Rancho de la Libertad

Ahh, nopales. Growing through fences and in vacant lots around Southern California and much of the Southwest, prevalent in landscaping even in places like Brooklyn, New York, the noble nopal (or prickly pear cactus in English), is a brilliant plant. With numerous different strains and cultivars that thrive in various climates, this hardy perennial cactus produces edible green pads and delicious red fruits.

While the tradition of eating the pads seems less common among non-Mexican or non-Chicano peoples than that of eating only las tunas, the fruits, I'm here to tell you that if you've never tried fresh nopales you're missing out. While I'm no scientist and I lack some regard for most nutritional science and health fads as a whole, there are some sources[1] that claim that the pads of the prickly pear cactus are antiviral and can regulate blood sugar as well as possessing of a host of other beneficial characteristics. Whatever the so-called health experts claim, nuestra familia swear by them because they're delicious and one feels good when one eats them. What I do know is that they propagate easily and from the free cut pads we got from a local motel owner we've produced dozens of pounds of young pads over the years while still leaving dozens more pounds on the cacti so they can grow more each year – making them a really very sustainable vegetable (are they technically a vegetable? I'm not sure!).

And so, while I could quite possibly write a whole article about this wonderful friend, for today what I have for you is an original recipe for beer battered nopales tacos that will have you falling in love with nopales as deeply as we have.

But first, a few notes on ingredients:

• Try to find really fresh nopales. Best if this is something you can forage or grow yourself, but if you do purchase them from the supermarket make sure the pads are firm and not wrinkled, and they should have a slight citrusy smell.
• Many people blanch the nopales before using them, claiming that it reduces what they call "slime". This is one of those culinary things I will vehemently disagree with until the day I die. Blanching the nopales ruins its flavor profile and reduces the beneficial nutrients you'll obtain from eating them. I recommend, if you're concerned about "slime", wrapping your cleaned nopales in a clean dish towel in the fridge for about a day before cooking. They'll dry a little bit in the fridge without losing much flavor.
• Real ancho chile powder is going to be better than your run-of-the-mill store-bought chile powder blend, as it has a kind of dark smoky flavor that typical chile blends don't. If you can't find it, see if you have a local carniceria or Mexican grocery that might sell dried guajillo or ancho chiles. You can remove the seeds of these and blend them to make your own powder.
• This would probably go really well with some chipotle in adobo but I don't buy canned goods so haven't tried it -- if you try adding those let us know!
• It's not very common for Mexicans to eat "hard shell" tacos like the nonsense you find in grocery store aisles labeled "taco night kit" and such. We leave ours soft. You could adapt this to be a burrito and after you fill the burrito, set the seam in the hot oil for about two minutes to let it seal and brown and give the burrito a good crisp. However, when we make tacos our homemade tortillas are still warm when we fill them and no further steps are needed.

Beer Battered Nopales Tacos Beer Battered Nopales Tacos

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 15-20 minutes

Servings: approximately 20 street-sized tacos

Ingredients

For the Batter:
• All purpose flour: 1 c
• Egg: 1
• Mexican beer or pale ale: 1 c plus a little extra as needed to thin batter
• Salt: 1 tsp
• Ancho chile powder: 1 tsp
For the Dry Toss:
• All purpose flour: 1/2 c
• Salt & Pepper: to taste
For the Tacos:
• Tortillas: Homemade are best. Between 12-20 store bought taco sized tortillas, depending on size.
• Bell pepper: 1, yellow or orange, sliced
• Sweet onion: 1, julienned
• Nopales: About two large or three smaller pads fresh, cleaned and sliced into approximately 2 in strips
• Squash blossoms (optional): 3-4, chopped
• Salt to taste
• Smoked paprika and cumin to taste
• Lard or other oil for frying
• Avocado, cilantro, diced tomato, sliced radish, lime, and salsa as desired for serving

