Firelighting with yucca

[santaman2000]

No, that dish is unknown to me.

They're eaten basically as a substitute for green beans or bell peppers (roughly the same nutritional value and taste) Like RV said, they're prepared by harvesting the leaf pads and scraping thorns off before cutting them to the appropriate size and shape. They're also pickled and eaten with eggs.

 

[Draven]

I haven't gotten around to eating prickly pear yet, but would like to - the stores around here sell the pads, but it would be just as easy to harvest it yourself, they grow everywhere (I planted one in my front yard, a few years ago but the pads aren't very big yet). The fruit sounds interesting, will definitely be on the menu next time I see some on a decent sized cactus!

I've also had a hankering recently to try mesquite bean pods ground into a flour. The mesquite, again, grows all over the place here and the pods litter the streets and desert alike when they fall.

 

[santaman2000]

I've never tried eating mesquite as such, but it's a wonderful wood for smoking meats and poultry.

 

[Robson Valley]

Living at 53N in the mountains, the Prickly Pear pad & fruit harvest is an annual treat from a seasonal harvest.
Thousands of miles south in Arizona/New Mexico.
Been eating those things for as long as I can remember, made certain that my children had plenty, too.
Lots of big seeds that you learn to ignore, jams and jellies look OK but heat kills the taste, I think.

I trim the pads and burn off the tufts of prickles with a bottle torch.
There is a way to drop the pads in boiling water for a couple of minutes and slip off the skin like for beets or tomatoes.
Never think to try it.