Cherman enchineerink

The other day I bought two knives I've had my eye on for quite some time: the vegetable paring knife and small serrated knife by Wuesthof, which makes some of the best knives in the world. Wuesthof is located in the bucolic burg of Solingen, Germany. Well, maybe it's not bucolic--it has a steel mill--but I like to picture it as bucolic. Bucolic with great belches of toxic smoke. But I digress....

I am very fond of Wuesthof knives and I'm collecting them. For the last couple of years my sister has given me Williams&Sonoma gift cards so I can go buy knives. I have the chef's knife already. The knives are very sharp, but the best part is the balance--how the blade rocks back and forth as you speedily chop things. You will chop like a professional chef if you have a good knife! And I like my German engineering, no doubt about it! These knives are the kitchen tool equivalent of Porsche, BMW, Audi, and Mercedes.

So what do I do using my new vegetable paring knive for the first time? I nearly slice the tip of my finger off! Blood started billowing out, all over my half-chopped onion! It was like a scene from a slasher movie--I think I know how to do some low-budget special FX now...

I can't figure out how to insert umlauts either...Wusthof technically should have a u with an umlaut over it, and I've been faking it by adding an e after the u, i.e. Wuesthof. For those of you who do not know what umlauts are, they are those two little dots on top of certain vowels in Motley Crue, Haagen Dazs, etc. They add that European flare to made-up words. I'm not sure why the Germans like them, but they are kind of cool, umlauts are!