I'm no faker.

Asparagus, when dropped into boiling water, almost immediately turns a gorgeous and vibrant shade of green. Artichokes, on the other hand, are nature's horticultural straight shooters. After a few minutes of being submerged in boiling water, they just look dead. I like that. That's honesty. If I were a vegetable, I'd want to be an artichoke - tough and spiny on the outside, lovely, layered, dry, and green. Tender and soft on the inside. Of course, I love to eat artichokes, and if I were an artichoke, I wouldn't want anyone to love eating me. Nor would I want to be submerged in boiling water. But if I were, at least I'd go with integrity.

I'm having a quiet moment in the kitchen. And yes, there's an artichoke on the stove [three little spiders crawled out while I was washing it - oh, good god, don't let me eat my way to a nest!]. And a plate of just-baked pre-made Tollhouse cookies on the table, the only straggling survivors to make it to the oven after my cookie dough binge three weeks ago. They look a little funky. I guess the dough WAS kind of old. But they taste okay. They're sharing the table with a glass of vinho verde.  I cleaned out the fridge today. Maybe after cookies, wine, and artichoke, I'll have blackberries. They're on the edge of going over.

Ooh! I think it's done! More to come later.

[EDIT: I'm pretty positive that I did, in fact, eat my way to a nest. There's no way to tell for sure, but on my last bite - yes, seriously, my last bite - I chomped into something brittle that broke in half and crumbled in my mouth. Upon spitting it onto my plate, I saw it was a pocket filled with a whole lot of little black somethings. Morbidly curious and somewhat horrified, I looked closer. But no matter how close I put my face to the crumbly atrocity, I just couldn't tell whether the little black somethings had legs. Either way, whatever it was, it was boiled for 45 minutes. So you can call it spiders. I'll call it protein. ... and no, I didn't put it back in my mouth.]