Are You Smarter Than A Cheese Grater?

I may have or may not have mentioned before that most of my favorite kitchen utensils are knives. Not just any knives mind you, but specifically Henckel's knives.

I actually prefer to cut, chop and dice everything by hand. My favorite knife is my 10" Henckel's Twin Select chef's knife. I've had this knife for a little over two years and it's probably the best kept tool in my arsenal.

I find that the trick to keeping a knife at it's peak performance is care and sharpening, lots of sharpening. My usual modus operandi is to sharpen it with a hand sharpener when I put it away, and hone it on the sharpening steel when I take it out. Like the samurai I only take out my knife when I plan to use it, so there isn't any unnecessary sharpening going on.

It is a proven fact that more people are injured using a dull knife than a sharp one because you have to work harder with a dull knife. The same can not be said for the cheese grater, my nemesis in the kitchen. The cheese grater doesn't care if you sharpen it (you can't sharpen it by the by). It doesn't care if you treat it with care. I think the win-loss record here is tilted in favor of the grater.

I can cut through the bones in a rack of ribs with my Henckel's chef knife without so much as a nick to myself, but heaven forbid I try to put some Parmesan cheese on my spinach ravioli. I can count on one hand (and I still have all of my fingers) how many times I've cut the tip of my finger, but I would have to take out a calculator to figure out how many times I've shaved my knuckles.

My name is Daddy Hot Buns, I may be able to chop and dice like a Samurai but I am not smarter than a cheese grater.