hi I'm Carolyne of Carolyn loves nutrition and today I'm going to show you how to harvest and prepare prickly pear pads behind me it's a big prickly pear that is growing on my property and it's spring so that's when we get the most pads most new growth and what we're looking for is the new pads you can see we have quite a few they're more bright green than the older pads which are also much larger you can also tell by where the beetles would be they're also called glaucous they look kind of like they have rubbery points that is still fresh and ready to pick like so next we'll go inside and I'll show you how to clean them and show you a few dishes alright so now we're in the kitchen and what we're gonna do is clean all of these lockets off I have a fully knife I found that it's easiest to just like just laying the skin off of something there's little stickers trickly pear pads are really good for diabetics as they help regulate blood glucose levels they're also high in vitamins A and C and calcium and fiber the inside staff of them it's very similar to aloe plant use some skin injuries like burns and cuts also be used like a hair conditioner all those been used to help with digestion all right so you see I cut the the bottom stem off so that's fairly tough also gonna cut the outer edge flip it over and do the other side you can of course buy these in the store especially down here in the southwest this is a kind of staple food in Mexico but it's becoming more and more popular here in the States and cutting up spineless variety and prickly pear there are some that have thorns it wouldn't take another step to remove the thorns before you can cut off the glocken so this is the kind of convenience all right I think we got it off so next I'll just take it over to the sink and rinse it off well now you know how to harvest and clean prickly pear pads there's different ways you can eat them you can eat them raw they're kind of slimy so that's not my preferred method I like grilling them I put them on the grill for about 20 minutes until they turn an olive green color you can saute them with other vegetables you can dry them either in the oven or in a dehydrator you can eat them kind of like raisins they have a levity flavor so put them in a salsa or you can eat them with eggs also it's the recipes in my blog so be sure to check that out in the description below and of course if you like this video be sure to subscribe to my channel check me out on Facebook and Instagram at lowest attrition and my website Carolyn loss nutrition comm thank you you you