Main character: Relatively intelligent woman with cooking skills
Location: A kitchen loaded with pots, pans, utensils and cooking toys
Weapon: Kitchen Pro 2000
Plot: The main character, despite being careful, always manages to cut herself when using her mandoline. The latest attack by the mandoline occurred not when she is actually using it but as she is moving back to the sink to wash a dish.
Mystery: Why does the mandoline have it out for her?
Any kitchen mishaps you’re willing to share?
It’s nothing personal. Mandolines will happily cut anyone. It’s their nature.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Like the famous story of the scorpion and the frog.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly.
LikeLike
Will think on that, but this comes to mind – Calvin & Hobbes – remember Calvin’s terror of his attack bicycle?
https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Calvin%27s_Killer_Bicycle
LikeLiked by 4 people
What is a mandoline?
LikeLike
Whatever it is, I know my father in law hasn’t got one. He’d have killed himself by now.
LikeLiked by 4 people
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh my God! Don’t get that thing near me!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bill’s picture is great but if you’ve never seen a mandoline in action, here is a video. My mandoline isn’t nearly this “robust” but you they are by necessity quite sharp and you can imagine looking at this guy how easy it is to injury yourself, especially if you are using your hands, like the idiot in this ad. I ALWAYSl use the guard piece, although I manage to get cut anyway. I’ve even cut myself while putting it back into its box. If I didn’t really love the matchstick cut, I would never take it out again!
LikeLike
No.No. I watch. watched for a few seconds. No more.
LikeLike
Whatever it is, I know my father in law hasn’t got one. He’d have killed himself by now.
LikeLike
You can say that again.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Monday morning snark.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ba dum bum
LikeLike
Daughter cut her thumb last winter on her mandoline and needed 5 stitches.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yikes. Mine is not a serious slice. Not deep but it is almost a half inch long. Didn’t bleed as much as I was expecting.. paper towel contained the “spill” until YA brought me a bandaid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve sliced a finger on a mandoline (new tech) but I’m pretty old school. I’ve sliced fingertips two or three times with a good old chef’s knife. It happened when I was in a hurry and believed my knife skills were much keener than they actually are.
Other mishaps include overfilling the blender and blowing the top off. The corollary to that is not having the base screwed on tight, then lifting the blender out of the stand and watching the contents leak out of the bottom.
Then there’s setting fire to hot pads–I’m good for about one per decade. I stopped counting the times I burned my fingers on cast iron panhandles, oven racks, and metal pot lids. Finally, let’s not forget those teaching moments when we are slicing and dicing a hot pepper such as a jalapeno–without nitrile gloves or other protection–then we get an itch in our eye and unconsciously rub it without thinking. LOADS of fun that. 😦
It’s a wonder I still bother cooking my own food. But I’m too frugal to eat out all the time, and take out pizza just doesn’t do it for me.
Chris in Owatonna
*BSP* I’ll be the guest author for a live Zoom even, Bookstube MN, on Thursday at 7:00. I’m also working my booth at the Hopkins Raspberry Festival Marketplace Fair on Saturday from 9-4 on Main Street in downtown Hopkins MN. For the particulars, please visit my Events and Appearances page on my website, chrisnorbury.com. *
LikeLiked by 5 people
I’ve done all these except catch a potholder on fire. (She knocks on wood)
LikeLiked by 2 people
I managed to do that, vs. With a microwave oven, no less.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We’ve always said that you are a talented fellow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think I’ll stick with farm and motorcycle accidents. Safer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love that you’re actively doing all of these activities to promote your novels, Chris. It sounds like you are actually enjoying getting to know your readers.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I am, PJ. It’s one of the unexpected perks of being a writer.
Chris
LikeLiked by 1 person
OT:something Sherrilee brought up yesterday. I would earnestly say to anyone, if you are picked out of a random crowd for searching, it’s probably because you DON’T look suspicious. I cannot get my wife and mother in law to see this. They’ve been picked on at airports when obviously hampered with injuries, kids, whatever. If people like that never get searched, then of COURSE drug runners or whoever will want to use them. Sandra gets too full of her persecution theories to listen to this.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve had my share of mundane and common kitchen mishaps, though I’ve never (yet) caught a potholder on fire. But one stands out, though I don’t know if you can call it a mishap, I did it very deliberately. I
t happened while I was working in the hotel kitchen in Greenland. All morning long, a big nasty fly was pestering me as I was preparing the lunch smorgasbord. I had swatted at it and shooed it away numerous time, and by the time I was done and cleaning up the prep area I was determined to get him. I didn’t have a flyswatter handy, so I grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on: a heavy, wood rolling pin. I watched carefully for the fly to land and when he did, I whacked him good with the rolling pin. The trouble was that he had landed on my shin, but that didn’t register with me until I had hit him. It didn’t help matters that I missed. First and only time I used a rolling pin to try to kill anything.
