Nicko started a thread titled, "How are you preparing your turkey this year?" Yes, I contributed to the thread. But to my shame I avoided the heart of the matter, only mumbling something like "smoking."

The non-answer haunted me. For one thing, my relationship with you is founded on honesty. For another, it's too important to keep dancing around it -- no matter how much we'd all prefer to keep silent about an unpleasant matter.

With maturity comes...

There's plenty more CFG knife, sharpeining and knife skills maundering to be posted; and I promise to add at least one more entry this week. But this whole baking by scale thing came up, and I thought it was worth an entry if only for the way the subject relates to my outlook in re CFG.

In relevant part this entry is also posted in a thread Dave (dscheidt) started in the Pastries and Baking forum here at CT.

Swimmers up. Take your mark. Bang!

Preface, Speaking...

MORE EDGINESS, MORE ANGST, MORE MONEY: MORE CHOOSING A KNIFE

OR, SOME THINGS YOU DON’T THINK ABOUT WHEN IN THE FLUSH OF ACQUISITION LUST, BUT YOU REALLY SHOULD.

Thanks in advance for bearing with me as I try and cobble all this stuff together. On the other hand, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

For those poor souls reading this in the sort of piecemeal fashion in which it’s presented, and for those who have read me on the topic before, it...

Writing a coherent and reasonably short piece – say, umm, well “chapter length” -- about how to choose knives has stymied me for more than a year. I’ve made dozens of starts but haven’t finished any of them, while over the same period have written tens of thousands of words on all sorts of culinary cutlery topics in the form of board posts (on CT and other forums).

The subject of choosing a knife – particularly a chef’s knife (or gyuto, or santoku) – can’t really be separated from...

Craig Bodenhorn passed away a couple of days ago. Craig was a close friend, an energetic political activist, and a brilliant chef.

I met Craig almost a dozen years ago in an online politics chatroom, he was funny, charming, knowledgeable, all the good things. We shared a similar political outlook, and had very similar reactions to the other chatters we met in shared rooms. We became virtual friends quickly.

We became real friends when we started talking about food....