food

cooking in the manner my neighborhood deserves

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

today is the two weekiversary of my move to london, and apparently two weeks is about my limit for eating easy crap while surrounded by markets laden with foods (and particularly spices) that are not usually easy for me to find. i’m actually surprised i lasted this long, though really i’m just surprised that two weeks have gone this quickly. what the hell have i been doing?!

well, part of the answer is that i’ve been looking for a job.
and i found one!
but i’m not sure i want it.
i’m hoping i get offered a different one tomorrow.
i’m somewhat stressed.

but that’s not what this post is about.

this post is about food.

Steamy Chana Masala and rice

see what i mean?

my new neighborhood is home to at least four curry restaurants and one market per block, and while word on the street is that the restaurants aren’t as good as in days of yore, i’m still picking out the ones i want to try once i have money coming in, and seeing as i view grocery shopping as a form of entertainment, it’s exciting to have places that sell things like bags of coriander that are bigger than my head, vegetables that look like zucchini except they have rows of tiny fingers that make them resemble sea creatures, bags of something that looks a bit like dense saffron but is actually apparently a shredded nut, and buckets of yogurt that are of a size in which small babies could bathe.

because who needs tv when you have baby-sized buckets of yogurt?!

so far, i have just been wandering and window shopping, because stocking up on spices and researching new recipes seemed like an activity that should be viewed as a reward, rather than as a distraction. but today i changed my mind.

not only is indian food, cooked in quantity, one of the cheaper things that i could be eating right now, but i’m realizing that i’m not going to be paid for a while even once my job starts, so i’m just going to have to make other plans for groceries, and since improving my indian cooking experience seems to be a major potential benefit of my living arrangement, there’s no reason not to get started.

My stove

apart from that, i need things to do to keep myself occupied and happy. so far the whole not going home for christmas thing isn’t all that bad – i know i’m going home before long, i know that i would regret leaving before i get the chance to do more of the things i want to do, and my parents are spending christmas somewhere i’ve never seen before, so it’s not like i have to be tortured by mental pictures of everyone doing things the way that they’ve done them my whole life without me. everyone is doing something new, and everyone is doing something temporary. it’s kind of like there will just be two years between christmases this time, and the people around me are acting funny and wearing santa hats for some bizarre reason that i don’t really understand…

all the same, i don’t think it would be very wise to spend this week wherein christmas will actually become a reality eating bland pasta and twiddling my thumbs. i’ve already decided that i’m buying myself a computer game so that i can have some of the new toy buzz on christmas morning. and the job thing will be figured out one way or another, which will feel good.

and hey, if i’m going to get distracted and excited about playing in the kitchen with some new recipes, then it seems like a good time to start!

so today i did some research, plotted out a rough ingredient acquisition plan that could unfold in more than one stage to keep me from spending too much at once, and went shopping. i bought ghee, cumin, dried red peppers, curry leaves, kalunji, yogurt, a packet of chana masala spice mix and some little coconut cookies. i spent just over £10.

Nigella seeds in a handy bottle!

kalunji is one of the ways of spelling the bengali word for nigella seeds, which i have already played with a little bit because erik got some last year and we used them in the sunday dinner that eventually led to attempts at making naan inside upturned soup pots. it’s fun to find them again here, and to be reminded that they are a key ingredient in bengali cuisine, which is the cuisine of eastern india and bangladesh. the population here in london is heavily bengali, so it’s a good chance to learn about some of what makes the cuisine unique. so far i have learned that one of the major things is the use of fish, since the region is on the ocean. also the use of mustard oil as a principal cooking oil, and panch phanon as a common spice blend (with the spices being cumin, anise, fenugreek, nigella, and mustard (all in seed form)).

oh! and they make a lot of desserts, which is intriguing, because my experience so far has not led me to have any deep love of indian sweet culture, but i’m always interested in changing my mind when it comes to dessert. :)

anyway, today was not really a bengali cooking day, despite these lessons. today was a “get a few key ingredients and use things you already have” day, which means that my plan was to use the chana masala mix with some chickpeas that i already had in the cupboard and some rice that i had made a couple of days ago, and then use the yogurt and spices to make a simple khadi, which is a yogurt saucy soup kind of thing, which the internet says traditionally goes with khichdi (lentils, veggies, and rice). i figured it would be fine with the chickpeas and rice, and then i could make the khichdi another day and already know how to make the khadi, which seemed like a bonus, and a good way to not freak out by trying to do 17 new things at once. seeing as the rice that i was using was fried rice, the authenticity rating on the meal wasn’t going to be that high anyway, so it seemed worth just getting the experience with the spices and using up what i had.

