Prickly Pear Fruit Classes July 28, August 18, September 3
And a New Prickly Pear Festival August 25 in Superior

      Our popular series of summertime workshops teaching How-To-Juice-Prickly-Pear-Cactus-Fruit resumes July 28, with the same class repeated at 10:30 AM again August 18 and September 3. In this informal one-hour outdoor workshop Apache Junction author Jean Groen and expert Prickly Pear picker Robert Lewis teach participants to harvest and prepare these juicy, seasonal fruits of the Sonoran Desert -- with a variety of prickly pear snacks shared once the class is over. And mark your calendars for the town of Superior's debut Prickly Pear culinary festival August 25 featuring Jean, Robert and other guests and vendors -- there are even plans for a home-brewing class where enrollees will learn to make a Prickly Pear IPA, or India Pale Ale.

Prickly pear classes at the Arboretum are included with your daily admission of $9 for adults, $4.50 ages 5-12, and no preregistration required. Or taken!
And drive up early, check out the gardens, and get breakfast or lunch in our neighboring town of Superior at Cafe Denogean or the Buckboard Cafe - just five minutes drive east of the Arboretum, both restaurants give discounts to Arboretum annual members and visitors who show a membership card or paid admission receipt upon arrival.

Preview this event on YouTube - Mike Rolfe posted a short feature about the Arboretum's How To Juice Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit Class at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl976a9pvLE

Show your Arboretum admission receipt for the BTA special discount at Cafe Piedra Roja, which offers Arboretum annual members a buy-one-get-one-half-price lunch deal. Or stop by the Jade Grille , to see whether Chef and owner Lucy Wing has new menu items for 2012; last time we offered this class back on Labor Day weekend she featured Korean tacos (a flour tortilla with kimchee, beef and shredded cabbage), and also Thai grilled chicken tacos on a corn tortilla.

Nearly 1,000 Arizonans have graduated from our popular and informal How-To-Juice-A-Prickly-Pear classes over the past few years, and four sessions were offered again during the summer of 2011. All ages are welcome -- and at the conclusion of the one-hour class we'll serve Prickly Pear Cactus fruit snacks -- such as the smoothies we shared last year with fresh cactus fruit juice, yogurt, bananas, pineapple and ice.

Learn how to harvest these fruits without your hands becoming a virtual porcupine of painful cactus spines and glochids.

        Apache Junction author Jean Groen wrote Foods of the Superstitions; she is seen in the photo above and at right -- and on four dates this summer Jean will explain how to pick, juice, and prepare opuntia fruits -- also describing cactus fruit and their nutritional value before we stroll onto the grounds to demonstrate how to harvest enough pears for a batch of juice or jelly. Back at the Visitor Center participants will learn techniques to remove most of the spines, as well as how to extract the subtle, watermelony-tasting juice from these forbidding fruits. Jean will also discuss prickly pear jelly and other recipes from her book. These cacti are of the Opuntia genus, and we'll share a cool, refreshing, freshly-blended pitcher of prickly pear, banana, yoguty and pineapple juice smoothie!

        Cactus fruits begin to ripen during July and continue through August. Labor Day marks the end of the season and fruits will be harder to find during September. They're simple enough to harvest, in fact commercial juicers work quite well once the fruits are de-spined. Have you sipped a prickly pear margarita or sampled the sweet cactus candy made by Tucson-based Cheri's Desert Harvest? Then you already know there's nothing which quite compares to the magenta color and hard-to-describe taste of juice from the prickly pear cacti fruits common at this elevation, and ripe during August.

        The image at left above shows Arizona State Parks Volunteer Robert Lewis demonstrating the juicing process. Prickly pears are an excellent choice as a landscape plant throughout Maricopa, Pinal, Gila and Pima Counties, and they thrive throughout the Sonoran Desert. Please keep in mind that a permit is required to harvest prickly pear fruit, or any other materials, from public lands, and you must always seek permission before picking fruit from plants that aren't on your own property. If you're interested in recipes using prickly pear juice we suggest "The Prickly Pear Cookbook" and also "American Indian Cooking" by Carolyn Niethammer or "Gathering the Desert" by Gary Paul Nabhan. These are available in our bookstore, where you'll also find pure condensed prickly pear syrup made by Cheri's Desert Harvest of Tucson.

       Boyce Thompson Arboretum is located 55 miles due East of Phoenix via highways 60, right near milepost #223 as you approach the historic copper mining town of Superior. For other directions or details call 520.689.2811


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