Cacti, the Rock Star of the Desert

The Truth is, cacti can be the best of times and the worst of times. It can represent the age of wisdom or the age of foolishness. *forgive me, Charles Dickens*

The Best of Times/Age of Wisdom

Cacti for Food

Nopales, a fancy name for young cactus pads of the prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) are a food marvel and have been a staple in Latin countries for centuries. Use them in scrambled eggs and jalapenos. Grill them and use in tacos, enchiladas or quesadillas. Use them in salads, or as a side dish. 

How do they taste? Sort of green-bean-ish with a hint of lemon.

Almost any fleshy cactus fruit is edible, but the prickly pear fruit wins the popularity contest, hands down. Also known as cactus fruit, cactus figs, Indian figs, Barbary figs, and tunas, this little fruit is dynamic! It grows two to four inches long and is shaped similar to an avocado.

The immature fruit is green and matures to orange, red, pink or magenta. It can be eaten raw, or made into jelly, syrup, candy or even margaritas.

Cacti for Health

Nopales are being added to smoothies. Why?

Because the humble little Opuntia cactus pad is receiving high marks for its low glycemic rating and ability to control blood sugar naturally. What’s more, research suggests the imbiber’s blood sugar continues to drop for two hours after ingesting it.

Cacti for Drink

Who hasn’t seen one of the vintage Westerns depicting a poor soul with sun-blistered skin and shredded clothing crawling, scratching, grunting to get to a lone cactus in the torrid desert? He has only the strength to reach the cactus and carve a hole in the side or top. He reaches in with both of his filthy, shaking hands and brings the lifesaving liquid to his peeling lips.

Ahhhhhh. Man is saved. Cactus is the hero.

But hold on! 

Although the large saguaro with its arm-like branches can store as much as 200 gallons of water, the liquid can be toxic to humans.

What is a dying desert crawler to do?

Aim for the prickly pear and barrel cacti, and don’t expect a lot. Forget clear bottled water. The inside walls of the cactus will be tough. The drinkable fluid inside is a moist, spongy pulp and will most likely be bitter.

The best way to get nutrition or water from a cactus *in an emergency* is to peel and eat the prickly pear or barrel cactus fruits. Or, you can eat the raw pads of a prickly pear. Be careful of those spines! Ouch!

Cacti for Ranchers

Native prickly pear growth has been used for over a century to feed cattle. The pads of the Opuntia are low in dry matter and crude protein but will suffice in emergency conditions.  The pads also contain a sufficient amount of moisture. Recently, the Southwest cattle industry has begun to cultivate prickly pear cacti as a fresh source of feed and water for cows. The spines can be burned off to reduce mouth injury.

Since cattle tend to avoid the sharp spines, prickly pear cacti can actually be used as a fence to keep cattle in a certain boundary.

Cacti as Art

No explanation needed!

The Worst of Times/Age of Foolishness

Cacti as Tormentor

Anyone who has ever stepped on a cactus, fallen into a cactus, or gotten the spikes of a cactus in any fleshly region of his/her body, knows that cacti can be “the worst of times.”

A childhood story . . . 

After a long afternoon of walking in and out of washes, climbing rocks and scouring the red dirt of our Arizona ranch looking for pottery shards, my brother and I wound up back at the pickup truck thirsty and tired. The grownups had all the canteens with them, so we were out of luck. My brother got a bright idea – why not eat some of the prickly pear fruit decorating the cacti all around us?

Great idea.

He sliced off a couple and tossed one in my direction. I  picked one up and took a big bite. Tears started immediately at the realization that my mouth and tongue were covered in little hairy spikes from the skin of the fruit.

I’ll never forget how hopeless I felt with a mouth full of stickers (glochids). My brother scrounged a pair of pliers out of the glove box and went to work pulling them out of my tongue and the flesh of my inside jaws. 

For that one day . . . my brother was my superhero.

Let me ask you . . . do you love or hate cacti?

Have you ever had a cactus houseplant? 

Did you ever step in the middle of those spikes? 

Fallen into them? 

Eaten any of the fruit or pads? 

What’s your favorite cactus recipe?