Quick bargain dinner

all in all, it worked pretty well.

i made way more chana masala than i originally intended, because i didn’t read the box. turns out it was a much better bargain than i thought because you weren’t supposed to use the whole box at once. i didn’t read this until after i had dumped it into the chickpeas, however, and the only way i could conceive of saving it was to go by more chickpeas and make more. so now i have a lot.

it’s ok, though, because it’s good. :)

Closeup Chana Masala

i used too much ghee, so the first batch is too oily, but the spice mix and the ghee do their trick, giving the dish that distinct fullness of flavor that is simply impossible to imitate with the wrong ingredients.

The Kadhi did not emulsify very well

the khadi was less successful. again i used too much ghee (the recipe didn’t give an exact amount and i didn’t think about it. i was like “butter tastes good! what will happen?”) and i didn’t pay enough attention to it, so it didn’t emulsify and the result did not look very appealing. it tasted ok, but the double dose of too much ghee (in both the main dish and the khadi) was a bit much. i opted for straight yogurt in the end and decided i’d try again tomorrow. now i have looked at a couple more recipes and i think i have a better idea what i’m aiming for, so it should be fun to try again.

in the not too distant future, i also hope to make roasted eggplant, bengali red dal, and aloor dum (potato curry). if i keep at it, then by the time i leave i should have a few new tricks up my sleeve!

at the very least, you can bet i’ll be packing some spices.
:)

i found a few interesting food blogs in my searches, so here they are if you want to check them out:

spending money to get it_a good dinner_cashpoints and chance (a medley)

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

so today went by faster than i wanted it to, and by 3 or so i hadn’t managed to do any more jobseeking or exploring.

the trouble is that i am really trying to take the whole “spend no money unless absolutely necessary” thing seriously, so i am trying not to transport myself around the city on any whims because the tube is quite expensive, and even if i walk (or particularly if i walk, since the exercise makes me hungry) it can be dangerous to find myself stuck far away and starving, because i am then tempted to indulge in overly priced treats.

this leads to me feeling somewhat incapacitated, and it takes a while to leave the house, even though i understand that i need to leave in order to defeat the problem, because out is where the jobs lie.

the food problem has really been highest on the list, because i know that i need to buy food, but i have been uncertain how to stretch my pounds most wisely. there are loads of interesting markets in my new neighborhood, but culinary adventure is not my priority at the moment (after i get a job it will jump up, worry not), and i tired myself with the lentils and rice route in edinburgh.

so last night, feeling hungry even After indulging in a (not Too overly priced) sandwich in covent garden in the midst of my wanderings, and not feeling inclined to go in search of the apparently nearby but as of yet unglimpsed tesco, i wandered into one of the larger bangladeshi markets and, after staring at things for a good 20 minutes, bought two boil-in-the-bag box dinners and a packet of pre-made naan. it cost £4 total, and i had one of the dinners and one of the pieces of naan when i got home, as well as one of the remaining beers from tania’s and my trip to the black isle brewery, which is now one of my favorite brewers in the world.

no kidding.

anyway, i know my hunger doubtless clouded my judgement, but the food was fabulous. i have enjoyed boil-in-the-bag indian box dinners before, of the tastybite variety, but these are a brand called gits, and based on my sample of one, they are better.

and that’s saying quite a bit.

it’s not really a fair sample because the variety that i had – paneer tikka masala – is not a variety that i have ever had in tastybite form, if they even make it. i was actually quite excited to find it because paneer is something i like, and tikka masala is something i like, but it is not my experience that they commonly go together.

anyway, tonight or tomorrow i’m having the palak paneer, so then i can report more fully on how gits stacks up.
or boils up.
whatever.

first, though, the rest of my story.

well fed as i was last night, today i was still confronted by the awareness that i needed to go grocery shopping, and also by the realization that i could not put off buying a new cell phone charger any longer, because i had given out my number to a few potential employers yesterday, and i was just going to have to bite the bullet and admit that i have lost the charger even though i distinctly remember packing it and even though they cost as much as the phone did in the first place, which annoys me. it does not help that i am certain that there are 5 of them within any given 100 meters that are gathering dust under someone’s bed or creating a fire danger in the back of their closet. but whatever. i’m over it.

