Hampton Family: Prickly Pear Lemonade Punch

A couple of years ago we saw some prickly pear lemonade at the desert museum and thought that would be cool to make someday. Well someday was Saturday and we decided to experiment while the pears were ripe on our side yard cactus. On Thursday I went to a free seminar at the farmers market on speedway that was sponsored by the community food bank. It was 106 degrees that day, very humid and I was surrounded by hippies and old people. I listened to a lady that volunteers at a community garden and did these free seminars to teach people how to use the desert for food. It was very interesting and I learned some good things about mesquite pods as well. Anyway this is my posting on how we made our lemonade with the pears, some tongs and a blender.

I had to get some helpers to pick some pears for me. I told them to look for really purple pears that were easy to pick. If they were hard to remove they were not ready yet. When you pull them off look for the end to be purple instead of green still. We had a combination of both. I was also taught not to pick the ones with bird poop on them. :)

This is my Indiana Jones helper that was very careful not to get any pricklies (glochids) on him. He was proud of his first choice. I made sure I taught them about where the stickers are and the pains of getting them stuck in your hands. They also told us to not pick them during a windy day because the spines can get airborne and get all over.

Tia leaned a little too far to get the big one and got it in the shorts. I told them to put on Levis but they didn't want to listen to Dad so I let them listen to the pricklys. These told Tia that they can penetrate clothes easily.

We found these great tongs at the dollar store to grab and hold them. Each of those little white spots had about 50 little reddish spines around them to torment us. I know what you are thinking right about now. How do you make sure those stickers don't end up in your drink? It's a trade secret and I will show you below.

We separated out the good pears from the bird stained ones and gave the bird pears to our tortoise. He didn't seem to mind. He leaves his treasures all over our lawn anyway and never seems to pick them up.

This is why we used tongs instead of gloves. The glochids seem to get everywhere in your gloves no matter what kind I have used in the past dealing with these little spines.

There are various ways to get the juice out but we chose to use a blender. That's our trade secret. Throw them all in and blend. At the farmers market they said that you can burn them off, boil them, peel them or freeze them and let the juice leak out when they thaw. I decided to go with the recommended way and use a blender. I was skeptical that there would be leftover spines but we seemed to take care of them.

Since it was our first time I mad sure I blended them thoroughly while the helpers looked on in anticipation. I think they just liked to see the destruction in the blender.

Tia added more pears as we blended them into a pulp.

We then strained the pulp into a container and repeated the process two times to make sure we got all the seeds and left over spines.

This is the bright pink leftover juice. I remembered it from the desert museum and how vibrant it was. I know these pictures do not do it justice but you can get an idea of how different it is.