My Very Own Cardoon

Who need’s Otto’s Pizzeria? On this, my actual birthday, I headed to the local supermarket to buy myself a present. (“Cardone,” on the label, is a variant of “cardoon.”)
Admittedly, my example is not nearly as attractive as the one I first spotted at the Guggenheim. It does not sport any of the pinkish tint that helps make Juan Sánchez Cotán‘s vegetable so strangely alluring.
Still, it’s mine all mine, and since the abundantly stocked produce department of Fairway Supermarket, Fort Lee, labels its offerings with more information than the Guggenheim’s Spanish show provides for its paintings, I now know that the cardoon, at 99¢ a pound, is “very closely related to the artichoke” and “even tastes like it. It has its own special way of cleaning and preparing it. [You mean I have to cook it?] It’s very popular in Europe and it’s gaining popularity here because of its deliciousness.”
And just think how much more popular it’s going to become now, thanks to Cotán and that other old master, CultureGrrl!