I like nopales a lot. They're a tender vegetable yet firm (when not cooked to death) and taste like a green vegetable should. I usually prepare them with zucchini, red bell pepper and cilantro dressing. Part of the appeal of nopales to me is their New World domestication and adaptation to an arid environment. To my mind – and dinner plate – I can't help but want to eat a desert crop that produces bountifully, deliciously and agronomically under extreme environmental conditions.

My enthusiasm for nopales is currently not shared by my daughter, who, over time, has decided she dislikes the nopales' slime, which sometimes – but not always – can be a feature of a nopales dish. "They're not as slimy as okra," she says with a lilt in her voice (trying to be helpful but knowing that okra is my favorite vegetable above all others and that I'd make okra more often, if she'd just give it a chance).

To combat the slime factor I've started serving nopales in a chorizo taco, where the flavor and texture of the nopales remain in tact, but the "slime" gets diluted by other ingredients. It tastes fantastic.

Ingredients
2 links of "market made" chorizo sausage (a little more than ½ pound from Las Delicias Carniceria, 1705 South College Avenue, Fort Collins) (approximately $2.25) or longaniza sausage, although it's not as readily available as chorizo
1 bunch chard ($1.49)
1 medium-size onion, coarsely chopped ($0.50)
½ pound sliced white mushroom ($1.99)
1 cup or so of nopales ($2.75 per 1-pound bag from Las IV Americas, 1669 South College Avenue, Fort Collins)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
flour tortillas (from Las IV Americas)
some crumbled cheddar or other cheese
hot sauce (we like original Tabasco pepper sauce and Tabasco green pepper sauce, which is milder)

Procedure
Wash and trim the chard, removing the tough central stem. Tear the leaves into pieces. Meanwhile, sauté the onion in the olive oil until translucent. Add the chard to the onions, along with a little water. Cover the pan and steam until the chard is nicely wilted. Season with salt and pepper. When done, put the chard and onion mixture in a covered bowl, and set aside in a warm place.

Remove the casings from the chorizo links. Break each link into four or five pieces. Sauté the chorizo until almost done. Drain off the excess fat. Add the nopales and mushrooms, along with a little water. Cover the pan and cook until the mushrooms are done. The nopales should be firm but not excessively so, and they definitely shouldn't be mushy.

Make a taco by placing a couple of spoonfuls of the chorizo, nopales and mushrooms onto a tortilla and then topping them with chard and onions. Add some cheese and hot sauce, although not much of either is needed.

While you're enjoying your taco, you should read the following article, which was recently published by the Brownsville, Texas newspaper. The article describes the cultural history of nopales – which I've never read before, and as a result, the article is more informative than it might seem (the highlighting below is mine).

Popularity of Nopales has been Around for Generations
The use of nopales in the Mexican culinary tradition predates the arrival of the Spaniards, said Juanita Garza, lecturer and academic adviser for the history department at the University of Texas Pan-American in Edinburgh.

Indigenous people in pre-Columbian times didn't use nopales in festivals or religious ceremonies. Instead, the cactus pads were a mainstay of the daily diet just as they are for many people today.

"Nopales is a native food that the Spanish picked up when they came," Garza said. "Then it has remained in the diet ever since, especially during the spring season when the nopalitos are nice and tender, and also when it's Lent season because of the non-meat diet."

Garza said the most important change in the use of nopalitos since the arrival of the Spanish about 500 years ago is the addition of meats. The indigenous people prepared them only with onions, tomatoes and other vegetables and spices.

Tony Zavaleta, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, said the earliest manuscripts written by Spaniards in Mexico in the 1500s describe the use of nopales.

"This particular form of cactus was cited as one of the staple foods," Zavaleta said. "So, it has been around as long as Europeans have been observing Mexican and Native American practices. It is what is called a cultural super food of Meso-America."

He compared its importance to that of the corn tortilla.

"I think it's ditto," he said. "It's the same thing. Beans would be the next one. Those are the cultural super foods of the indigenous Mexican population."

However, not all Hispanics like nopales.

"Many people would look down their nose at it," he said. "Most of the Mexican Americans that I know, unless they grew up eating nopales, with their mothers preparing nopales, they don't eat it. So when they see it in the buffet line, they just go right past it. It's seen as something that is just too simple. But for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people throughout Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, it's used as an essential staple food."

Indigenous people combined nopales with other vegetables and also with spices.

One of the more popular dishes, says Sylvia Contreras, manager of Emilia's Restaurant at 605 West Elizabeth St., is fajitas Guadalajara, prepared with spicy peppers, onions, melted cheese, avocado, plus the ubiquitous nopales, or nopalitos, a type of cactus.

The cooks at the restaurant now also prepare nopales with meats.

During Lent, Garza said, people prepare them with either salmon or tuna croquets. At other times of the year, they can be prepared with pork, hamburger or turkey meat. "And then of course you add all the spicy kind of ingredients like tomato, onions, chiles," she said.

For breakfast, Contreras said, nopales can be prepared with scrambled eggs with a side of beans.

Emilia's menu also includes the more traditional nopales a la Mexicana: fried nopales with onion, tomato and chile peppers, with rice and beans on the side.

Nopalitos are also believed to have medical uses, Garza said.

"They are used for diabetics," Garza said. "It really helps to bring down the sugar levels."

First and foremost in Contreras' mind, however, is their culinary value. Her mother in Matamoros keeps a large nopal cactus from which she regular cuts pads for use in cooking.

"There's a lot of plates," she said. "My mother, for example, prepares nopales with ground beef and mixed vegetables. She cooks, boils them and serves them with rice and beans. She cuts them in the little pieces and puts them on the grill and puts salt and black pepper. Other people sometimes prepare nopales with little pieces of chicken and green beans, and on the side, some pasta, like Alfredo or fideo. I think there's an infinity of plates where people use nopales."