An artichoke is a vegetable that looks more like a strange green pinecone than something you'd eat. It's actually an edible flower bud from a thistle plant, covered in thick, pointed leaves called bracts that overlap like armor plating.

To eat an artichoke, you pull off the leaves one by one and scrape the soft, buttery flesh from the base of each leaf with your teeth. The real prize is the heart at the center, a tender, nutty-flavored disk that sits beneath a fuzzy layer called the choke (which you remove because it's inedible). The heart is so delicious that you can buy jars of just artichoke hearts at the grocery store.

Preparing artichokes takes patience: you have to trim the sharp tips, steam or boil them for 30 to 40 minutes, and work your way through all those leaves. But that's part of the experience. Eating an artichoke is like a slow treasure hunt where each leaf brings you closer to the prized heart.

The word can also describe the Jerusalem artichoke, which isn't related to regular artichokes at all. It's actually a knobby root vegetable that tastes a bit like a potato.