My parents have a small farm in rural South Carolina where we spend our Thanksgiving. At one time, this was a full working farm. My parents don’t live there full time now, so they just let things grow that are already there. I’m lucky that there are tons of things that don’t need tending –just me to pop in a few times a year to harvest.
Last year I picked a few prickly pear fruits and took them home to experiment. I ended up making sorbet that was amazing. I peeled the fruit, threw it in a blender and strained the seeds out of the juice. Added lemon juice and some agave syrup for a hot pink frozen dessert.
This year I got lazy. I peeled, blended and strained but didn’t feel like making the effort to stir the concoction every 5 minutes to make sorbet (I don’t have an ice cream maker, I was using the ol’ toss it in the freezer and stir every 15 minutes for 2 hours method). Instead I poured the prickly pear fruit juice into ice cube trays for later use.
Today was deemed a good day for later use! I popped 3 ice cubes of juice in to a glass. Added a squirt of agave syrup, a splash of lime juice and topped it off with seltzer water. What a fantastic, refreshing drink!
The picture is of the prickly pear in May. All those flowers become dark purple fruits by Thanksgiving.
Prickly Pear
1 Comment
February 12, 2009 at 3:54 am
We had a variety of things in Tucson with Prickly Pears. My favorite was jam! Super yummy!!