[Sca-cooks] Feast quantities

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> You probably ought to invest in your own real, live, personal knife
> set, even if it's only like three knives, with none of them being
> sharpened by a laser into micro-serrations.

Probably. But if I spent the money on the knives, darn straight I wouldn't
want pages using them. :)

> I could be mistaken, but it seems that, if Eisental keeps a supply of
> those inexpensive black-molded-plastic-handled knives with the
> allegedly never-needs-sharpening edges, that could be a part of the
> problem. And, with use, those knives still do get dull, and when
> they're that thin and flexible, they can be dangerous.

Nah. We bought those knives because we got sick of using the 4 really
crummy ones that the site has, or bringing our own. The shire isn't really
good about taking care of our stuff (someday I'm going to engrave "Do not
seal wet wooden objects in plastic containers" on all their foreheads...),
so it's cheaper to keep buying new serrated ones (that work well on
certain types of food) than buy good ones and see them lost or destroyed
in a year. (I don't use serrated knives to cut cheese-- those are for
veggies and bread.)

I have 2 decent knives that I bring with me to events and am shopping for
some good paring knives. But they aren't _good_ knives. I have a pretty- good
Pampered Chef bread knife and a pretty-good Pampered Chef medium sized
knife-- but that Pampered chef knife wasn't much more help with the cheese
than my merely decent knife.

The thin knives that I tried were actually inherited from someone's
grandmother's kitchen, and they may not have started out that thin.

> Good knives are expensive, but, as with things like cars or
> computers, when you're putting your well-being on the line, it can be
> worth it to spend the extra money to do it wisely.

Stefan, is there an article in the florilegium on how to pick out cooking
knives? One of the things that holds me back from buying really good
knives is that I don't know which brands are the really good ones and
which are just expensive ripoffs.


-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
	"Index your brain."