Sunday Funday

Election night was too stressful so instead I'm going to talk about my Sunday. I had one hell of an exciting Sunday. I bought two big enameled cast iron pots for the house and sharpened all the cooking knives.

Yup. Life is alright I suppose.

The post were getting to be a must. We've been looking for awhile but the set we want is about 500 bucks so we have to save up. In the meantime, food has been sticking to...Tower Controller's(?) non stick pots bad. They've been getting rough. Plus we wanted something that we can toss in the dishwasher cause doing dishes sucks. So, when I saw the large and medium size pots at Costco I figured I'd grab them. They're nice and will last us till when we get the set we have our eyes on and past to the point where the universe is collapsing into a single black hole and they hit it at near light speed and just bounce off.

As the main cook in the house, I'm happy to have them. I need to get my wrist strength up to dump anything out of them though.

The knives were also overdue. I don't sharpen them as much as I probably should. I try to do one every once in awhile and then when it starts to get bad I start using the v shaped hand sharpener until it just doesn't do anything anymore. All our paring knives were getting bad and the one big knife I sharpened last weekend had an accident. I was using the honing rod on it and I gave it a little too many beans and just cut into the rod. Note to self: The rod is cheap, soft metal. Don't bother using it.

So, I went to town on all of them. The aforementioned wrist wasn't happy about that but oh well. The pilot has mentioned in the past how he wants a really nice knife and I've always though, yeah, but whatever. These are good enough. And, yeah, they are. But, a better knife is worth it. We have a couple dollar store paring knifes that I can sharpen with Jello if I need to since they are so soft but they are dollar store knives so they don't count.

The two main sets we have are a Kuriadori (I think I spelt that right) that Mom and Dad got me for Happy Holiday one year and a second set I had bought for Tower Controller our first Happy Holiday. I always thought the Kuriadori (Canadian Tire stuff) were pretty good but when I sharpen the knives it's evident how much softer the steal is than the other set. The blade of the one I like to use is also chipped to hell but I won't blame them for that. The chips are big enough that I would have to spend way too much time to fix them.

Seeing how well the good set keeps and edge vs mine makes me understand getting a real good knife more. I suppose I could just get a ceramic blade to keep it sharp longer but once the blade goes on those it's way harder to sharpen them. And I'm no pro knife sharpening YouTuber.

I also don't want to use the knife I got for Tower Controller, though I really should. I just don't like the idea of getting someone a present that is for the entire family or something like that. I know that me cooking all the meals would make up for that and Tower Controller wouldn't care but I do, dammit!

I think getting some nicer sharpening blocks is a first step though. The one I have is a hand me down from the father-in-law and has some hard spots in it that create bumps that dull the blade. And if I can get one that sets the angle for me then that would make my knives so much sharper. I can sharpen a knife with just a block but I'm not one of those guys that can get a block of butter sharp enough to cut through Titanium.

There are some cool ones out there, like the rolling barrel one, but maybe I should do some research and see what I can find.

Either that or get myself some diamond plates and go expensive.

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OK. I wrote the above on Monday. It is now Thursday and BIG things have happened. After I blogged I was going through Amazon to grab a couple gifts for the Tower Controllers upcoming 40TH BIRTHDAY. I decided to look around at some sharpening blocks. The ones I would have liked were all $60-300 so I figured I'd look at some of the cheaper ones.

So, I ended up order a 2 block (4 grits) set with a bamboo base, leather strop/polishing compound and an angle guide for about 35 bucks.

I've never used a strop and most of it I'm thinking is probably overkill for me. I like a sharp knife but I don't need it to be like a razor.

Then it arrived yesterday.

Cutting some chicken after sharpening my knife on all of that was amazing. and I'm pretty sure I could get it even sharper if I went longer. It was all worth it already. It also came with a stone flattener so I can use that one on my existing blocks to get rid of the bumps and crap on them that was causing trouble.

My existing block isn't labelled so I had no idea what grit it was but now I'm thinking 800 and 400, which is the starting point for a knife. I was getting stuff sharp but going from that to my honing stone was pointless (pun intended).

With all of it, the guide I think is the best part. I've always struggled to maintain the proper angle on when sharpening and this one just pinches the spine of the blade and keeps it raised the perfect amount. Now I'll be cutting everything!