finally i got myself out the door and headed in the direction in which i believed tesco would be found. i figured i would also encounter somewhere to buy a phone charger, but i wasn’t actually thinking about it as much because i was getting hungry, so the need to buy groceries was no longer just a theoretical exercise.

as i remembered dominic’s instructions, the tesco was to be found by heading up to bethnal green road, then turning right, then walking until you got there. this seemed easy enough, but i walked a pretty good ways and didn’t see it, so i wondered if he might have meant left instead, and i walked back. after circling around a bit, and getting ever hungrier, i was a little frustrated, so i decided to just go in one of the smaller stores again, but one of the more anglicized ones this time, since what i had decided i wanted was biscuits and cheese and pasta and milk.

i found a friendly looking store with a “costcutter” sign, which made me feel like i could kid myself into thinking i wasn’t getting ripped off that much by going into a little store. i made my selections, felt rather good about the number of meals for which i was now prepared, and checked out. just over £10. good work. i went to hand the guy my card and he said “oh, sorry! we are a new store. we do not yet have credit card capabilities.”

now, many people have chided me for not carrying enough cash, and i must say that, for a short time today immediately after this point in the story, i wondered if i might have arrived at the point in my life where my habits end up changing long term. my new neighborhood seems somewhat short on cash machines, and the majority of the ones it Does have are the stupid fee-charging ones inside kwiki-marts. so perhaps i will learn my lesson. it remains to be seen. in the end, this adventure did not offer a clear interpretation to that end.

(that’s my way of saying you should keep reading ;)

so i left my groceries with the clerk and promised to be right back. he said there was a cashpoint (that’s british for ATM) two doors down, and there was, but it was broken. the next one was less broken, in that it still interacted with me, but it refused to give me any money, and by that time i was to here with the little kwiki-mart machines so i decided that i would look a bit harder for a bank, even though it was raining, and getting dark, and i was now officially hungry.

as a sidenote, a cool thing about britain is that almost all official bank ATMs do not charge a fee.

as another sidenote, there are almost no banks in my neighborhood, which led me to ruminate a bit on the consequences of poorer people living outside the main channels of commerce, which makes it more likely that they will be the ones to pay stupid fees to kwiki-mart ATMs as a kind of penalty. the machines are often right next to the lottery tickets, so it’s like a one-stop poor tax bonanza!

but i digress.

i found a free cashpoint at a post office, but it was out of money, which did not help my feeling that i was the victim of a rude conspiracy. i glimpsed what i thought might be a bank sign (i don’t really have all the logos installed in my brain yet), but it turned out to be a sign for a cell phone/car audio shop. i decided to interpret this, in the way that i like to interpret things, as a sign that maybe this whole diversion was just an excuse to get me to remember to buy my cell phone charger, because if i had succeeded in getting my groceries i would have just gone home and forgotten about it and been annoyed later.

so i walked into the shop, asked for the charger, and they had it! it was a genericky looking one, but i wasn’t feeling picky, so i pulled out my purse. as if on cue, the guy says: “cash only!” and i only sighed for a second, because i already knew i had to find cash, right? so the adventure was just going to continue.

on the way out, i asked how much it was, and he said £5.

this news lightened my mood considerably.

£5! that’s like 1/4 what the official ones are! that’s not even annoying! that’s like FMV for “you left it somewhere, stupid, so you have to pay Something!”

suddenly the hassle of having to walk out of my way in the rain and scrutinize every building i passed seemed negligible, and indeed, it all felt a part of some great plan.

for less than what i had previously prepared myself to spend on the charger, i was going to get the charger And enough groceries for the next few days. it was like getting the groceries for free, as a gift from the universe so that i would remember that, if i just don’t pretend to know where things are headed, unexpected surprises will always present themselves in the most wonderfully poetic of places.

and sure enough, no sooner had i walked from the phone place to continue the search for the cashpoint than, half a block down the road, i found a barclay’s machine, free, and willing to dispense me £20.

so i am now the happy owner of a busily charging nokia mobile phone, and the cheese and salami and crackers and twix finger that i had for tea were heavenly, thank you.

