Steve2inLA - Have you ever made Tuna (Prickly Pear Fruit) jelly?

M

melissa-dallas

Well-known member
I've always heard it is good and have never tasted it and nice ripe ones are on sale here right now really cheap, like .69 a pound. Looks like the color would be really pretty too.

I miss living in the country and being able to cut a trash sack full of mustang grapes off the fence rows. Really puckery but made the most fabulous fuschia colored jam.

 
Funny you should mention it, Melissa. I was offered some tonight but growing up in Tucson, I never

really cared for the stuff. If you like it, I'm sure it would be easy enough to fine a recipe on-line. Probably involves cooking it, straining and maybe adding pectin. Don't know it well enough to know if it's got much natural pectin.

Because you peaked my interest, I did a little research and found this very helpful website. Good luck! http://www.homegrownevolution.com/2007/08/prickly-pear-jelly-recipe.html

 
When I was nineteen or so I visited my boyfriends West Texas relatives

with his family. One day we went dove hunting and I was wandering around by myself. I came upon some prickly pears with ripe tunas on them. They were so pretty and I had heard they were good to eat so I picked several and put them in my overall pockets. I didn't know the fuzz at the ends of them were fine cactus spines. My boyfriend's mom spent a long time that evening picking the hair-fine cactus spines out of my lower belly with a pair of tweezers. They itched and stung something fierce. I sure got laughed at.

 
I had a run-in with a bad@--d cactus my first trip to West Texas too...

I swear the thing attacked me. I was sitting on a patio and the pot was 3 feet behind me, but it still got me. I then endured the same surgical procedure up and down my forearm and hand.

My first West Texas Experience: The small plane from Amarillo drops down on the runway at Lubbock airport. 3 dozen jackrabbits scram in 3 dozen different directions. Then a tumbleweed came bouncing down the runway alongside the plane and accompanied us to the end of the runway before it went tumbling off to greet the next plane.

It was just so "je ne sais quoi" as they say in Lubbock.

 
I tried to make some recently with cane juice and liquid pectin...

lots of work and it was a syrup..
I'd try granualated sugar and powdered pectin...
maybe some apple juice ...for a good set

 
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