Lent means it's a time of penance, abstinence, and fasting. It's a time when we abstain from eating meat on Fridays. It's a time when people prepare non-meat dishes, such as capirotada, salmon, fish, or potato patties, and nopalitos, or prickly pear. Besides capirotada, nopalitos are popular as a Lenten meal. The prickly pear, though, has many other uses. It's called prickly pear because of the plant's sharp needles and pear-shaped fruit. It has green, pulpy, needle-filled leaves. Its bloom, however, unlike the plant, is beautiful because of vivid yellow or red colors. Unlike wildflowers that grow by the highways,...