For me spring means artichokes and asparagus. So let's tackle the thornier one. It must have taken a hungry or ingenious person to first eat an artichoke. Historians generally agree that artichokes, one of the oldest cultivated vegetables (as early as the fifth century BC), started somewhere around the Mediterranean, most likely Sicily or Northern Africa. As member of the Asteraceae family, with cousins of sunflower, dandelion, ragweed, and wormwood, an artichoke is an improved version of the Cardoon which people also ate but preferred their stems to their smaller and pricklier buds. The Greeks have a myth for the creation of the plant suggesting their very creation is wrapped up in concupiscence. According to Aegean legend, the first artichoke was a lovely young girl, Cynara, who lived on the island of Zinari. Zeus was visiting his brother Poseidon when, as he emerged from the sea, spied a beautiful young mortal woman, ...