Artichokes

A few days ago I asked my husband to buy three artichokes. He came home with two because, frankly, he's scared of them and convinced that the kids aren't going to go anywhere near them. I was pretty sure that he was right about one of the kids -- Elizabeth is a great eater and will try almost anything once. Abigail, on the other hand, will declare that she doesn't like anything that resembles a green vegetable. She'll eat carrot sticks and corn, but she will eat edamame out of their shells (probably because it's fun to eat). Peas and green beans, she'll eat if I put them into her mouth, but she'll try to leave them on the plate if given a choice. Lettuce and fresh spinach, same thing, but with those I have a lower success rate. The best success I have with her vegetable eating is when we get "dda-ddu-goh" -- that's the word for "vegetable" that Elizabeth used when she was about 1-2 years old, in reference to the bag of frozen peas/carrots/corn/green beans. The kids will eat those straight out of the freezer (except the green stuff for Abigail).

Anyways, so he got two artichokes, and it took me a couple days to muster up the courage to prepare and cook them. I've eaten a few artichoke leaves about 20 years ago and thought it was kind of a neat experience, but I've never ever even watched anybody prepare and cook them. Never even saw it on TV. I mean, what's the choke look like? Will I recognize it and not mutilate the precious heart right below it? What if I don't get out the whole thing? Will I ruin the whole artichoke? Will I cause family-wide choking because of this? What if I cut off too many leaves? What if I stain my carbon-steel knives? I don't have lemon slices!

I got the artichokes out of the fridge today, cleaned them (and pricked my fingers on the thorns), got them prepared for steaming, and then realized that I don't have a steam basket big enough to fit two artichokes. Thank goodness that I only had two -- who knows how I would've gotten three to cook at once. Well, I was able to get them into the microwave and cooked. Whew.

After they cooled a little bit, I was eating the leaves and was quite proud of my accomplishment, when Elizabeth (with Abigail not far behind) asked me what I'm eating. I told her it's artichokes, and she wanted to try one. I dipped a leaf in salad dressing and showed her how to scrape the leaf with her lower teeth. Abigail then said she wants to try one too(!), so I did the same for her. Then they both asked for more! And then more!

I couldn't believe my ears -- my preschool-aged girls (Abigail!!) were asking for more artichoke! And then when we got to the heart and stem, I cut them into bite-sized pieces and we all shared them. Now I think Abigail was just happy that she had something with which to scoop up salad dressing, but nonetheless, she was really good about scraping the flesh from the artichoke leaves. And I was happy that she was willingly trying this new and very foreign vegetable.