Your Kitchen is a Danger Zone: Don't Make These Mistakes
So I was perusing this fun little post on Six Common Kitchen Injuries today. Emergency Room professionals were asked what kinds of kitchen injuries they see most often -- and what people should do about them. Gee, it brought back such memories. Ah, what fun times I've had, mauling myself while cooking. The blood, the burns, the tears. It's been real.
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I'm not sure how I haven't ended up in the emergency room by now. My son has -- but I'll get to that later. Let me tell you about my sad history with knives.
It started when I was 13 and my parents brought home a giant wheel of sheep's milk cheese. I decided the best way to cut myself a slice would be to cut across the top with a steak knife. I was very clever to hold onto the other side of the cheese with my other hand so that when my knife inevitably slipped it would sink right into the side of my thumb. Nice! This was right before school, and because I was raised by a hard-ass mom I wrapped my cut up with toilet paper, stuffed it into a mitten, and toddled off to school like it was no big deal.
Then there were the crusty bread incidents. I've done this two or three times -- because I'm a slow learner, obviously. I have a nice, big chef's knife. But unfortunately that's not going to work for a big crusty loaf. But I'm persistent! For years I kept trying to slice crusty loaves with the wrong knife, my fingers splayed all over the place.
My favorite cut was the time I nearly divided one fingertip in half just before I had to leave for a meeting. What did I do? Same thing as usual: Wrapped it up in toilet paper and toddled off like nothing had happened. (I know now you should see a doctor within 12 hours of cutting yourself.)
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But as I sat through that meeting with my throbbing finger a light finally went off in my head. And I came to two important realizations:
It is time to invest in a proper bread knife with a serrated edge.
It is time I learn how to cut food without cutting myself.
I am not a cutter! So I bought a proper bread knife, and I took an amazing knife skills class that swear-to-god, totally changed my life. But alas, I had also reproduced. And one day my plucky then-five-year-old climbed up onto the sink to reach for a mango hanging in a basket right by where a brand-new food processor blade was drying.
There was screaming. And there was blood. So much blood.
We rushed him to the hospital where he got seven stitches into the side of his poor little hand. And that's when I decided I need to put a stop to our sad family legacy of accidents in the kitchen. I've been teaching him knife safety ever since. Anyway, you should definitely check out that list of kitchen injuries.
What kinds of kitchen injuries have you gotten?
Image via The Marmot/Flickr
Written by Adriana Velez on CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
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