In article ,
Usenet2007 @ THE-DOMAIN-IN.SIG wrote:
I regularly harvest items from my veggie garden (e.g. chopping
the base of a lettuce head.)

Then, I chop the vegetables themselves - a wide range of items.
Hard like broccoli, to soft like tomatoes.

I also chop a few other things, like sausages and so forth.

And, for some reason, I feel a little annoyed with just using the
basic cheap medium kitchen knife that I have. Although I've had
it long enough to probably dull it, somewhat.

With a small budget, and small number of knives, what would you
buy, to make things go smoothly? (I am only gardening and
cooking for one person.)

Thanks...



Three things: 1. Get a good chef's knife. I reccomend the Forschner
Victorinox 8" chef's knife. It's got a razor-sharp, wide blade and a soft,
raised handle so you won't rap your knuckles when you're chopping. And it
costs around $25. I use mine consantly for slicing and chopping, have had it
about 9 months and haven't sharpened it yet;

2. Get a good boning knife, maybe a 6" from Chicago Cutlery. If you do
anything with chicken, beef or pork, you'll use it for trimming and shaping
all the time. Along with this, get some paring knives from Dexter-Russell.
They're very well made and inexpensive. An alternative, if you can find a
source for them are Mundial knives from Brazil: very nice and very cheap;

3. Get a Chef's Choice electric sharpener. It's not cheap: they tend to run
around $80 list, but you can often find them for $15-20 less. The sharpener
uses magnets to hold the knife at the correct angle and diamond-impregnated
bars to do the sharpening. For home use, nothing else comes close to giving
you a sharp, long lasting edge on your knives combined with ease of use.

W.