute [...]

Prickly Pear Syrup

Prickly Pear Juice (approximate how much you have)
Fruit Pectin
Florida Crystals Natural Sugar

To learn how to make prickly pear juice, check out PART THREE. The pectin will have recipes inside the box. Honestly, you have to just experiment with the amounts. Every time I’ve made syrup and jelly, it [...]

Prickly Pear Margaritas

1 cup prickly pear juice (or syrup)
1 1/2 trays ice
1 1/2 cup margarita mix (this is the easy way out) - lime juice from scratch is even better
1 cup tequila, optional if you want yours alcoholic

Blend all ingredients except ice. Slowly add in ice until perfect. Delicious!

Now that we’ve made the prickly pear juice in PART THREE, we’re ready to have some yummy fun with prickly pear fruit. Click here for PART ONE. Click here for PART TWO.
In PART THREE, I explained how to get the juice out of prickly pear fruits. Boiling the way I showed works [...]

Click here to read “Prickly Pear Fruit Harvesting PART ONE”.
Click here to read “Prickly Pear Fruit Harvesting PART TWO”.
Now that you’ve picked the fruit from the prickly pear, it is time to prepare it. We prefer a “no touch” method, which doesn’t involve any knives or accidental touching. Click here for a great [...]

Click here to read “Prickly Pear Fruit Harvesting PART ONE”.
When picking prickly pear cactus fruit, it’s obvious that you need to be careful of the large needles. What isn’t so obvious is that you need to be even more careful of the almost minuscule little thinner-than-hair short needles. These small ones are so [...]