best two dollars ever

A bunch of my knives were both dull (something I could correct myself, using a steel) and nicked (something I can’t correct myself, and which came about from years of cutting chicken bones or careless handling on countertops or the like).

I found out that Board and Basket has a service where they’ll sharpen and re-edge your knives for $2 a blade. I figured I’d give them a try, and dropped my knives off last weekend. They said they’d be ready Tuesday, but I didn’t really have a need to go to West Leb before today, so I didn’t bother. Picked them up, plunked down $12 for the six of them, and went home. John and Mike and I planned to have dinner together, and my contribution was to be gazpacho. Lots of chopping and slicing, so I figured the newly done knives would get some exercise.

Holy. Crap. It’s like they’re brand new again. I got the finest dice on some red peppers I’ve ever done, I minced an onion into really teeny bits, I got some paper thin slices off a cucumber… I’d gotten so used to the knives being middling-dull and ragged, and now they just fall through things. I know it’s a goofy analogy, but what sprang to mind was the first time I had sex with my then-girlfriend without a condom, over a decade ago now. Same (okay, similar) sense of wonder at the ease and fluidity (an unintentional double entendre, that), and a similar sense of lurking danger. (Having used condoms for years previously, there was a strong fear of being without the safety barrier, despite The Pill; tonight, there was a pretty reasonable fear that I might cut my fingers right off, down to the bone, and not notice it. They’re that sharp.)

Anyhow, memories of my first barrier-free sex aside (and no, there was no two dollars involved there), the price for getting the knives edged was well, well worth it. I didn’t catch anything back then, and I haven’t cut my fingers off yet. I’m very thankful on both counts.

(The gazpacho came out okay – I didn’t have plain tomato juice to use, so I used the plainest box of tomato soup I had to act as the base. Tasted fine, and all the veggies and garlic and onion and vinegar made it taste a lot more gazpacho-y, but there was still a faint hint of the usual “tomato soup” spice to it. John made a cherry tomato and corn salsa, which was good, and a mango/lime/cilantro? salsa which was really terrific. John and Mike had grilled porkchops and I had a grilled chicken sausage, and we all had asparagus from the Farmers’ Market this morning, grilled. Obscenely thick stalks, but very tasty nonetheless. After watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica in HD, we trooped over to West Leb to get softserve icecream. The buzzing bug lights, the highschool students working there and hanging out there, the cardboard-y softserve cones… all seemed very familiar, though I’d never been there before. Oh, and the icecream was really tasty. I think we’ll be back before the summer is out.)