How to cook an artichoke!

Yesterday was a productive day!

Having photographed the artichoke I offered it to Alba but she said I should cook it myself. I have not cooked an artichoke before, bit scary..
Alba gave me a wonderful cookery lesson to cook it the Italian way.

First you have to get rid of a lot of the outside leaves especially if they look a bit old (mine had been sitting around the studio for 2 days) then you have to chop off the top bit and then you pare the stalk down a bit and then finally you cut the whole thing in half. Then you put some water in a pan (not too much) plus lots of olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon. Then salt and garlic and we put a little bit of mint in as well. I didn't have pepper but it also needs some black pepper to finish off. Then you boil it for about 15 mins



Then you simmer it until you can put a fork very comfortably through it - it took about 20 mins



Then you eat it - it was delicious!



After that I was well set up to have another go at understanding digital photography...I am an analogue girl...
Anyway, having stressed about the resolution and size of my images for two whole days, I took myself off to the local print shop and asked them to print my file as big as they could go - just to test the resolution. I was quite happy with the result..



Later on I was introduced to an Italian soft drink by Andrew one of the City of Rome students here - he described it as tasting like a mixture of Gin & Tonic (I'm quite partial to a G & T) and Christmas Pudding (which I am not) sounded so intriguing I had to try - it is exactly as he described and was really refreshing! It's called Cinotto I think? And apparently is quite common in Australia...