(Photo courtesy Mikey Sklar)
What a prickly trip! Mikey Sklar emailed me about his adventures making stucco out of prickly pear paddles. He and his girlfriend Wendy Tremayne are building an off-grid, eco-friendly bed & breakfast called Green Acre, in Truth or Consequences, NM. Using as many reclaimed materials as possible, along with local resources like prickly pears, they’ve come up with a green stucco slime. You can see photos of the process here, or watch a video to see what they’re about here. Yeehaw for creative folks!
Many of the plants we talk about as being wild food are also strong medicines and otherwise useful in our lives. What do we intend to use the plants for? Do we greet them with reverence? They’ve been around a lot longer than ourselves and react to our energy. Setting intention simply outlines the energy exchange between us more clearly. If that’s hard to choke down…slather a little barbecue sauce on it.
Prickly Pear Barbecue Sauce
1 c prickly pear syrup
1/2 c diced red pepper
1/2 c elderberry vinegar, or apple cider vinegar
1/2 c hot chili paste
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1 T soy sauce
You can click here to read about processing prickly pear fruits into syrup. Combine all ingredients in blender. Pour into pot and simmer until it begins to thicken, ~15 minutes. Refrigerate what you don’t use. Watch out, it’s got some kick!
Nice recipe! I love prickly pear since you can eat just about every part but the spines! The strained seeds make a delicious flour when ground and the pads (Nopales in spanish) are a delicious vegetable.
You can use agar, pectin, or a wild-collectable starch thickener like kudzu root to thicken this, rather than the animal-derived getlatin.
Hello Nat!
would love to know more details about making the flour from the seeds. It’s something I’ve definitely been wanting to try. Any tips? Please share with us.
Happy Halloween! ~sunny
mikey and wendy rock!
we have a bunch of prickly pears in our yard, i’m going to have to do something with them, whether it be paint or syrup!
yeah! Usually what you need is right out your own back door. There’s a book called, ‘Prickly Pear Cactus Medicine’ by Ran Knishinsky that’s supposed to be pretty good.
Happy Foraging!
cheers, ~sunny