Prickly Pear fruit

[generalzonzo]

Anyone know where I can get enough fresh prickly pear fruit mailed to the east coast to get me 5 gallons of Prickly Pear Mead? Can not find them in Delaware at all (go figure), even at the gourmet joints. Thanks.

[Chubber]

Prickly Pear has been suffering from a kind of pest on the East Coast and finding local supplies has been hard. Even here in Florida the wild quantities are 10% of what they were 10 years ago.

But I still find it at the supermarket from time to time. I would approach some ethnic groceries before I tried to buy it via the internet. If it is truely ripe, I doubt that it would mail all that well.

[corkybstewart]

If you had posted this a month ago I could have made you a couple of gallons of juice, but now it's too late. I let bushels rot on the ground because nobody wanted any. Prickly pear season is over out here. Try health food stores, you may be able to buy some extract. And shipping fresh tunas wouldn't work, they're too fragile when they're ripe. You'ld have a stinky sticky mess on your hands.

[Mad Scientist]

Corky, you are right, the season is over for tunas, but we maybe able to find some 'late' bloomers so to speak....

[dparsons]

I saw canned/jarred fruit on the internet. Not fresh.

[generalzonzo]

Thanks everyone. I guess I will either wait till next season or track down some juice/puree. Thanks for the juice offer Corky.

[corkybstewart]

I picked a 6 gallon bucket and turned them into 1.5 gallons of juice by mashing them with my son's old Little League bat and a towel for straining. I used the juice in my prickly pear mead. 2 years ago I gave a cornyfull of concentrate to the Wellhead Pub in Artesia and the brewer used it in a batch of pale ale-damn pretty and tasty.