I had an artichoke for dinner tonight, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Shout out to my sister-in-law for introducing them to me sometime in the distant past.) But, they really are an odd food. I’m trying to imagine the person who first said, “I’m really hungry, but the only thing growing in our garden right now is that big thistle thing. I’ll bet if we cooked it we could peel off the leaves and scrape some stuff off with our teeth. Maybe it would be tasty.” And then whoever that person was talking to might have replied, “OK. What have we got to lose? And I’ll bet it would be even better if we dipped the leaves in melted garlic butter before we scraped the stuff off with our teeth!” Whoever that ancient stranger might have been, I tip my hat to them. It turns out it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.