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That's an interesting use of the plant.

A friend taped a segment of This Old House, which I 
thought normally takes place somewhere in New England, 
except they were in Arizona. They visited Tubac and showed 
how the workers would put Prickly Pear pads through old 
clothes wringers to express the juice and pulp, then would 
mix that into the earth plaster they were repairing the 
mission with, because it would keep it from cracking.

We have a lot of the prickly pear cacti here, and I have 
used the Nopales in salsa and as a substitute for aloe for 
big scapes. I have also made prickly pear tequilla jelly 
with the fruit.

--Sage


On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:06:50 EDT
 Bunjov AT aol.com wrote:
> Jeez. Sent this to all my Property Owners members and 
> forgot to include  
> Homesteaders' list members.
> Sandy
>
>
>  
> ____________________________________
> From: Bunjov
> To: SLYSPI
> CC: ellen1950 AT earthlink.net, Butchfarrington, 
> Debifarrington, 
> BrokenTailRanch, vasseura AT hughes.net, 
> mojavehome AT gmail.com,  ghancock AT bcsmechanical.com, 
> diana40355 AT msn.com,  maureen.reilly AT sympatico.ca
> Sent: 10/10/2008 2:58:26 P.M. Pacific Standard  Time
> Subj: Nopales (no-pall'-es) - in today's 
> news!
>
>
> Just an off-the-wall transmission to everyone - 
> interesting stuff! From  the 
> ACWA newsletter. Too bad, says I, that we are Mojave and 
> prickly pear is  
> Sonoran.
>
> As an aside, my mother-in-law, bless her, used to use 
> canned 'nopales'  the 
> same as we use green beans - in omelets or served as a 
> side dish with red  
> chile sauce. When we were in Arizona, she cut the 
> paddles herself and spent  hours 
> scraping off the thorns so she could cook the sliced 
> paddles for dinner.
>
> Nopales are available in almost every market nowadays, 
> in the Hispanic  foods 
> aisle.
>
> Just sharing.
> Cool concept.
>
> This is of particular concern to me because in past 
> years, when 'labs'  have 
> been busted out here, the contents are simply dumped 
> into the sand, and -  I'm 
> assuming - the nastiness eventually works its way down 
> into our  groundwater. 
> I have asked law enforcement about this before, and 
> gotten  no viable 
> response.
>
> Sandy
>
> Cactus Goo Makes Water Safe
> Jessica Marshall, Discovery News
>
> Sept. 17, 2008 -- The slimy ooze inside  prickly pear 
> cactuses that helps the 
> plants store water in the desert can also  be used for 
> scouring arsenic, 
> bacteria and cloudiness out of rural drinking  water, 
> according to research at the 
> University of South Florida in  Tampa.
>
> Biochemical engineer Norma Alcantar first learned of the 
> _cactus's_ 
> (http://reference.howstuffworks.com/cactus-encyclopedia.htm) 
> unique abilities from her 
> grandmother, a native of  north central Mexico. There, 
> the residual water 
> from boiling the flat, _oval-shaped lobes of prickly 
> pear_ 
> (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/17/cactus_pla.html) 
> for salads and other  dishes was used to 
> clear up cloudy water drawn from the river before use 
> for  cooking or 
> drinking. 
> "When you boil [the prickly pear], what is getting 
> separated is mucilage,"  
> Alcantar said. 
> Mucilage is the clear, gooey, viscous liquid from within 
> the cactus which  
> helps to seal water inside the plant so it can survive 
> desert-dry  conditions. 
> Alcantar began to study how the mucilage worked to clear 
> cloudy water. She  
> found that the mucilage binds to the dirt and causes the 
> particles to  
> coagulate, forming large enough clumps that they can 
> settle out of the  water. 
> Then, she turned her attention to other water 
> contaminants. The group's  more 
> recent research has shown that the mucilage can also 
> form a complex with  
> _arsenic_ 
> (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/14/arsenic-bacteria-lake.html) 
> , 
> a carcinogenic water contaminant that can occur 
> naturally or from industrial 
> or agricultural pollution. 
> The arsenic-mucilage complex is large enough that it can 
> be removed by  
> drawing the water through a sand filter. 
> "Sometimes we get 80 percent removal, and sometimes we 
> get lower than 50  
> percent removal," Alcantar said. "We don't yet know 
> exactly what it is; we  
> haven't found what are the exact best conditions for the 
> mucilage [to get the  most 
> arsenic removal]." 
> What percentage removal is sufficient will depend on the 
> amount of _arsenic 
> in the water_ 
> (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/19/arsenic-diabetes.html) 
>
> supply. 
> Other ongoing research by Alcantar's team has shown that 
> the mucilage can  
> also kill bacteria in the water, solving another 
> potential water quality  
> problem. The mucilage either engulfs the bacteria and 
> starves them, or it  binds to 
> the bacteria and causes them to settle out of the water. 
> Mucilage consists of carbohydrates and sugars. The team 
> is investigating  
> exactly how these components interact with bacteria, 
> arsenic and suspended  
> particles. The evidence so far suggests that when 
> arsenic binds to the sugars,  the 
> number of charges on the particle changes, which changes 
> its ability to  stay 
> dissolved. Similar processes appear to be at work with 
> the other  
> contaminants. 
> Alcantar estimates that one lobe of prickly pear would 
> supply a family of  
> five for about five weeks. Alcantar's team is still 
> optimizing and developing  
> the best system, but she envisions that each family 
> would pass their water  
> through a filter that would periodically be recharged 
> with fresh mucilage from  
> prickly pear grown at home or in the community. 
> An advantage of the approach is that prickly pear is 
> familiar to local  
> communities, which her work suggests will help ease its 
> acceptance by local  people 
> in Temamatla, Mexico, where she is working with families 
> to design and  
> _supply  filters_ 
> (http://science.howstuffworks.com/h2o4.htm) . 
> "Our survey showed that 97 percent of the community 
> wanted to have a  filter, 
> especially if it's based on something that they know and 
> are  accustomed to," 
> said Alcantar 
> "There are a number of aspects to this project that I 
> think are unique,"  
> said Angela Lindner of the University of Florida in 
> Gainesville. "She knows  
> these communities so she understands the social aspects 
> that are involved.  She's 
> keeping in mind that the one who is going to be making 
> these filters is  going 
> to be the person who is drinking the water. That's 
> rarely done in  
> engineering design." 
>
> ____________________________________
> Related Links: 
> _How Stuff  Works: Water Purification_ 
> (http://science.howstuffworks.com/h2o4.htm)  
> _Discovery Earth Game_ 
> (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/game/game.html) 
>
> _Planet  Green_ (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/) 
>
>
>  
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