Okey dokey artichokey

Anyone with a home garden knows the juicy deliciousness of a tomato fresh from the vine.  In the winter, fresh beets eaten right after they are pulled from the ground are not only sweeter, they give you a rush of vitamins and flavor that can make your head spin.  Fresh chard and spinach can give you the same rush.  And nothing beats raspberries picked and eaten as you wander through the berry patch.  Most anything grown in your own garden tastes better, but given farmer's markets and upgraded produce aisles, we can usually find fruits and vegetables that come within shouting distance of the home grown product.  Among the few exceptions are artichokes.  If you want to dip artichokes leaves in butter or aioli, go ahead and buy those big globes at the store, even though home grown and fresh picked artichokes may taste a bit sweeter.  It is next to impossible, however, to find good quality fresh baby artichokes.  Unless you grow them.  For the past month or so, at least once a week and sometimes two, I snap off three or four artichokes the size of a baby's first, trim them, slice them up, soak them in meyer lemon juiced water, dust them with flower, then pan fry them in a little olive oil and butter.  Sometimes I add a thin sliced meyer lemon.  I've tried this with store bought "baby" artichokes but it just doesn't work.  The store bought babies are a bit more like bitter adolescents than the sweet, rich, babies I can grab from my own artichoke shrubs.  In a few weeks, as the weather warms, my artichokes will find their thistle DNA and rush into flowering.  They'll take over their corner of the garden with gangly silver green foliage and purple flowers.  Still worth looking at, but no longer worth eating.  Just in time for the zucchini blossoms -- part of the limited late spring bounty that just can't be bought.