Friday, June 29, 2012

Roasted Artichokes with Lemon & Garlic


We've been eating lots of artichokes from our garden lately.  I steamed the first and second harvests and we ate them with a lemon aioli.  The third set was the smallest and I decided to roast them with lemon and garlic.  I've never eaten artichokes this way but I was inspired by a Sunset Magazine recipe and they were delicious.  

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Growing Artichokes



Last year we planted a perennial artichoke plant and this year we harvested 9 tender delicious artichokes.  Annual plants will produce the first year but you'll need to plant them each year.  I think it's worth the wait.

For those of you not familiar with the artichoke, it's actually the flower bud of a perennial thistle in the sunflower family, native to the Mediterranean and Canary Islands.  They were first written about by greek philosophers around 300 B.C.  They were brought to Louisiana by the French immigrants in the early 1800's and to California by the Spanish immigrants.  Today, 100% of the commercial crop in the United States is produced in California.


Sunday, June 24, 2012

Happy Blog Birthday


June is the birth month for My Recession Kitchen.  I started this blog three years ago when I was unemployed and wanted to keep busy.  I also wanted a way to document my recipes for my daughter, T.C. who is admittedly, kitchen challenged.  She used to keep shoes in her little NYC oven.