Saturday cuttin'

I woke up at 7:30 AM and had to hustle a tad. I have another Williams-Sonoma cooking class this morning at 9:00 AM. I got to the mall about 20 minutes early and was astonished at how many people are in there, walking before the mall opens. Amazing! I talked with one guy and asked him how they compute mileage and he said if you walk the entire, exact perimeter of the mall, 1 and � times around equals 1 mile.

Anyway, this class is on knife skills. I actually learned a LOT of things I didn't know, too many to go into here (hey, take the damn class yourself, okay?) She spent about an hour talking: parts of a knife, types of knives, using the steel, which knife to use for what, European versus Asian (the difference is mainly in the angle of the blade: 22 degrees for European, so it can cut through the tough meat and bone Europeans eat, versus 16 degrees for Asian, mainly used on softer seafood and perfect for fine slicing, like stir fry), and the current fusion between knife makers. For example, the Wustoff chef knife Carla bought me years ago is a Santoku style, so, that means that even though it was made by a renowned German knife maker, it has the classic Asian 16 degree angle blade. Something good to know before you go and have it sharpened!

For the next 1/2 hour, she demonstrated cutting things up: like how to dice an onion and how to mince it or slice it, cutting up a green pepper, a Jalapeno pepper, a carrot, well, you get the idea.

But, I will share a tip I thought was fascinating: She used a tomato knife to cut a plum (or Italian) tomato in half and put the cut sides down on her cutting board. She then took her chef knife and cut it down the middle. She said that was a good test of how sharp your knife is: if it slices cleanly through the tomato, its fine, but if it "pushes" through the tomato, it needs to be sharpened. I tried it after my nap once I got home and the Shun chef knife? Like butter, baby! The Wustoff? Not so good! Time to get it sharpened. But, the good thing? She had business cards from a firm in Novi that sharpens knives!

I also learned that my Wustoff, being Santoku style, is not made for the "keep the point on the cutting board and rock up and down" "chef knife" style of cutting (although that's how I've used it since I got it). The Santoku is almost flat from the heel of the blade to the tip, where a chef knife curves upwards (to allow for the rocking motion). See Photos. You're supposed to quickly pick up and chop down with the whole knife when using a Santuku.

Another tip she had that made sense was the time to practice knife skills was NOT when you are making dinner. She said to practice cutting up celery, green peppers, etc., get a couple of heads of celery. To practice cutting up harder things (like squash) get a bag of carrots and, finally, to practice cutting herbs up fine, get a bunch or two of parsley. All of these are fairly inexpensive and you can freeze your results. But the practice is very useful.

I left there to go and get my hair cut. But, I stopped at the Value Center Market and loaded up with $13 worth of celery, carrots and fresh, flat leaf parsley. My order also included fresh green beans, fresh asparagus, a butternut squash and an acorn squash (hey, it's Fall and it's time).

I got my haircut and got myself back home. I unloaded my practice veggies and then took out a pack of stewing beef to thaw. It's Fall, its chilly, I'm gonna cut up a large amount of vegetables - I'm thinking vegetable soup!

But, first I have to do something very important: take a nap! So, I did and it was a one hour, wonderful thing (sad to say, but at my age that's about the only wonderful thing I can do for an hour). So, on to my soup! I crushed some garlic cloves into oil and browned the stewing beef in my big ole cast iron Dutch oven. I added three small onions (and, may I say, they were perfectly sliced). When those were translucent, I added the stock.

Now, some may say I made a mistake, (and maybe I did) but I looked at the limited amount of store-bought beef stock I had on hand and the two big containers of home-made chicken stock in the freezer and I went with the chicken stock. Hey, this soup's not really about "beef" or "chicken" but vegetables! Huge amounts of perfectly cut, chopped or sliced vegetables!

Then I went out back to take some photos of the wild garden, get some catnip for the Scruff-miester and grab a plum tomato. My neighbor was putting his pool to bed for the winter (regretting he hadn't done it earlier, when it was warm, like Jake did). We chatted a bit and he said, "Hey, I think your black walnut tree has a disease or something. I noticed the squirrels aren't eating the nuts this year, so I figured you wouldn't mind and took a whole bagful to a buddy who wanted some. But, when he opened them up there were worms in them."

Okay, well one of the first items on this week's ToDo list is to get all the walnuts out of the ditch and the grass. I'll call my county extension agent next week and ask about this (sounds more like an insect infestation than a disease, but what do I know?). But, for now, its time to get to work on the raking.

I got two wheel barrows of nuts raked out of the ditch and into the field next door when Jake and Carla pulled in. They brought back my air compressor and picked up the tools he needs to install the turnbuckle on his big gate (it's sagging a little, making it hard to open). We chatted for a while (of course I had to tell them all about the knife class) and Carla asked, "Oh, are you making chicken soup?" So much for my idea the stewing beef would overpower the chicken stock, I guess.

Then they left. And, just in the short time they were here, my back started to stiffen and hurt. (No, body! Don't fail me now! I gotta haul my nuts outta there!) I went back to work, raked and loaded two more wheel barrows full of nuts, and then I stopped and took a realistic look at this project. I obviously will hurt myself big time if I try and finish today. But, if I spend just a little more time, I could get all the nuts out of the grass and onto the driveway, where it would be easier to shovel them into the wheel barrow, anyway. So that's what I did and where I left it.

Back inside, I begin my knife skill training. First of all, I was holding it wrong and, like she said, holding it right will be awkward at first (like a golfer who, on the advice of a golf pro, tries to change his grip). So, I made myself hold it right and cut up celery, carrots, asparagus, potatoes, green beans and way too much flat leaf parsley. I also threw in some fresh thyme and a lot of fresh ground pepper.

It's missing something, but I ate two big bowls of it and still couldn't figure out what, lol! I changed clothes and quit for the night. Watched some TV, read some, you know, the usual.