Instructions

1. Mix the batter and dry rub, set aside.
2. Heat a large frying pan or cast iron skillet with a liberal amount of cooking oil until water sizzles when flicked into it.
3. While the pan is heating, chop all of the vegetables, including desired toppings.
4. Heat another skillet on medium heat and add a dollop of lard or a tablespoon or so of your desired cooking oil. Add your peppers and onions once the oil breaks down a bit, and add smoked paprika, cumin, and salt to taste. Sautee until sweet and onions are translucent and soft, and then add squash blossoms at the very end right before you turn off the heat. Toss together.
5. Meanwhile, or after the vegetable mix is done and your frying skillet is hot enough, dip the nopal strips first in the dry toss and then in the batter, ensuring liberal coating and taking care to not let the batter slough off the sides of the stips. Add to pan immediately (I recommend setting up so your bowl of toss and batter can be right next to the stove).
6. Cook until golden brown, approximately 2-3 minutes per side. Ensure space between each strip so they have room to brown. Don't be afraid to fry in batches if space is limited.
7. Assemble your tacos with the beer battered nopales, the sauteed veggie mix, and your desired toppings. Give a generous squeeze of lime and a shake of salt if you need more. You can serve with rice and beans if desired or eat these a la carte -- they're plenty filling.

Pretty sure the Venezuelans working the lithium mines have some things to say about this post as well but we don't care about them long as we're getting people to keep buying into an endless cycle of consumption and feel good about it

This is dope if we're talking about the solar energy stored in trees, grasses, and other living bodies and not like, acting like solar panels and lithium batteries don't require loads of materials that either directly rely on petrol derivatives or extractive mining. That *is* what you meant, right?

In the meantime, though, a mini rant, for fun (for those of you who enjoy):

My threshold for "should this animal be captive in my house" is pretty much: can this animal learn to not poop in the house?

Which pretty much negates anything living inside but a dog, who is pretty much outdoors all the time. And it's pretty simple: while animals other than dogs can totally bond with us, few can have *all* their needs actually met within a house.

Another four pounds of animal fodder and three pounds of nopales (in our world these are a vegetable) added to the harvest log. Nice to catch up a bit on gardening and hopefully some long-term planning.

I do too! I like that at least some small percentage of the hive mind seems to be seeking out this knowledge now, too. Good stuff!

Has anyone done the math to see if your carbon footprint is reduced more by buying a used truck or a brand new electric truck? My guess is, because electricity still mostly comes from natural gas or coal your carbon footprint is smaller if you keep your gas truck until it dies rather than buy a brand new electric model to "go green"

Though I would ALWAYS go for a more intuitive circular or fractal patterning in the garden, rows are so Eurocentric and colonial, and they just invite issues even with interplanting, but that's my biggest critique. Cool sewage/waste treatment patterns are brought up in the Designer's manual that could go external to the central gardens and integrate aquaculture for protein production and utilization of excess nutrients (waste would be the biggest concern with such a dense design, I think).

I LOVE things like this. Truly if collaboration was something we worked into society, a functional intertwined in-place dense village would be SO productive, and leave lots of room for creative division of labor, rewilding efforts. In actuality we need so few species to consume and such little land, we just have to design well, and this is a cute example.

Cats... Take antidepressants?

At this point the thing that "takes down" healthcare may not be an EMP or significant natural disaster (though regionally the latter is worth considering) but widespread adoption of, say, AI diagnostic or image intepretation tools. Worth thinking about what we would or should do should that happen!

The ultimate goal for the end of summer season is to start establishing other elements of the mesquite guilds in the West garden now that the canopies of those trees are maturing. Mullberry, elderberry, and a few others to be determined. Now that the soil has been decompacted and rebuilt a bit, perennials are more likely to establish and annuals don't flourish as well in the shade, so we're moving away from those.

Since January 1st of this year, we've produced:
111 dozen eggs
175 pounds meat
18 pounds of vegetables
14 pounds of lard
4 pounds of grass fodder

I wish we could change the ratios a bit, but our inputs have been minimal: organic animal feed (which is not insignificant, we know), our own labor, well water (though much of the produce was produced with greywater from the house). We've given lots away, and have lots preserved or in the freezer for the summer.

Bunny. Cuddle. Puddle. Happy Sunday!

I mean forget about meat, if we're considering the ecological footprints of most cooking oils lard is like... more valuable than gold in my opinion. It's unfortunate that it's become such a taboo source of fat because of the alignment of its image with Mexican people and health issues (eh hem), because truly the backyard hog was an enormous point of sovereignty for many before regulations made keeping them impossible in most areas.

Thoughtworm about how a blatant inability to view death as something that is natural and not always horrid, or put another way: about how *total horror* at death is tightly coupled with socioeconomic privilege.