For the Love of Artichokes

ARTICHOKES- a mindful choice, but what is it?

LOVE LOVE LOVE

In early Summer, spending more time in the outdoors when air is saturated with increased oxygen from recent plant growth, and the sun provides us with a healthy dose of Vitamin D, it does the body, mind and spirit good. So does eating foods that are in season.

Eating seasonal foods increases not only the highest nutritional value from food, but it also aligns with our bodies' seasonal needs to receive optimum health benefits. Mother Nature is no fool.... vending machines.?...another story!

In early Summer, there are several high quality seasonal foods, but one of my favorites is the (drum roll)...

Artichokes are funny looking things, and at first glance they certainly do not look edible; especially with those thorny leaves, but they are fun to eat and quite tastey.

ARTICHOKE!

Not only that, but they are loaded with many health benefits including:

FOLATE:   B vitamin, promotes new cell growth, supports and maintains healthy cell growth, boosts immune system, protects DNA

MAGNESIUM:   Mineral, boosts energy production, increases calcium absorption, supports healthy nerves, aids detoxification

FIBER:   Aids and supports healthy digestion and assimilation of nutrients

Is an artichoke a fruit or a vegetable? - Good question!
Per The Phytophactor, The artichoke is an immature (at the stage we eat it) thistle. It's name artichoke is derived from the Turkish word for thistle. When it flowers, it is a nice big purple thistle. However to call it a flower or flower bud is not correct either. Like all the other members of the Aster or Sunflower family, the artichoke clusters a lot of small flowers together into a head, an inflorescence, that has the appearance of a single flower, a nice way for small flowers to have a big visual impact and attract more pollinators.

You can see the ovaries (little oval-shaped things) of each flower lining the cup-like receptacle, and each of these will make a single-seeded fruit called an achene. The sunflower "seeds" are actually one-seeded fruits where we discard the dry fruit and eat the seed. But thistle "seeds" are too small for any human benefit.Fruits are flowers at the stage of seed dispersal, after pollination, and after development of the fruit (from the ovary) and the seeds. Some fruits are eaten at an immature stage (bush beans, okra, cucumbers) and others are eaten when the seeds are mature (tomato, apple).

So if we use pollination as the dividing line, then pre-pollination flowers (broccoli) would be vegetables. But even then the flowers of artichokes aren't eaten. The part of the artichoke that is consumed is the fleshy receptacle and the fleshy bases (both sort of cream colored) of the bracts (modified leaves) that surround the flowers. And like broccoli, most of what is eaten in the artichoke are these vegetative parts associated with the flowers.

So basically, the answer is......an artichokes is a vegetable.

 For a quick and easy basic recipe, click here.

ENJOY!!

To the adventure,

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