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.

Visiting Granny

For those of you who wonder what happened to me, after having a baby we have had lots of guest so blogging was one of the first things to loose priority.  Right now we are visiting my wife's granny and when we get home I'll try to do a garden update.  I have been taking pictures even though I have not posted them.  I'll also have more pictures of Ruth.

I have been reading Perennial Vegetables and Edible Forest Gardens Volume I, both great reads. Perennial Vegetables is a great resource for any gardener/permaculture practitioner any where in north america, including Hawaii and Alaska, or any similar temperate climate.  Edible Forest Gardens Volume I, is a great read/text book/resource on who, what, when, where, why, and how of forest ecosystems and how to apply the knowledge to your personal forest garden.  Volume I is mainly dealing with the science and theory, and Volume II is how to use this to information it to your food forest.  I'll do a full review of both of these books when I get home.  

Garden Bounty

Here are some pictures of what I picked today, the pumpkin and one of the acorn squash were from last week.  The tiles are 4"x4" for scale.  The things that look like small tomatillos in the last picture are ground cherries.  The melon in front of the pumpkin is a charentais.  There are golden wax beans, Asparagus beans, green beans, and black eye peas starting at the top left and going counter clockwise.