"Summer monsoons in the Southwestern Sonoran Desert produce a wild bounty of
crimson fruit. Rising from Engelmann's prickly pear cacti (Opuntia engelmannii),
these fruits, or tuna in Spanish, perch atop Mickey Mouse-shaped pads like ruby
crowns. Against muted browns and greens of the desert, the tuna are eye-popping.
When I landed in Tucson for graduate school more than thirty years ago, I was
amazed to learn the spine-covered fruits were edible. I sent store-bought
prickly pear jelly back home to midwestern friends for the holidays, its
dazzling pink hue a cheeky reminder of the deserts December sunshine. I knew,
though, that with enough determination, I could put up my own preserves from
foraged fruit just as my Kansas grandmother had canned foods from her garden.
When I realized I wasn't moving after a decade of desert living, I decided to
see if harvesting prickly pear fruit could connect me to the native foodways of
my adopted home."
More in this essay by Lisa K. Harris.
