Eulogy for Artichokes
Behold the bristly artichokes scattered through the field—
delicious little thistles when boiled, buttered, peeled.
With our taste buds wakened and when they’re salted slightly,
it takes a bit of discipline to try to eat politely.
Leaf by leaf, we peel them bare, scraping off their meat.
We like them better with each tiny bit of them we eat.
Then scraping off the “chokey” part, we gobble down the heart.
They told us all along that this would be our favorite part.
Who knew these fat green pinecones would turn out to be so tasty?
Now we wish consumption of them hadn’t been so hasty.
And even after plates are bare and not a morsel lingers,
we’d like to slurp the butter up and lick it from our fingers.
Prompts for the day are scattered, field, discipline, bristly and wake. Image by Margaret Jaszowski on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
The title caught my attention and I just had to read the eulogy. Loved it! Now I want some artichokes.
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Do you suppose there will be a run on artichokes today? In my dreams….;o)
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Very possible. 😂
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I love artichokes
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OMGoddess of word smithery. I could taste these babies and marvel at their meatiness. Yummy, yummy imagery.
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Makes me want one too, Dale.
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Good instructions on how to eat them, and they would be easy to grow down where you are, but it will take two years. Now for my part, I like to make a tangy sauce out of GREY-POUPON mustard, horse radish, a spot of Tabasco, in a good brand of avocado oil, because we must admit without this they can be almost bland. And I grow my own because they are so expensive here, but I must protect them in winter. Thanks for that, you made me hungry~!
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Love it!
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Your poem got me hungry for such, as you write about. I do not have any artichokes today but do have some nice plump avocados. This reminds me of my first trip down into South America when I had this huge Avocado tree in the front of my newly assigned villa. So I climbed that tree and started plucking avocados~!! There were several kids standing around watching me and they started yelling at me: “no senior, no es hechos”~! I told them “Sal de aqui estoy ocupado”~! So I took beautiful things in and was going to have a feast,, this is when I learned an important phrase in their Spanish: “They are not ripe”. What did I know about this, because they are always that hard when we bought them back in the US, But there is a time when they are “ready to be ready” and these were just not there yet so will rot before they ever get ready~! Bet those kids laughed at the stupidity of that gringo for years after that~!
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Oh I did not say so, but I did learn that day that even here, to lightly squeeze an avocado when I am buying them, and can tell you just how many days it is going to take before they are “ready”~!
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Yes, I’ve grown adept at the same.
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I think that one of those ten year old kids later showed me how to do that~! I was dating their little “American School Teacher”. I sometime visited their class room and they later came to know me. Sometime funny in that some of them thought in Spanish but spoke to her in English.. One day one of them said to her: “Miss Teach, Pablito has been molesting me~!” It took me a little while to figure that one out~!
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??? I guess I haven’t figured out what he meant. Was someone picking on him? Trying to figure out the humor.. clue me in.
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That must be the best eulogy ever written for artichokes!
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And perhaps the only one!
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Absolutely!
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