New thoughts about Southwest Cacti

Autumn in El Paso, Texas.  Days getting shorter.  Nights getting longer.  Dusk arrives around 4:30 in the afternoon and by 5:30 it is pitch black.  I feel a frantic need to garden as much as possible before winter sets in.  This  melancholy thought inspired me to attend a recent Saturday workshop presented by the El Paso Cactus and Rock Club.  I was looking for inspiration for the southwest life style that my husband Wayne and I enjoy, and I found it.

Jim Hastings, "The Gringo Gourmet," had set up a table for his presentation, "Not Your Mama's Nopalitos."   

Jim Hasting's display table

Nopalitos are the diced pads of prickly pear cacti.   I have often seen packaged nopalitos in the produce departments of local markets and have even bought a package or two through the years.

Packaged nopalitos

But I could never get past their sticky texture to create a tempting dish. Jim convinced me to give the nutritious nopalitos another try.

He demonstrated how nopalitos sauteed in a frying pan with a little water added from time to time for steam could get rid of the mocos (if you don't know this word in Spanish, we won't gross you out by translating it).  Then you add the cooked nopalitos to a variety of dishes, limited only by your sense of adventure.  There are tempting recipes available on the Internet for nopalitos with scrambled eggs, nopalito tacos, and nopalito salsa, to mention only a few.  Jim combined nopalitos with squash and corn, cooking up an attractive vegetable side dish that he passed out in small tasting cups to the audience.  I found myself wanting more than just a taste. 

I'm intrigued by the idea of joining the national movement to use more local produce and am looking forward to visiting Jim's web site, http://www.thegringogourmet.com for inspiration .  If I have any nopalito cooking success, I'll share the recipe on a future blog post.

After this feast for my taste buds, I found a feast for my eyes in a Bishop's Cap cactus for sale. It was love at first sight. 

Bishop's Cap Cactus

Isn't it a beauty?   This is the Astrophytum myriostigma.   It is called the "star cactus" when it is young.   And this specimen was just about to flower.  Bishop's Caps usually only flower when they are five or six years old, so I knew I had a mature specimen.   I had to buy the Bishop's Cap to live in our new outdoor area we are calling the "Tucson Yard." 

Now I'm looking forward to fall projects of cooking and planting, thanks to the El Paso Cactus and Rock Club.  If  the sun would only peek out today, I would be completely at peace with living in the Desert Southwest.