The artichoke: a mystery wrapped in an enigma

Last night, for the first time in my life, I cooked an artichoke. I have to say that I figured it would be very good because I love artichoke hearts on pizza and in salads and whatnot, but I had never had a whole artichoke and I must say I was a little nervous about cooking one myself. So last night, I got out my three favorite cookbooks and read in each of them how to cook an artichoke. They all said something different, so like any good cook would do, I combined all three instructions just to make sure I covered all my bases. So I washed and trimmed the leaves and cut down the stem and top leaves like it told me to do, and away I went. Let me just say the cooking was the easy part. Once I got it out of the pot, I set it in between Chad and me to share (this was not the only thing we were eating for dinner!). Chad at first looked at it and said he would not try it, but I finally coaxed him enough and he said it was good. I have never been so confused as to what part of a vegetable I should and shouldn't eat. I know you are supposed to scrape the meat off the bottom of the leaves with your teeth, but I think I did something wrong because there wasn't much meat to scrape. Then, after all the leaves were gone I took out the stringy stuff (the choke, apparently?) and what was left was the heart, I think. I couldn't quite figure out the whole thing, but I think I will be trying this again because I liked it. So, is there anybody out there who reads my blog and is good at preparing artichokes that can tell me how to eat it? Until I figure out a different system, I guess I'll just be buying the already prepared hearts in the jar.