Food: I Ate A Cactus!

Ok, so not the whole thing, but I tried a prickly pear fruit for the first time the other day and thought it would make a neat post!

I'll start off by saying DO NOT JUST GO PICK ONE OF THESE UP WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!!! Seriously, it looks like all the spines have been removed but it is still covered in tiny little barbed hairs that you will never get out of your hands! I was itchy the entire rest of the day!

Here is the painful fruit, sitting in a bowl of water. I rolled it around with the spoon, so I wouldn't have to touch it, until the little hairs were all rinsed off. Those are all the things floating through the water. They are seriously annoying, so make sure they are all rinsed off before using your bare hands! Next I cut off both ends and sliced down one side about 1cm in like this:

That is some quality iPhone camera work right there... Next you just stick your fingers into that slit and peel off all the outer skin! The skin part that peeled off ended up being a lot thicker than I thought it would be.

You could stop here and eat the whole thing with your bare hands like the animal you really are, or slice it up like I did.

Can I just say that this is the most amazing shade of pink? I want lipstick and eyeshadow in this exact shade and will now be on the hunt for them!

As for the taste of the cactus fruit, I really like it. I read before eating it that it is often compared to kiwis in flavour and I think I agree, but it is still kind of different. It was really sweet and had and interesting soft texture. It does have big black seeds all through it that are too hard to chew. You can spit them out or just swallow them apparently, so I swallowed them. Why not get the full experience? I didn't mind having to swallow them, but I can see how some people might.

This was a pretty off topic post, but I liked it so too bad. I am definitely going to be going back to the grocery store to get more of these soon! I'm also going to look into growing one of these if you can indoors. I always love adding to my house plant collection, and my favourite plants are edible ones/cacti. This is both so I WANT ONE! As long as it can grow in a 12 inch pot or smaller. My window ledge can only do so much...

What's your favourite fruit and/or the weirdest fruit you ate? I'm counting this as my weirdest fruit and my favourite is pineapple.