I love to hear from you!

Jodi Lea Stewart was born in Texas to an "Okie" mom and a Texan dad. Her younger years were spent in Texas and Oklahoma; hence, she knows all about biscuits and gravy, blackberry picking, chiggers, and snipe hunting. At the age of eight, she moved to a vast cattle ranch in the White Mountains of Arizona. As a teen, she left her studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson to move to San Francisco, where she learned about peace, love, and exactly what she DIDN'T want to do with her life. Since then, Jodi graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Business Management, raised three children, worked as an electro-mechanical drafter, penned humor columns for a college periodical, wrote regional Western articles, and served as managing editor of a Fortune 500 corporate newsletter. 

She is the author of a contemporary trilogy set in the Navajo Nation, as well as two historical novels. Her current novel, Blackberry Road, is available on Amazon. Her next historical novel, The Accidental Road, debuts in September 2019. She currently resides in Arizona with her husband, her delightful 90+-year-old mother, a crazy Standard poodle named Jazz, one rescue cat, and numerous gigantic, bossy houseplants.

Blackberry Road is published by Sundown Press and is available on Amazon.

Trouble sneaks in one Oklahoma afternoon in 1934 like an oily twister. A beloved neighbor is murdered, and a single piece of evidence sends the sheriff to arrest a black man that Biddy *a sharecropper’s daughter* knows is innocent. Hauntingly terrifying sounds seeping from the woods lead Biddy into even deeper mysteries and despair and finally into the shocking truths of that fateful summer.

The Accidental Road debuts September 2019

A teen and her mother escaping an abusive husband tumble into the epicenter of crime peddlers invading Arizona and Nevada in the 1950s. Stranded hundreds of miles from their planned destination of Las Vegas, they land in a dusty town full of ghosts and tales, treachery and corruption. Avoiding disaster is tricky, especially as it leads Kat into a fevered quest for things as simple as home and trust. Danger lurks everywhere, leading her to wonder if she and her mother really did take The Accidental Road of life, or if it's the exact right road to all they ever hoped for.

Food for Life by Jodi Lea Stewart

No running water, no inside plumbing, no way to run to the store for bread, meat, or butter.
The name of the game was survival.  

In our current world, it’s hard to conceive of what it’s like to feed a lot of mouths when you have empty pockets and no promise of help. In 1934, welfare was non-existent, but my long-ago farmer relatives would have died before taking government handouts anyway. Without education, opportunity, and with no way to move up a corporate ladder or go to college to better one’s self, life was lived by prayer, hope, and the sweat of the brow.

Food meant the difference between living or dying for the farmers and sharecroppers of 1930s Oklahoma. I highlight that struggle and life lived close to the earth in my latest novel, Blackberry Road. 

No Crops ~ No Life

Coaxing the stubborn ground to give up its stumps and boulders by using a small team of horses, mules, or even one of each was the only way to prepare the dirt for growing crops. After that back-breaking task came the planting, weeding, and harvesting of the fields and gardens. Is it any wonder those men and women became experts at preserving and stretching their bounty?

My grandmother was one of those women. The wife of a sharecropper, she gave birth to eleven children, all at home and all delivered by her own husband. Coming from a family of eleven children herself, she was equipped with the knowledge of keeping a horde of hungry kids alive and fed. 

If it grew in the dirt or came off a tree, she knew how to preserve it in a jar.

She cooked on an old wood stove, and mealtime was greatly anticipated three times a day. Everyone gathered at the table with a sense of excitement. Family courtesy dictated each person look around and calculate how many mouths were waiting to be fed at the table. The answer determined the serving size each one could take on his/her plate. 

Dividing a bowl of milk gravy or fried “taters” by thirteen, or adding up the buttermilk biscuits in the crockery bowl to see how many each could have, made the kids early mathematicians!

No Animals ~ No Life

The family kept cows for fresh milk and made butter from the cream. Buttermilk was considered a special treat, as well as cottage cheese made by letting milk clabber, hanging it on a clothesline in a bag, and then letting it drip dry until it curdled.  

