Last week, when I wandered on about harvesting cactus pears (also called “tunas” or “prickly pears”), I invited readers to offer ideas that would help Jim and me find uses for our cactus pear puree—especially ones that did not involve adding a lot of additional sugar.

Dame Trouble offered the following:

“Have you tried making your own “nice cream”? Take two ripe bananas and slice them into pennies and freeze. Put the frozen banana slices into a food processor with 1/2 to one cup of your frozen cubes (to taste) and process until smooth. It will be soft, but not completely unfrozen, so you can then portion it into servings and re-freeze.  Not having cactus pears, I use a cup of frozen mixed berries when I make nice cream.”

Jim and I made a batch with two large bananas and roughly a half cup of cactus pear puree.  It was fantastic!  The texture was about the same as soft serve ice cream or custard.  I plan to freeze some puree into smaller cubes next time, as our one difficulty was that the cubes we had were slower to break up than the frozen bananas.  I might try adding more cactus pear, but I’d hate to sacrifice the excellent texture of our first trial.  Cactus pear, unlike most fruits, has a slightly viscous texture, even after being frozen

Any other suggestions?  Low added sugar is a bonus.

We already make jelly, Italian ice, iced tea, lemonade, vinegar, and a few other things.  We’ve tried candy, but can’t get it to “set” at our altitude.  (We live at a mile high. The boiling point of liquids is lower.)  I have mixed some puree into homemade barbecue sauce to good effect.

Harvesting continues.  I now have two very overstuffed bags of mixed Italian and Thai basil ready to become pesto.  I’ve also dried some of each, and frozen a few of the larger basil leaves for a quick addition to sauces.

After the frost, we’ll dig Jerusalem artichokes (sometimes marketed as “sunchokes”).  These are the tubers of a plant in the sunflower family.  Raw they make a tasty addition to salads, but they also grill or roast well.

Now to go cut up late season veggies for dinner!  Later!!