Artichokes From The Garden

Since we are traveling for the next few weeks, I expect that most of my posts will just be a picture of something delicious and maybe a paragraph or two. As a warmup, here's a picture of the first edible artichokes to come out of our garden. Gardening has been pretty much a laissez-faire survivor-style challenge for the veggies this year. The first chokes, earlier in the season, were so infested with all manner of crawling friends that they never made it to the pot. These 3 were a perfect little artichoke family, one big, one medium, and a baby. ("Someone's been sleeping in my aioli"). The picture shows them taking a bath out on the deck to remove any of the aforementioned friends. I don't know what variety they are, but the aroma and flavor were intense and outstanding. They were wider at the base than the typical retail varieties, and therefore had a high proportion of tasty heart. Artichokes are perennial, so I'm looking forward to see what goodness next year brings.