Artichoke Bags
Description: The annual Artichoke Festival began in 1959 as a harvest festival to celebrate California’s official state vegetable, the iconic artichoke. Castroville, California, which bills itself as the "Artichoke Center of the World," sees artichoke fans and foodies from around the world make their way to Monterey County each year, and the festival has grown so large that it has been moved out of the town, into a nearby convention center.
Description: The globe artichoke, also known by the names French artichoke and green artichoke in the U.S is a variety of a species of thistle cultivated as a food. The edible portion of the plant consists of the flower buds before the flowers come into bloom. The budding artichoke flower-head is a cluster of many budding small flowers (an inflorescence), together with many bracts, on an edible base. Once the buds bloom, the structure changes to a coarse, barely edible form. Another variety of the same species is the cardoon, a perennial plant native to the Mediterranean region. Both wild forms and cultivated varieties (cultivars) exist.
