What I Cooked Last Night

I was chopping some carrots using a vegetable knife with a short non-serrated blade. The carrots were quite hard. I slid the knife across and into the third carrot. The blade of the knife snapped suddenly at the point where it is imbedded in the handle. It rebounded against the force of my hand, flicked up and around like a soccer player doing a scissor kick, and stabbed me in the forefinger before flopping onto the table. I threw the handle and the blade into the bin, after examining the break. The imbedded section was far too thin. It was the last cheap knife I will buy. Lesson: sack your cheap cutting knives before they crack up under the pressure and do you an injury. * I had been about to make a recipe I always drag out in autumn, an old favourite I learned from my mother before she gave up on all the old standbys. Oxtail stew with garlic mash. Using a quality knife, meaning a knife made just about anywhere except China, chop six celery stalks, two onions and two carrots...

It's the little things that get you. Like when you reach for something you absolutely must have at that particular second, and it isn't there. Because if it isn't there, it could be anywhere; which means whatever you are doing in the kitchen will be ruined by the time you make enquiries of the rest of the household as to the whereabouts of the missing item: your best knife, the corkscrew, the only colander in the house, an oven mitt, the kitchen sink plug. Whatever. All of these things have a number of potential alternative uses in a household that comprises inventive or enterprising people. Take my favourite small dish, for example. It was just the right size to hold olives or a pat of butter for the table. Emblazoned with the University of Melbourne crest and the words Melbourne University Union House Cafeteria in black, the white porcelain bowl also made an excellent talking point. (And no, I didn't steal it.) One day, a long time ago now, I had taken a stick ...