Nopales
I was standin’ there washing dishes-
Dealing with military grade pesto sauce and contemplatin’ the adhesive qualities of
Four day old guacamole.
When I received “a reminder”.
….
A few days earlier, a friend offered to show me how to make nopales, the Mexican cactus dish…He offered to show me how to… harvest cactus.
To be perfectly honest he offered to show me, but he was in a bind. I was asked help so he could make his catering deadline.
Now…here I’d like to pause for just a moment to point out that:
“Harvest” and “cactus” are two words that should never be said in the same sentence.
Seldom does one receive a warning so stark and easy to respond to…
Seldom does one ignore that warning, and he does so… at his peril.
For us, that SOS went completely unheeded
Hmmmm
Was it
Hubris? Stupidity? Golly, they go hand in hand most times…Why should I be any different?
I worked in the Mojave seven Summers doing car photography.
I know the desert.
I know cactus.
They are not to be trifled with.
And yet we harvested them.
That, my friends, might qualify as trifling with cactus
Umhmmm
Needless to say, despite our care we ended up with nasty, nasty cactus spines in our shorts and buried in our forearms (despite taking precautions …Read: Heavy gauntlets).
That was bad enough, but harvesting includes prepping them, which means getting the needles off the dang cactus before you can chop it and boil it…Three Times. Did I mention that making nopales is labor intensive in the extreme? Oh yeah. Three boilings.
The cactus slime is an impressive thing to pour off, I can tell you!
So by the time, days later, I, washing dishes and brushing up against something and hitting that all but invisible cactus needle sticking out of my skin…Well, I’m here to tell you that at first it’s like an electric shock…after a while, it’s less so but still dang annoyin’.
Why am I bringing all this up?
Well…To tell you that you do not want to clean up dried crusty four day old guacamole…Toss out the dish…move away…Burn the house down…whatever.
Also that if you or a friend get a hankerin’ for some nopales.
I hear that they sell them, prepared and slime boiled off and everything.
They sell ‘em In jars and cans.
Ya might consider doin’ that.
Ummmhmmm.
Pay for it.
It’s worth it.
Because “harvest” and “cactus” do NOT belong in the same sentence.
By the way, this is a plant that I’ve named “the Maining Tree”, and it exists in the middle of a Northern California College campus. Yikes!
