Pardon- I was born in a barn

My Mother always said, You eat a peck of dirt before you die :D
IMO, parents nowadays don't let their kids eat enough (any) dirt. It's likely the cause of many of the allergies.:D
Best regards

Robin
 
Pipeman said:
My Mother always said, You eat a peck of dirt before you die :D
IMO, parents nowadays don't let their kids eat enough (any) dirt. It's likely the cause of many of the allergies.:D
Best regards

Robin
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Exactly Bro!

Anybody ever swallow lake water while swimming? Put some in a petry dish and look at it under a microscope........scary, scary stuff. :D

I cut my food at lunch with this 60 year old knife.......who knows where it's been? :eek::D

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knarfeng said:
These two abbreviated quotes describe
►my use of pocket knives as every day tools and
►the cutting tools I use in the kitchen.

Until I started hanging out here, I would have considered somebody pulling a grungy nasty old pocket knife out of his pocket to cut food as somebody not banging on all eight. I used to use my knife to clean spark plugs and open bags of chemicals among other things and I assumed other folks did, too.
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Change "I used to" to "I". My knives don't seem to be like most I see here. They are dirty, sometimes they stink, and sometimes they have a bit of rust on them even though they are stainless. (Working in South Texas summers wearing blue jeans will do that!). I clean adhesives and other nasty stuff off of them with charcoal lighter fluid or kerosene. Although I rarely carry carbon anymore, they always smell like carbon steel and whatever I found to put on the blade to help keep them from rusting. That is anything from a spritz of some lubricant, a few drops of pneumatic gun oil, to chap stick. Still, with a good wipe I might split a burger with one of them, but will look for something more suitable.


knarfeng said:
Since I still use my knives for all sorts of nasty chores, I still do not use my regular pocket knives for food. However, I have learned that there are folks whose knives lead a sheltered existence and are therefore safe to use on food. So if you keep your knife reasonably pristine, have at it.
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I cook a lot. A lot. I don't have time to whittle through brisket with a 3" blade, properly cut up a couple of chickens with a stockman, cut up the normal group of onion/celery/carrot/peppers that make up so much of my cooking or spend the time needed to cut up a couple of pounds of potatoes I am making for dinner. I don't like the way the food looks when cut with an undersized blade, nor do I like all the extra time it takes to do it. I don't like any extra time to clean, nooks, crannies, spaces between liners/blade/cases, or the fact that it is really difficult to get guts out of a folder before you can move to the next process in the kitchen.

While I am a pretty sturdy guy, I would hate to think that while I was searching for an excuse to use one of my knives and kitchen prep was one of them that I inadvertently food poisoned my diabetic 83 year old mother (what? missed that last little bit of slime in the pivot?) or my 89 year old mother in law. Yes, I know I could go through an exhaustive regimen to sterilize a folder after every process, but why would I do that when I could walk over to the sink and wash it quickly with a good soap, no nooks, no crannies, no small cracks, no pivots, nothing else to worry about. A quick wash, and I can go from cutting up 5 pounds of raw chicken, put it in the oven or on the pit, a quick wash of the blade and start cutting up fresh vegetables in just about a minute.

I choose my kitchen knives with the same care I do my work knives. That means suitability for purpose. There is no way anyone can cut meat, julienne vegetables, dice, cut, or slice a meal's worth of food as fast as a someone proficient with a razor sharp 8" chef's knife. All my kitchen knives are polished, flat ground with a convex edge (from me) and are honed with a 1200gr rod.

I wouldn't use them out in the field any more than I would use my work knives in the kitchen.

Robert
 
Lol I use my knives when they're needed. If they're needed for food prep or I feel like using it for food prep I will use it. I feel like my knives don't get enough use due to school so using them when I can is great.
 
tongueriver said:
I use a screwdriver for screws, a hammer to hit things, a tape to measure things and kitchen knives to cut things in the kitchen. I use pocket knives to cut things when I am away from my obviously superior dedicated tools or for the rare situation when the pocket knife is superior for some purpose. The original reasons for pocket knives still hold true today, hundreds of years later: they are handy, pocketable, concealable and have (often) more than one blade. Superior cutting behavior is rarely one of those reasons and never was. Fixed blade knives can have a longer cutting edge, are easier to sharpen, are easier to clean, are usually stronger. Since they can be larger, they can be dedicated to special uses that a folding pocket knife cannot duplicate. I regard pocket knives as backups and often they come into play as such. And of course they are fantastic collectibles.
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I like this reminder. Pocket knives, although DARLING BEAUTS of functional art, can at times (not always) really be boiled down to a somewhat improvisational but highly available replacement of some other, superior tool. Like a fixed kitchen knife. Or a shovel, heaven forbid, lol
 
oh you devil. The prickly crunch of the onions and 'peños paired with the soothing, fatty, voluptuous mayo...

