Cooking as a hobby or passion can be expensive. Whenever I have a new idea to try or if family is in town, it usually exercises my wallet a little bit. It's well worth it when my victims, I mean guests are fully satisfied with my offerings. Mostly, I just get joy out of feeding and taking care of people.
I'm not big on fancy tableware or name-brand cutlery. Paper plates and plastic utensils are perfectly fine by my standards. It's what you put in your mouth that matters. As well, I don't go overboard on expensive knives. Anything that can be sharpened is good enough for my hand.
I tend to buy the cheapest cuts of meat as a challenge to see if I can get more out of it than expected. Ya, that's why. Oftentimes this requires a great deal of skill. Since that isn't likely, razor sharp knives can prove to be a powerful asset at mealtime.
Sharpening a knife is both an art and a skill that are passed down from generation to generation. Like some rare diseases, it unfortunately skipped a generation with me. It's not uncommon for my youngest son to be grimacing while watching me during my sharpening attempts and say something like, "Dad, I'm going to have to ask you to please step away from the knife" and take over the job. Once I have my population of rummage-sale knives sharpened, I'm good to go for at least one use on each of them before they require a touch-up.
Sharpening and using a knife are two different things. No, I'm not the worlds greatest sharpener, but I like to think I can whip a blade around like a culinary professional. There's something very manly about taking a big chunk of meat and carving it into portion perfection. On the other hand, do not believe them when they say, "A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one because you don't respect it as much" or some silly thing like that. It's an "old wives' tale" that gets repeated by people that don't work in the emergency rooms that I frequent.
While preparing and cooking meals I have been able to lower my emergency room visits to less than three times per year on average by using better knife control. It's been said that a person can tell how many meals I've served in the last week by the number of band-aids I have on my hands. I don't agree with this benchmark's accuracy, but I suppose it's not totally off-the-mark.
During my first ever cooking competition, I missed the judging and awards ceremony due to just such a circumstance. I was getting a rather nasty little wound sewn up by a doctor that hadn't had the opportunity and pleasure to work on me before, so it wasn't a total loss. I cut this finger while putting the finishing touches sharpening a knife rather than actually working on the meat. In this case, I apparently had it nice and sharp. I knew it was bad right away when I instantly became nauseated before I even looked at the wound. A trusted and well trained medical person was a couple booths down and agreed to give an opinion on whether it needed an emergency room treatment. When a seasoned professional like her says, "Oh good lord that's just terrible" I kind of figured it's time to pull out my tattered insurance card and find a driver that still had enough blood in their system to make the trip. With another competition coming up, I hope there's not a repeat of last year's malfunction. My goal is to try to blend in with the real cooks in the area that actually know what they are doing and have fun doing it. This time I intend to see that only the swine and the beef suffer the blood loss.
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