How an Arizonan Company Turns Cacti Into Candy - $#@!ly pear gummies are a taste of the Sonoran Desert.
In mid-August, 17-year-old Lynette Alvarez and her aunt, Nellie Botello, put on matching camouflage snake guards and steel-toed boots for their work gathering $#@!ly pear cactus fruit. Snake-season is year round in the Arizona desert, and there are baby rattlesnakes in the summer that may not make warning rattles yet.
Along with a handful of pickers, they start as early as 4 a.m. to avoid the scorching afternoon heat. By 9 a.m., when they stop, the group will have collected up to two tons of produce for the Tucson-based company Cheri’s Desert Harvest. The fruit will be pressed and its juice used to create a chewy jelly candy with a texture similar to a gumdrop.
Botello and Alvarez pick the fruits, also known as “tunas,” from wild Opuntia engelmannii cacti, better known as $#@!ly pear, using simple metal kitchen tongs. As Alvarez lightly mashes the fruits to pack her six-gallon bucket, splatters of fuchsia juice accumulate like a Jackson Pollock painting on her long white sleeves and shirt tails. While the pigment will wash out, the juice’s bright-pink color is a hallmark of the beautiful syrups, jams, and candies enjoyed throughout the Southwest.
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...r-cactus-candy