As I stood in the express checkout line, I couldn’t help but notice the bemused look on the face of the man standing ahead of me.

            “I’m not even going to ask what that is.” He was looking at the produce bag I had placed on the conveyer belt behind his hotdog buns.

            I had to admit that the cactus leaf I was about to buy did look like something a repentant monk might use for his self-punishment ritual. (I had just finished reading The Da Vinci Code.)

            I told the man what it was and he asked if I was going to plant it. I must have really made his day when I said that actually, I was going to eat it. He walked away laughing and shaking his head, probably thanking his lucky star that he wasn’t my husband.

            You can all thank your lucky stars that you aren’t married to me. Just imagine Jordan’s face when I told him that we were going to experiment with nopales, a.k.a. cactus leaves or pads or paddles.

Nopales are the stems of the prickly pear cactus, which grow wild and are also extensively cultivated in Mexico. I had seen this vegetable several times in the produce section at Thrifty’s and was more than a little curious about what anyone would do with it.

I did a bit of reading, and found that the nopal is a major ingredient in Mexican cooking. With a very basic recipe for preparing and cooking the cactus in hand, I was ready to experiment. But was Jordan!

The first mistake I made was assuming that the leaf had been completely disarmed. I thought that perhaps the produce manager might be wise to put up a warning sign, but then really, the only customers who would normally be purchasing nopales would be the ones who knew what the heck to do with a cactus leaf! It took me a few hours, but I did finally get that pesky thorn out of my thumb.

In preparation for dinner, I trimmed the tough edges and cut out any of the “eyes” and thorns. I then cut the nopal into strips and sautéed them with lime juice, white wine, cumin and chili powder. I felt this sounded suitably Mexican.

            I can’t say that either Jordan or I were overly impressed. It tasted a bit like green beans, but not as sweet. And then the next morning, when I opened up the Tupperware of leftovers, I noticed that the cactus strips were lying in a pool of clear, syrupy liquid. I thought that I had done something horribly wrong, and so my ninety-cent experiment ended up in the compost, with only a sore thumb to show for it.

That could have been the end of the nopal and me, but I knew that there had to be some reason that this vegetable, so popular in Mexico, had made its way to a grocery store in Canada.

Nopales are one of the healthiest and certainly most versatile of Mexican foods. In Mexico, they are cleaned of their thorns and sold in the markets cut into strips called nopalitos. Nopalitos can also be purchased canned in either water or vinegar. They are used in a wide-range of Mexican dishes: taco fillings, salsas, egg dishes, salads, baked goods, and even ice cream. During Lent, nopales become particularly important as a good substitute for meat in many traditional dishes. There are even festivals held to celebrate this important crop.

Nopales are a good source of vitamins A, C, and B complex, and provide a good source of fibre. That slimy liquid produced by the cooked cactus was actually a very important soluble dietary fibre that is sold commercially as a supplement.

            I am not alone in my disgust at the mucous slime. Most people don’t like this liquid and there are several ways to remove it. The easiest is to gently boil the cut pads and let them sit over night in the fridge. You then rinse off the offending substance before continuing with the recipe. If only I had read that far before running to the compost bin.

            The whole pad can be grilled and very young, tender pads can be used raw in salads. Nopalitos can be breaded, deep fried, and eaten like chips or the entire pad can be sliced horizontally, stuffed with cheeses, battered and fried.

            With all of these possibilities, it is hard to imagine that we have survived this long without eating cactus. To be fair, I should add that if I am ever going to do a traditional Mexican dinner, and I can find either the whole pads or even better, canned nopalitos, I will probably give them another go. At the very least, it will make an interesting conversation piece.