Tuesday, October 18, 2011

prickly pear JELLY!!!or more like syrup




After all the prickles were out, we decided to make jelly... ooohhh how i love prickly pear and peanut butter sandwiches.
     So I carefully poured the pears into my canning pot and boiled for about 10 min. Then took about 5-8 of those little suckers and blended them up in my blender.
     Then poured that into a strainer lined with several layers of cheese cloth, and pressed out the juice with a potato masher and just picking up the cheese cloth and squeezing the dickens out of it.
     Then you have beautiful fuchsia colored juice to make jelly or make prickly pear margaritas... (i canned the jelly using the water bath and the instructions from the pectin package)although this time, it didn't set up as well as it did last year, and its more like syrup, so i may try and redo it or just use it as syrup.... so happy canning!!!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Prickly pear Pickin

 Well this is my second annual prickly pear extravaganza!!! One of my sons(the other is getting to cool for this kind of stuff) and my two daughters, got our wagon, our bucket, and our tongs and headed off to the neighbors down the road to pick prickly pears or tunas or cactus fruit... whichever you prefer.  They were just perfectly ripe and as i warned for the 20th time to my 4 yo not to touch the cactus or the prickly pears... she tripped and fell into one... and got quite a few prickles... so we had to go home to get them out and then return the next day... so this process can last a while when you include the kiddos... but they beg to go and love to do it... i guess once you get the prickles, you probably will be more careful next time.


 They are such pretty fruit... and i love the color of the juice... fuchsia!!
  Tomorrow will be the jelly making... see you then!!