Chickens provided eggs and protein. My granddad raised hogs and butchered them when the weather turned cold. This provided bacon, sausage, headcheese, the boiled backbone for seasoning potatoes, beans, and more. Nothing was wasted. Granddad made real pork skins (cracklings)—not the kind you buy today—from the hide.

My seven uncles added to the survival table by killing rabbits and squirrels with slingshots. Like it or not by our delicate standards of today, that was another way to keep empty bellies from hurting.

Because Granddad grew up in Indian Territory, Oklahoma, he knew about boiling sassafras root in the spring to make a tea that boosted one’s health. He knew the herbs, roots, and weeds that were fine to eat, which ones to use in herbal medicines, and which ones to avoid at all costs.

As the issues are hotly argued in the twenty-first century about genetically engineered foods, depleted soils, chemical preservatives, and mass production of food commodities that barely resemble the original foods of yesterday, the simplicity of those earlier times often pulls at our hearts—a time when soil was rich and yielded the best food for our lives. 

Survival Recipes

Fried Okra

Pick a good mess of fresh okra

Wash and rinse

Cut into ¼” slices

Roll in cornmeal, salt, and pepper

Fry in bacon grease until slightly crispy

Pinto Beans and Salt Pork

Dried pinto beans

Large onion, thick sliced or chopped

A two-inch piece of salt pork, cubed

1 Tbls. chili powder

2 cloves garlic, mashed

Salt and ground pepper to taste

Go through beans and pick out rocks and sticks. Rinse and drain. Dump beans in a heavy pan and add water to cover plus 5-6 more inches. Add cubed salt pork, onion, chili powder, garlic, salt, and pepper. Bring water to a boil. Cover pan, but not tight. Stir and add more seasonings as beans cook.

Hot Bean Dumplings

Left-over cooked pinto beans made juicier by adding more water

Red or green peppers to make beans hot, optional

Biscuit dough rolled out thin and cut into one-half-inch by three-inch strips (dumplings)

Bring beans and juice to a rolling boil. Drop biscuit dumplings into pot and heat through. It doesn’t take long. Serve immediately.

Johnny Cakes

2 cups cornmeal

¼ cup flour

½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

 1 Tbls. sugar or honey

1-1/2 to 2 cups boiling water

2 Tbls. bacon drippings

Measure and sift dry ingredients in a bowl. Heat water to boiling. Pour water and bacon drippings over dry ingredients. Drop by tablespoons into deep fat and fry. If you prefer to bake the Johnny cakes, shape in your greased palm and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake 30 min. at 450°.

For many more down-home survival food recipes, see the Appendix in Blackberry Road, 

Blackberry Road is a panorama of dirt-poor but honest Oklahoma life as told through the eyes of a sharecropper's teenage daughter. The murder of a beloved teacher stretches into mysterious sounds coming from the woods to beyond the hidden caves of Coody's Bluff. Before it's over, truth brushes shoulders with some of 1934's most notorious criminals. 

Blackberry Road is available on Amazon.

Jodi Lea Stewart was born in Texas to an "Okie" mom and a Texan dad. Her younger years were spent in Texas and Oklahoma; hence, she knows all about biscuits and gravy, blackberry picking, chiggers, and snipe hunting. At the age of eight, she moved to a large cattle ranch in the White Mountains of Arizona. Later, she left her studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson to move to San Francisco, where she learned about peace, love, and exactly what she DIDN'T want to do with her life. Since then, Jodi graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Business Management, raised three children, worked as an electro-mechanical drafter, penned humor columns for a college periodical, wrote regional Western articles, and served as managing editor of a Fortune 500 corporate newsletter. She currently resides in Arizona with her husband, two Standard poodles, two rescue cats, and numerous gigantic, bossy houseplants. Blackberry Road is Jodi's fourth novel.

Don't Let the Stories Die by Jodi Lea Stewart

Story opportunities pop up everywhere. All you have to do is cross the bridge.

Unique Challenges

Historic novel writing presents many unique challenges. Foremost, the writer didn't personally live during that time era, or he/she lived in New York but loved writing about the Old West. 

