Saturday, August 27, 2011

Prickly Pear Limeade

Thursday we went to a farmers market in Atlanta and bought a bunch of veggies.  The prices were right so I bought several to experiment with. One of the things I bought was Prickly Pears.  It is the fruit of the Nopale cactus which also has edible leaves too.  I bought one green (unripe) and one red/purple (ripe) pear.  Once I googled how to peal them and gave them a sample taste I had to decide how to prepare them.  The red pear was sweet and the green one reminded me of sweet peppers.  Taking a bite of the center revealed a lot of hard seeds (which are edible), so I pureed both together to use the juice.  Once pureed the juice was red and reminiscent of kiwi in flavor.  So after trying to come up with the best way to use this juice I decided on lemonade, and then changed my mind to limeade since we were having a slight mexican theme to dinner.  I put the Prickly Pear juice into a 1/2 gallon pitcher, then to sweeten I used some light syrup leftover from canning pears.  I used 4-5 cups of the syrup, which is 3 parts water and 1 part sugar.  Then I added the juice of 3 limes.  After deciding the flavor was good I added enough water to fill the jug.  We drank it with dinner and it was excellent, but I forgot to take a picture.  After dinner I mixed the Prickly Pear Limeade with some tequila to make an excellent mixed drink that I served over ice.  I haven't come up with a name for the mixed drink yet, but if you have any suggestions let me know.