now, if i can only find a way to write a blog entry that isn’t really three blog entries in disguise, and that discusses something other than food, i’ll be off and running.

langoustines live in the sea, kynthia lives across it

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

the other day i was watching as jackie boiled two huge pots of water to cook the langoustines.

langoustines are like tiny lobsters. or gigantic prawns. it depends on who you ask. i just asked my friend wikipedia, and it says tiny lobsters are the winner. norway lobsters, actually. and, as the name may suggest (because i don’t think that “norway” is just being used as a euphemism for “tiny”), we don’t have them in north american waters, which explains why i have never encountered them before.

they remind me of salt-water crawdads, but wikipedia tells me that crawdads are further away from lobsters on the crustacean family tree, so i guess it’s the whole living in salt water thing that binds them.

wikipedia + blogging = crazy informed kynthia. sweet.

anyway, these langoustines come out of the loch next door, and when they arrive in the kitchen, they are alive.

kind of…

what i mean is, they are legally required to be alive when sold, but in this case that translates to: heaped on top of one another in big plastic crates without any water from which to derive oxygen. which basically means they are slowly dying, and i don’t really find “alive” to be a fair description of their situation.

but anyway, the other day i was watching as jackie boiled two huge pots of water to cook the langoustines, which is an activity that i have seen before and it makes me kind of sad. it’s worse when francis does it because he puts the pots on the back burners so they are out of the way, but the front burners are still on because the burners are always on while people are cooking so that they don’t have to light and relight them a bajillion times. this is unfortunate because sometimes the arrangement results in some of the barely alive langoustines falling into the fire, which is downright grotesque.

but that’s another story.

this time i just stood there watching jackie bustle around the kitchen, finding other things to do so as to allow the proverbial unwatched pots to boil, and i said: “jackie, why do the langoustines have to be kept alive for so long without water? why don’t they just boil them right away or something?” and she laughed and said they had to be kept alive, it was the way they do things, we shouldn’t ask questions like that.

this caught me a little off guard, because i was expecting simply: “it’s the only way to ensure that they are fresh.”

you see, people have dreams about these langoustines between visits, and i am not even joking. they are an integral part of some people’s relationship with the hotel, and cooking them seriously involves nothing more than boiling them and serving them with butter and garlic, so freshness is the key factor in their fame. the other day jackie and jane were arguing about how many to order (traffic is rather unpredictable at the moment because the season is winding to a close), and jane suggested we could freeze them if there were extras, so we should err on the side of too many. jackie got angry at this and simply would not hear of it, because apparently they had done that once before and they had not tasted at all the same and customers had complained.

so “freshness” is the motivation that i had come to understand, and i had been considering a position that respected that but was also not fully convinced by the whole “let them endure prolonged asphyxiation before being thrown into boiling water” bit, and that’s what i was intending to ask jackie for her opinion on. i mean, couldn’t we gas them or something so they go sleepy sleep between when they are caught and when they are cooked? or transport them in water even though it would be heavier?

these were the questions on the tip of my tongue, so i wasn’t prepared for the whole force of habit angle, but jackie was serious.

“why question the way they do it?” she said with a shrug.

i paused here for a second to check for cameras in case i had been unknowingly cast in an after school special.

“asking questions is good!” i replied.

“but this is so obvious…” she said. “why waste time asking questions about things that are so obvious?”

“the things that seem the most obvious are the things that it’s most important to question,” i said, playing my part, but also actually believing it, and marveling somewhat naively at the fact that this conversation was unspooling itself in the real world.

but jackie just laughed again, harder, and looked at me as she left the kitchen to take a break for her lunch.

“oh, kynthia,” she said with a sigh, “you really are american.”

i stood there for a minute in the kitchen by myself, deciding what to make of that.

in a move that would probably only prove the point more securely in jackie’s mind, i decided to take it as a compliment.

but a thought-provoking one.

this job definitely has its perks

Friday, September 1st, 2006

like having the chef plan our meals for us and do the shopping.

the live-in staff take turns cooking, so i will be up every 3-5 days (depending on how many more staff end up staying in the hotel), which is kind of fun. i like cooking, and planning a menu is some of the fun and a lot of the skill, but it’s nice not really having to think about it for a while, and it’s doubly nice having a professional do it for me.  it’s kind of like living in the dorms again and having a meal plan, except you’re allowed in the kitchen, you get to cook every once in a while, and the food is better.

