Artichoke Adventure

I am on a quest to include a greater variety of fruits and vegetables to my diet. I recently started eating (and enjoying) fresh steamed green beans (something I never liked before). At Sonnewald the other week, there were artichokes for just a little over a dollar each so I figured I'd give them a try. I just bought one, that way I wouldn't be out too much money in case we hated it! Almost every recipe I found online said to put olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and garlic cloves on the artichoke (after cutting off the stem and the top) and bake for over an hour wrapped in foil. Well, I did that. It smelled great. It looked amazing. It tasted alright. But the texture- yuck! You could chew on one leaf forever! I felt like a cow chewing the cud. So I don't know if I didn't cook it long enough, if I picked an artichoke that was not quite ready, or what the deal was. Any ideas? Needless to say I'm going to take a break from artichokes for the moment. Hopefully I can figure out what went wrong and try it again!