Bryan Tipton

I consider myself to be an intelligent guy.  Okay, I'm borderline über-genius.  But for every part smart, I'm also a part dumb.  I like artichokes.  I've had them in two different forms: boiled whole, where you pull off a leaf and dip it into a mayonnaise concoction, or the hearts all chopped up and part of another entree.  But I've never followed one form into the other -- whole to heart.  Last night I thought I'd boil an artichoke for an ambiguously healthy snack (while an artichoke is a vegetable, its healthy benefit is probably negated by dipping its leaves into mayonnaise).  After peeling off the last leaf, I was left with the bare stem and base.  My thought was that the heart was simply the part underneath, but it seems like I need an artichoke anatomy book because after disassembling the damn thing I was left with nothing that appeared edible.  Where did the heart go?  There were bits of  'choke dispersed all over my plate, looking like it exploded, but I saw nothing that resembled a core.  I'll require some diagrams with a cross-section view.  I may need to run one through a cat-scan machine.