I love artichokes, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten a fresh one. I’ve only had the hearts, canned or from a jar. The prickly outside seems so intimidating, so I never prepared on myself. I thought this was a good time to face my artichoke fears since I’m almost 30. I used this recipe to cook it in the crockpot with lemon, wine, and garlic (http://theproducemom.com/2012/03/11/crock-pot-artichokes/). It was really easy to prepare, but it did take 3 hours to cook in the crockpot.
I’d always seen roasted artichokes served in restaurants where people pull off the leaves and scrape the edible part off with their teeth, but I’d never actually done that myself until last night. I rather enjoyed eating that part of it. I like food that is eaten with one’s fingers. Once I had peeled all the leaves off, I cut the artichoke in half. I thought I knew what an artichoke looked like, but I was completely surprised when I opened it up! I had no idea about the stringy part that gets removed called the “choke.” Once I removed that, I ate the artichoke heart and I was completely disappointed. It didn’t taste like the ones from cans or jars, and it was not very good. The texture was nice and eating it warm was great. I think I might use fresh artichokes if I were to make a hot spinach artichoke dip. But mostly I guess I’ll just stick to the cans and jars from now on or let someone else prepare it for me and see if they cook it better than I do.
30newthingsbeforeiturn30 