Cardoons and artichokes

Anyone know anything about cardoons? I know they're a close relative of the artichoke, and that you eat the stem instead of the flower. The books say you need to blanch the stems or else they will be too tough and stringy. By "blanch" it sounds like they mean wrap it in cardboard while it's still growing. I don't really get that, so I'm just going to grow them for looks this year. They also provide lots of good mulch. Multi-purpose plants, remember?

The literature says that cardoons can be very invasive, but we haven't found anything to be particularly invasive up here, so we'll just let our two plants go to seed and see what happens. Don't you think it's an awesome-looking plant?:

I also planted several artichokes which are much smaller but also seem to be doing okay. Not sure if they're going to deliver anything edible this year, but they should be perennial if we carefully mulch in the fall, so maybe next year. Artichokes typically will provide a harvest for only three to four years, so if we have any success, I'll plant a few new ones every spring.

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