Before this week, I had only encountered artichokes in the form of dip for chips and such. The thorny little buds didn’t seem very user friendly, but I recently saw a food show that made me forget my intimidation. One segment on the show focused on a restaurant that made the best artichoke soup around. After hearing all of the customers rave about how wonderful this artichoke soup was, I knew that I had to have some for myself.

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I have turned into a strawberry fiend lately. I’ve always liked strawberries, but since they’ve started appearing en masse at the grocery in the past month or so, I feel like a “strawberry love” switch has been turned on in my brain. It doesn’t hurt that the first couple of pounds that I bought were some of the best strawberries I’ve had in my life. So, naturally, I had to make this strawberry galette pretty much as soon as I saw the picture in the latest issue of Martha Stewart Living.

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Shepherd’s pie, aka Cottage Pie, is a traditional English dish made with a ground meat and vegetable mixture covered with mashed potatoes. The traditional meat used is lamb, though it’s often substituted with ground beef in America.

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The best thing about an oatmeal cookie, besides its wonderfully chewy interior and crunchy around the edges exterior, is the fact that I can justify eating more than I normally would because it contains oatmeal. Oatmeal = Health Food = Eat As Much As You Want. You can’t argue with reasoning like this, especially if you refuse to think about the copious amounts of brown sugar and butter involved.

I was drawn to this particular oatmeal cookie, probably because it contains everything but the kitchen sink, and figured that it would be a winner because it’s from Cook’s Illustrated, whose recipes I’ve tried in the past with much success.

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