LikeLiked by 3 people
AAAAGHH that hurts just thinking about it. In my shin I mean, not just from where I’m clutching my sides.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, PJ, that is so funny in a masochistic kind of way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Guess I was lucky he didn’t land on my nose.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Yikes, PJ!
LikeLike
Morning –
Finally, a benefit to not cooking much; the chances for injury are reduced!
I’ve burned myself a few times, I always use a towel as a hot holder (aka Jacque Pepin) as my hands are too big to fit in the mitts.
I’ve said before, I feel a strange attraction to spinning or rolling blades, so I have to remind myself not to stick my fingers in there. A pizza cutter will be the death of me yet.
We’ve burned a few things, and there’s been a few cuts, but nothing stands out – or at least that I remember.
LikeLiked by 2 people
We got rid of ours. It scared the dickens out of us.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hey John, you should check out yesterday’s blog. You got mentioned when we were in the midst of some fun word play.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I looked, but couldn’t find it in your farm Report of two days ago.
LikeLike
It was quite a weekend – so might be hard to spot. We were messing with spelling words with a “y” instead of an “i” because Fenton had used the word “tyre”. After a bit Fenton said “I wonder if John Dyer could help us out of this myre?”
Bill – how are you getting photos uploaded… I’m technologically challenged today.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sherrilee,
For the mandoline I just copied the address of one on Amazon. For my own photos I use the address of images I upload to my Flickr account.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My mandoline just sits in a cupboard now. I used it once, thankfully no mishaps, but I’m afraid my luck will run out too quickly. And I almost never have a use for it – my cooking for one is pretty basic. I should donate it to free up cupboard space.
LikeLiked by 2 people
They really are a wonderful tool, but they’re not for the faint of heart.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You know that the minute you donate it you’re gonna have a need for it, right?
LikeLiked by 1 person
A need for a machine far more dangerous than a circular saw?
LikeLiked by 1 person
In fact, if Jane ever thinks of getting one, I will install a circular saw in the kitchen, and leave Isaac and Jane to their own devices, knowing they are safe.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a primitive, kind of bare bones version of a mandolin that I inherited from my first mother-in-law. It can’t be that sharp anymore, but I’ve cut myself on it a number of times. I just hate it when blood gets into the soup…
LikeLiked by 3 people
There once was a Greek pork soup made with blood, called Black Soup. Also many recipes for coq au vin call for the blood of the chicken in the recipe. Maybe it adds something. Vegetarians will want to avoid it, though.
LikeLiked by 4 people
We used to have a mandoline but it never was the tool of choice. I just like doing my slicing and matchsticking with a knife. It’s meditative.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I burn myself frequently, especially when I take things out of the oven. I have had teen girl clients ask me if I was a cutter, since I have all these scars on my arms from oven burns.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I remember an incident when my mother accidentally burned something she was baking for our dinner, and although she was usually pretty unflappable, in this case she was uncharacteristically angry at herself. She had taken the dish out of the oven, closed the oven, and was assessing the damage to the dish on the counter near the sink. I came into the kitchen and was looking at the oven, which was a built-in oven at eye level, with a glass door. I could see flames. This didn’t seem like a good development, so I told my mother that there was something burning in the oven. She didn’t turn around, but snapped at me in an exasperated voice, “I know it’s burning, I can certainly see that and smell it.” My mother was almost never short-tempered, so I was a little taken aback, and was quiet for a minute, watching the wavering flames. Finally I said, in a small voice, “No, I mean something’s burning, like flames, in the oven.” She came running, then, and grabbed a tongs to pull out a burning potholder that had fallen onto the heating element. She was having a bad day. I think I was maybe eleven or twelve. I wasn’t much help in a crisis.
LikeLiked by 3 people
LikeLiked by 3 people
The header photo brought this to mind.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nobody has commented on your choice of header photo, Sherrilee.
Nice misdirection!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Great minds think alike…as they say.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I thought that was pretty cleaver, too. Made me smile.
LikeLiked by 1 person