score.

the menu at the hotel is mostly seafood, and rather fancy, but we eat simpler things, making use of the leftovers in clever ways. yesterday we had some really good fried shrimp, chips, and a salad, and today we had a chicken stew with naan. there is also breakfast every day – cereal, leftover pastries, and/or eggs and bacon cooked to order, and we can make our own sandwiches and fruit for lunch.

i’m going to eat better for these few months than i have in a while, and with not much effort and not much expense – they take £30 out of my pay each week for room and board. two nights at the hostel in edinburgh cost the same, and a week in the room that i passed up in matthew’s house would have been twice that. and neither of those included any food.

so yeah, that’s a perk.

as is being able to write a blog post ten minutes before i have to start working, because all i need to do is change clothes and walk downstairs.

i think i’ll be ok with this for a while. :)

i should treat all of my interests the way i treat cooking

Friday, May 12th, 2006

last night i made risotto for dinner, and it turned out really well.
i didn’t have a recipe, but the idea struck me when i was wandering through bloomingfoods last weekend seeking inspiration, with “you need to eat vegetables this week, kynthia!” playing on repeat in my mind.

over christmas, when i was playing with my new cookbook, i had made eggplant one night to prove to my mom how easy it could be to make good, simple eggplant, and on that same night we also had some zucchini to use up so i picked out a recipe for zucchini sauteed with kalamata olives and oregano, and it totally blew me away. i would never have thought to put olives in zucchini, but now i think that they are made for one another, and learning secret pairings like that is one of the things that i really love about cooking, because carrying around little tidbits of knowledge that can turn really basic foods into incredible taste experiences with just a flick of the wrist makes me feel like a ninja, with the power to slay an army in the crook of my little finger…

(more…)

what a crock of… soup

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

i’ve spent a fair bit of the day prototyping, some on paper and some not, and fussing a bit with an upset stomach that descended upon me last night.

these activities combined to mean that, until about an hour ago, i had consumed a cup of coffee, a piece of toast, some crackers, some ginger ale, and a small head of raw broccoli that i forced in front of myself during a moment when the internal babysitter took over.
after a while, i got tired of sitting, and got up to walk around for a bit. in so doing, i experienced one of those fearful moments where i realized that i was going to be very very hungry very very soon, and i’d better do something about it while i still had the energy to push buttons or boil water.

(more…)

there are few things i like better than sourdough toast

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

and this week sahara mart’s bakery, which continues to delight me as it expands bit by bit, had a good crusty baguette-style sourdough, which i sliced up and froze to use as toast for weeks to come.
yay.

40 days, 40 nights, 40 mornings, 120 meals

Friday, March 3rd, 2006

speaking of mardi gras, i would like to publicly announce my intentions for the lenten season that is now upon us:

  1. I will not purchase any of my primary meals at restaurants. Neither will I starve or subsist on cookies at colloquia. I will bring food from home whenever I will be out of the house for mealtimes.
  2. I will get up every morning by 8:30.

I have jokingly referred to the second item as my “diversionary” proclamation, by which I mean that, if I feel my resolve wavering, maybe it will be easier to keep the first goal if I can offer myself the chance to cheat on the second as a distraction. I say this not because I view waking up early as a lesser goal; in fact, it is one of the most powerful white whales of my aspirations in personal behavior modification. I would be positively tickled pink if the limited nature of lent somehow placates the grog enough that i am able to try out an extended experiment in early awakening, but prior experience has taught me to be skeptical of that possibility.

Ironically enough, it might be the fact that I am adMitting to be less than fully invested in the goal that will allow it to work this time (the grog has a somewhat sadistic sense of humor), but whatever. I intend to do my best to honor both goals, and I’ll keep you posted, but my real commitment is to the restaurant meal boycott. In the week after WV I found myself caving into the “well, you have to Eat, don’t you? isn’t it better to spend a little money than starve yourself?!” argument Far too easily, and my busy schedule right now makes it a simple matter to leave the house without taking a few minutes to pack something for later, or to allow weeks to pass without a real trip to the store. It’s partly a financial issue (I need to start pinching pennies to prepare for the unknown months ahead), but it’s mostly a matter of principle. I like to cook. I like to have food in my bag when I need it. There is no reason for me to have such a mental block when it comes to picking out easy snackables, making a sandwich or two, or planning for leftovers. I fall into traps where I say things like “well, you’re not going to want carrots and hummus every Day. or peanut butter sandwiches. what else will you bring?!” which is really ridiculous, because i’m sure that i can think of things to bring, and i really have no proof that i wouldn’t enjoy carrots and hummus every day. or peanut butter sandwiches.
so it’s silly psychology tricks, i want to snap out of it, and this seems the perfect opportunity.