Okkkkk yup I need to eat
 
I've used my pocketknives for food, but not in the kitchen. Why bother? A pocketknife's advantage is its portability. It's a cutting tool that you can have on you at all times. It's superfluous at home, where a properly sharpened kitchen knife is a better, less messy implement to use.

However, I have no problem using my knives for food when I'm away from home. How else can you split a sandwich or burrito?

- Christian
 
Why bother? is a sentiment I agree with, Christian. There are vastly more suitable tools to use in the kitchen.

However- I suppose it bears mentioning that if we all behaved based on pure functionality, no one of us would spend all kinds of time and cash on acquiring (as well as Ooo-ing and Aahhh-ing online lol) on all sorts of varied and sundry pocket knives, high-end and low. A (kinda poor) example to illustrate what I mean might be the box cutter, available by the gross, cheap as chips. We'd just buy box cutters, use them thrice for our lil cutting tasks, and pitch 'em into the trash and then grab a fresh one ready for the next thing (I wonder how many box cutters it would take to gut and skin a buck. Prob lots but you could do it).

VERY FEW of us take this box cutter approach to knives, however- and it is not simply because our pocket beauties perform better than box cutters. We do not do this for lots of reasons, one of which is because aesthetics (as well as history) are things that matter. They matter almost as much as utility matters.

A pair of Dickies workslacks and some workboots will get the job done. Their functionality is in place- they are cheap and durable and widely available. But very few of us operate solely from a utilitarian point of view, consuming more than just Dickies and workboots 24/7. Some want higher performance; others, more style, etc. But the point is that pure utility is not the sole motivator for behavior. YES it plays a very important part (my extensive cheap utility Mora collection is a testament to this).

But we like style. We like history. We connect with some kind of underlying principle or aesthetic beyond just the box cutter or the Dickies. Somehow it feels so good to cut that salami on that wooden board with that long slender blade that is good for little else.

Thank you all for helping me refine my own thoughts in this matter as well as countless others ;)
 
pjackst said:
Why bother? is a sentiment I agree with, Christian. There are vastly more suitable tools to use in the kitchen.

However - I suppose it bears mentioning that if we all behaved based on pure functionality, no one of us would spend all kinds of time and cash on acquiring (as well as Ooo-ing and Aahhh-ing online lol) on all sorts of varied and sundry pocket knives, high-end and low. A (kinda poor) example to illustrate what I mean might be the box cutter, available by the gross, cheap as chips. We'd just buy box cutters, use them thrice for our lil cutting tasks, and pitch 'em into the trash and then grab a fresh one ready for the next thing (I wonder how many box cutters it would take to gut and skin a buck. Prob lots but you could do it).

VERY FEW of us take this box cutter approach to knives, however- and it is not simply because our pocket beauties perform better than box cutters. We do not do this for lots of reasons, one of which is because aesthetics (as well as history) are things that matter. They matter almost as much as utility matters.

A pair of Dickies workslacks and some workboots will get the job done. Their functionality is in place- they are cheap and durable and widely available. But very few of us operate solely from a utilitarian point of view, consuming more than just Dickies and workboots 24/7. Some want higher performance; others, more style, etc. But the point is that pure utility is not the sole motivator for behavior. YES it plays a very important part (my extensive cheap utility Mora collection is a testament to this).

But we like style. We like history. We connect with some kind of underlying principle or aesthetic beyond just the box cutter or the Dickies. Somehow it feels so good to cut that salami on that wooden board with that long slender blade that is good for little else.

Thank you all for helping me refine my own thoughts in this matter as well as countless others ;)
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Well-said, pjackst!!:thumbup:

I'll continue using my trapper or Opinel in the kitchen, not because they're more efficient than kitchen knives we have, but because, for me, they're more enjoyable.

- GT
 
I use whatever's on hand at the time. If I happen to be in my kitchen when I'm cooking I'll use my kitchen knives. However, if I'm out by the grill or in somebody else's kitchen that doesn't know the joy of a properly sharpened blade I'll pull out my pocket knife. If you're worried about germs, you'll be exposed to far worse in most restaurants you'll visit. After working for 8 years in various kitchens I know that it's a crapshoot at best as to how vigilant the guy preparing your food at the local bistro is to cleaning his tools. It wasn't uncommon to watch somebody cut up some raw chicken, wipe the knife off on a dirty apron, and consider it clean. You can spend your time inspecting every restaurant before you eat and worrying about which knife you use for what, or you can accept the fact that you're going to be eating a fair amount of filth on any given day and get on with it. I wipe my blade on my blue jeans and figure that I've probably eaten worse and off I go.
 
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