Prickly Fruit Salad

There's been a massive heat wave this past week here in Culver City, and in response I decided to avoid using the oven at all costs. This was pretty easy to do, (thanks, microwave!), but it still didn't keep the heat down in the apartment. So, I cooled down the only way I knew how. I ate lots and lots of fruit from the refrigerator. Mmmmm cold fruit, so juicy and wet and refreshing. I threw together this fruit
salad with some prickly pears I found at Albertson's. I'd never used
prickly pears to make anything before, but I had them juiced in mixed
drinks and it always tasted pretty good. So, I ventured to make a tasty
fruit salad with them! They're called prickly pears because they're
shaped like pears but grow on cactuses, and have tiny brown circles on
the outside of them that have small furry, prickly bristles that will
come off onto your skin, so take caution when preparing them. I read
online that they are usually juiced, but could also be eaten plain after
you peel them, as long as you don't mind the seeds which are apparently
edible. Well, I juiced one  of the prickly pears to pour over the salad and cut up the other one to
put in the salad, and I can honestly say that I wish I would've juiced
both of them. It's not that the flesh of the fruit didn't taste good, it
has a great honeydew melon type flavor, but there were SO many seeds
and they were fairly large and really hard, not something that I would
just swallow massive amounts of. So, if you don't have any problem with
seeds, then feel free to cut one up and put it in the salad, but if you
have a tough time eating a large amount of seeds, then juice both of
them and pour the syrupy juice over the salad. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 Banana, cut into slices

2 Pluots

2 Prickly Pears

1 Tangerine, peeled and separated by slice

Cut the pluots in half, remove and discard their pits, and cut each of the pluots into sixths. Place the banana, pluots and tangerine slices into a medium sized bowl, stir so that thefruits are evenly distributed, and set aside. Cut a vertical line down
the side of one of the prickly pears, then cut the top and bottom off.
Now, place your finger underneath the vertical line and grab ahold of
the pear's skin. Peel the skin off and discard it. Repeat this process
with the other prickly pear. Now, you can either slice one of the
prickly pears and put it in the salad, if you don't mind lots of hard
seeds, or you can slice up both of the prickly pears and push the slices
through a sieve held over the bowl of fruit so that all of the juices
from the prickly pears fall over the fruit. Garnish with one remaining
slice of prickly pear and serve cold.