Bill: When Tom was living at the Monkey House, we harvested several of the younger pads from the cactus. We carefully cleaned off the thorns (by burning them on the gas stove's burners, I think). Then we peeled them as best we could, sliced them into pieces and cooked them. We had no real idea what we were doing, but we knew they were used in Mexican dishes, so we figured what did we have to lose? If they were edible, we had a great supply of free food at hand. As it turned out, they tasted rather like sauteed green beans, with a less appetizing texture. We never repeated the experiment.
