Fruit of the Day: Tuna Roja

Before we get to today's fruit, I have to once again sing the praises of Peru's fruit. There are more new varieties than I know what to do with, and when we're craving something familiar, the options are plentiful and cheap. To wit: Here is a picture of 50¢ worth of strawberries:

They were fragrant, sweet, and delicious.

The tuna roja isn't a fish, I promise. It's a fruit, and one you might even recognize: In North America, it's more commonly known as the prickly pear. There were three prickly pear varieties available: roja (red), amarilla (yellow), and verde (green). A prickly pear traffic light! I don't remember why we chose red, but maybe because it looked the weirdest.

Without consulting the intarwebs, I wasn't sure how exactly to approach the tuna roja. I decided to slice it vertically, and was very excited when I found its insides to be as red as a beet!

I scooped out a spoonful of the juicy red insides and found the tuna to be full of tiny, hard seeds. The fruit itself is mild-tasting and not super-sweet. It's refreshing but I found it nondescript (as you may have gathered from my non-description). The seeds were too small to spit out so I just swallowed them, and they were inoffensive.
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