Knife Skills Class 101
You go pass the whole pineapple, and honeydew. You pick up an apple or two , and even an orange. You finally make your way to the back of the produce area, to the wall of clear containers, marked up %50 (or more!) of beautiful pre-cut fruits and vegetables.
Sound familiar?
It's perfectly okay! They are a GREAT solution if you have more money than time.
What's NOT okay, is if you are passing all the cheap and on sale goodies JUST because you fear the knife. Or have never been taught how to use one.
Well, my amazing friend Morgan from Les Accoutrements decided she was no longer going to let her fear of chopping her fingers off stop her from learning.
She went to the Classes page of my website, chose the Knife skills class, and booked a class at a time that was best for her. (The booking calendar doesn't even LET you book a time that's bad for me, it's SO cool!)
All classes are held in the comfort of your own home. I had to make an exception this time, because we kept running into schedule conflicts. (Her parents having work done to their house at last minute notices) Since she was a close friend of mine, and knew she wouldn't judge the small kitchen in the house we are renting, I allowed her in.
I met her at Kroger, to see what kind of fruits and veggies she would be interested in learning how to slice up. I taught her a few food shopping rules, like what the term "organic" really means, and how to tell how old some of the food was. With our arms full of produce, and our hearts full of stubbornness,(Psh! Who needs a buggy anyways?) and excitement, off to the kitchen we went!
The first thing I showed her was how transparent I am... We had to clean the kitchen first. Now that everything was in order, time to chop, slice, and dice!
I showed her different sizes and shapes of knifes, and which ones to use for which jobs. I picked out two knives for us. Next, we needed cutting boards. I took about 4-5 different ones, and talked about how important stability was, then put them all back, and got out two small ones that were just right for us.
We went through many different sizes of fruits, veggies and cuts. I showed her how to hold a knife safely, and where to put the other hand she wasn't using. She learned how to cut other fruits that we didn't have with us, just by teaching her versatile techniques.
We had a lot of fun giving samples to my fourteen month old, and watching him devour a good portion of the "Fancy Cantaloupe".
We took a few pictures, and had a lot of laughs. This was a trial run of the class, and it taught ME a few things about how I will do some things differently with my next student.
Things I will do differently next time:
1) Have a checklist of things to go over. I was so excited to have a friend over to show my skills to, that I actually forgot to teach her how to MINCE. Haha. She calls ALL knife cutting Mincing, so I had to mention that.
I hope you give one of my classes a try! I'm in the Nolensville/Antioch/Brentwood area!
Feel free to use the Contact Me on my website if you have any questions!