Slick documentaries and photos often don’t go far enough to immerse the writer or the reader in the “feel” of that particular slot of time. It helps to find journals or other written material to base the needed atmosphere of the novel upon, but the REAL STORIES come from the mouths of those who lived them. 

Blackberry Road, my latest novel, is a snapshot of a hot summer in 1934 Oklahoma. A girl called Biddy narrates a whopping tale of murder and spookiness that begins in May when school is out and ends when the blackberries are turning brown on the vine – about mid- to late-summer. Biddy’s family jumps right out at you like a real family, and why is that?

Because they are, and someone (me) didn’t let their stories die.

Turning 'Real' into Fiction

Collecting family stories, recipes, lore, and copying old handwritten Bible notes over the years created the realistic backdrop for Blackberry Road. Fictional Biddy has twelve brothers and sisters. My mother had eleven. Both Biddys, the fictional and the real, were from sharecropping families living in Oklahoma in the 1930s. 

Dirt poor, but rock solid, those families had to eat, live, and survive everything from snake bites to drought (or flood) to miserable housing conditions.

In my particular case, I was fortunate to mingle and mix with a real sharecropping family because they were my own relatives. You can be sure the stories at our reunions or get-togethers flew around like greased spitballs; and there I was, in the thick of it, laughing and asking questions, my pen flying over the notebook I kept with me at all times.

Most members of the real Blackberry Road family have now passed on, but their lives and experiences will live on forever simply because I didn’t let the stories die. My job as a writer was to make fiction seem like reality and reality seem like fiction. 

You can do the same thing.

No Family Stories to Collect? No Problem!

Don’t despair if you don’t have actual family stories to gather. Story opportunities full of "nuggets" pop up everywhere. All you have to do is cross the bridge, so to speak, and be ready to take notes. 

A chance to record stories “from the horse’s mouth” is as close as that elderly lady you see every day on the bus. Befriend her and see life as it was through her eyes. Maybe it’s a

friend’s uncle who served in the military and lived through stories that seem too fictional to be true but are true just the same.

A person volunteering for a church street choir used to be homeless many years ago – what was that like, and how did he or she escape homelessness? The Vietnamese family down the street who barely made it to the USA in 1971 – how did they do it, and what happened when they got here? 

Your friend tells you she has a grandfather who was a butler in the deep South in the early 1950s. Wow! Can you go see him and make sure his stories don’t die? You don’t know until you try, right?

Living stories are waiting for you to discover, record, and save. Now . . . go write that novel!

~ Three old stories that didn’t die ~

“I remember Mom making my dresses from flour sacks and my bloomers from flannel undershirts. She used innertube rubber for the waist and legs. She made me at least three dresses for the year. When I grew out of them and had to wear them anyway, it was sure pitiful.” ~ the real Biddy

“It was my job to lead my blind grandma to the outhouse, and I would read the Sears and Roebuck catalog to her while I waited. That’s how, when I was ten years old, I got the second doll of my childhood. We read about her in the catalog, and she cost 95-cents. Grandma bought it for me for taking such good care of her. I thought my doll was the most beautiful thing in the world. She had rubber bloomers, and I kept her hung up on a wall. In those days, we didn’t have screens on most of the windows and some grasshoppers got hold of those rubber bloomers and ate them up. I had to kill those varmints for doing that!”

~ the real Biddy

One night, a pretty young woman *we’ll call her Doodles* from our family went to a local dance with her older brothers. A catty and foolish young woman became jealous of Doodles’ beauty. Throughout the evening, the woman heckled her, making verbal innuendos and snide remarks. Doodles ignored her bully, dancing and promenading around the dance floor. Later, as Doodles started home under the full moon with her brothers, the woman hid and threw rocks at her as she passed. It was too much. Doodles marched into the bushes and took the girl to the ground with enough vigor to make all her seven brothers and one of her sisters very proud. During the scuffle, the band scuttled outside in the glittery moonlight and played a lively rendition of Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes. Needless to say, 16-year-old Doodles had no more trouble from this hateful woman, and this became an energetic and favorite story at all the family reunions for years to come ~ Jodi Lea Stewart

Blackberry Road is available on Amazon.