so there you go.
:)

i’ll still participate in the Informatics Weekly Day of Food, i think (on Tuesdays we have both lunch and dinner at restaurants. because it just evolved that way).
i’ll just eat my own food before or after and have a cup of coffee or something.
i’m still allowed to buy snacks and beverages, so it’s not like i will have to avoid social outings altogether.
it’s really just about encouraging myself to plan ahead.

and speaking of planning ahead, anyone up for a dinner date on the monday after easter?
;)

public service announcement

Wednesday, January 18th, 2006

sahara mart has organic avocados for $0.79

that is all.

i made christmas dinner!

Sunday, December 25th, 2005

A full plate for Christmas - trout, rice pilaf, and stuffed mushrooms.
so, in my family, we don’t really have a traditional christmas dinner. we stick pretty close to the books for thanksgiving – the small child in me does not feel like everything is right with the world if there is not stuffing, or green beany glop, or pumpkin pie (turkey and sweet potatoes are nice too, but if i have the others, i am appeased). but after those cravings are knocked out in november, it’s really up in the air what will happen for christmas. we Have made another turkey, especially when my dad’s old work used to give everybody one as a holiday bonus, and we Have made ham, i’m pretty sure. but at the end of the day, the only real requirement is that we have something special. last year, i think we had buffalo steaks, and this leek and wild mushroom stuffing that i wanted to try out, and the hands-down best asparagus that can be made in 15 minutes or less (and a good contender for the best in any time period, so go make some… now!).

Cranberry tarts for dessert!
this year, we hadn’t really thought about it until yesterday. nobody really had a hankering for poultry of any variety, or for anything else for that matter. lloyd offered to make lasagna, which is nice, but it didn’t seem quite right to me, and when i said so, i was given the job of finding a replacement.

fair enough.

i decided that we should have trout, because that seemed like a good thing to make while i was back in colorado, and, well, because it sounded good. i hadn’t had trout in a long while.
i poked around online, getting some use out of this recipe search engine that i had discovered a couple of weeks ago and had been waiting for a chance to try. it served me pretty well, and i picked out a menu that made me quite excited:

in case you’re interested in a glimpse of my current del.icio.us playground, that list is also available here.

the tarts were far and away the hardest part, and they were really only time-consuming – i had to make the crust and the cream filling last night because they both had to chill. today they were easy as, um… tarts!

Stuffed mushrooms that are very, very bad for you... next hardest were the mushrooms, and they were really only a little annoying – they require one to grind up a cup of brazil nuts.
that’s a cup of nuts, in addition to the butter and the cream… i’m going to file those little suckers away in case anyone ever asks me to define ‘decadent.’ and on that note – david, consider this my first (pressure-free, as always) suggestion for an appetizer for next year’s dgp. they might pack a punch equivalent to a slice of cheesecake, but i can’t say they don’t make an argument for being worth it… damn.

on the whole it was blissfully easy for how fancy it sounds – i will make the trout in less than a half-hour, any day of the week, for anyone who will buy the ingredients (i would say the same for the rice but that shiznit takes a long time to cook, so we’d need to plan ahead a bit more). i am quite pleased with how well things turned out, and my family was very gracious in agreeing with that assessment. everyone seemed happy, my dad did the dishes, and we still have to eat the tarts! (hopefully i won’t curse that experience by writing this while everything else digests a little, but i’m thinking they’ll be ok, and it’s Not because i already ate some of the berries, and some of the custardy filling, and some of the crust…)

so christmas ends, and so chanukah begins.
i shall raise a glass of wine to that.
[clink]

oh! and santa brought me a sweet little chef’s knife, so it was even fun to chop the onions.
seriously.
this knife is Sharp.

now let’s see if i can muster the energy to finish a post i’m writing about narnia, shall we?