Don’t Choke on the Artichoke

It’s getting late so I am going to try and make this snappy. 

This A.M. I started with a quick breakfast because I woke up a few minutes late since my husband failed to wake me up before he left for work.  Normally he tells me bye and I wake up. (He claims he said goodbye and I responded, but I have no recollection of it.)  Anyway, I had a slice of whole wheat toast with some peanut butter, sliced banana, and a handful of blueberries.

Lunch consisted of a delicious salad composed of tender greens, grape tomatoes, yellow and red bell pepper, sliced scallions, reduced fat colby stick, rotisserie chicken pieces, and peach salsa for dressing.  I had a Fage Honey on side and I added a couple of spoons of the plain greek yogurt to my salad before digging in.

On my way home after my meeting, I munched on this pecan pie Larabar all thanks to my sister for snagging me one when we stopped at the grocery on Sunday afternoon.

For dinner I ran over to Fisherman’s Cove Seafood Market to get some fresh fish to prepare at home.  I knew I wanted to have roasted asparagus as a side, but I also picked up  a stuffed artichoke to share with Chris. 

I cooked the mahi filets loosely following a recipe for a topping involving miracle whip, Worcestershire, dijon, bell pepper, scallions, and cayene.  However, I wasn’t at all happy with the dressing so I won’t be sharing that recipe.

As for the star of the show, the stuffed artichoke made an appearance.

Just in case you want to stuff your own artichokes, here are the ingredients.

And for those who have never eaten a stuffed artichoke which is actually a type of flower…

How to Eat a Stuffed Artichoke:

1. Pull a petal from the flower.

 

2. Put the entire petal in your mouth crumb side up and scrape the entire thing with your top teeth pulling the petal out of your mouth.  (Don’t eat the petal.  Just scrape the soft top layer from the top with the crumb mixture.)

3. Discard the scraped petal.

4. Once all of the petals are removed you get to the choke or hairy covering over the heart of the artichoke.

5. Peel off the entire choke layer to reveal the edible heart.

6. Now that does not look all that appetizing, but it can be eaten in its entirety.  It contains the most flavor of the artichoke.  Many people only scrape the petals and stuffing and bypass the nutritious artichoke heart altogether.

In this area, I only see stuffed whole artichokes at seafood restaurants, po-boy shops, etc.  However, no stuffing is necessary.  Artichokes can be steamed and the petals can be dipped in lemon butter or vinaigrette prior to scraping the leaves.  Hungry Girl sent out a recipe last year for the steamed artichoke which can be seen here.  I made it and preferred the lemon butter dip over the salsa- yogurt dip she suggests.

Have you eaten artichoke before that did not come from a jar or can?