Last night we decided to do a fun cooking project. This week we have been hosting Ellen, who is doing her last week of internship in the area to become a licensed dietician. We've had fun visiting with her, and since she enjoys cooking along with us, we spontaneously decided to try some new recipes. The major recipe was stuffed artichokes. None of us have prepared whole artichokes before, but thought it looked like fun! After Ellen got home from her day of interning last night she and I headed to the store for our ingredients and started our cooking project about 8 PM.

In case none of you have cooked with whole artichokes, here is a whole one before anything had been done to it (with Ellen in the background).

Above Ellen begins the artichoke prep, snipping the sharp tips off the leaves.

There were several stages to preparing the artichokes for stuffing (I made the stuffing, a feta cheese and sun-dried tomato recipe). Below is a picture of artichokes at each stage of preparation:

The one closest is the one ready to be stuffed. All photography credits go to my dear husband Ryan, who graciously took lots of pictures, made macaroni and cheese as a side dish, and did not complain about eating his supper at 10 PM last night!

I think artichokes are very pretty.

Above is an artichoke stuffed and ready for the oven! Yum.

Here they are just before going into the oven [above]...and here they are coming out [below]!

(Ellen holding her work of art)

Above is our supper last night: Stuffed artichokes, oven cauliflower gratin, and macaroni and cheese!

Eating artichokes is a messy job: you have to break off one leaf at a time and scrape the meat off with your teeth. The pile on the plate above is what is left after eating a whole artichoke.

Really, eating an artichoke is a lot of work. I was tired by the time I finished!

(Thanks, Ryan, for this awesome shot. lol.)

We finished off the meal with homemade vanilla ice cream. It was a fun night of cooking and fellowship. :)