Lee, you will love the artichokes.

You can do anything to them that you can do to a potato. I highly reccommend steamed or especially grilled, with a splash of olive oil on them.

One note: as your plot ages, the roots get larger. In 2 or 3 years, they can be nearly as big as yams. Your first crops will be tiny little roots and seem like hardly worth the bother to clean, but they are. Tasty little devils.

Second note: Don't eat too many at one setting until your body adjusts. Beano won't help.

Third note: The 'chokes will take over if you don't ruthlessly dig them back to their plot.

Last note: Dry 'choke root, and grind into flour. Mix with parched and ground yellow corn. soak in water with some wood ashes (adds vitamin A, some lime will work, too) bake like bannock bread, flat or balls (balls boiled with jerked meat and some salt, yum)

The dried stems are good tinder, they can be retted to make fair cordage, and the leaves are good to drive off bugs and mites in containers.