It’s great to be able to break stereotypes. One should do so at every opportunity. But sometimes it’s also fun to play to a stereotype for the comedy value, if you’re at home in your comfort zone and can get a good laugh out of your spouse.
What does this have to do with cheese knives? Well, you see, my husband is fussy about his knives, and I mean that in a positive way. Knives are tools and the man likes to use good quality tools when he can. Our old cheese knife (you can see the tip of it lying on the board) is a decent quality one that’s fit for purpose. But it does have one small flaw, which is a hollow handle. At some point, a very tiny hairline crack opened on the handle along the seam of where the two halves of the steel must have been welded together. You can’t see it or feel it. You wouldn’t even know it’s there, until you put the knife in the dishwasher. In the dishwasher, the handle of the blade takes in water slowly through the crack and it sloshes around inside for ages because there’s really no way to get it out again easily. No real problem, we just hand wash the thing and it’s been working for us for years. But I’ve been keeping an eye on getting an alternate cheese knife over time whenever I happen to find myself in a store with higher-end kitchenware.
I finally picked up a simpler, more basic cheese knife during mum’s visit. It’s a different style and I got around to unwrapping and showing it to my husband today. I told him that I was aware that our old one was perfectly serviceable, but I was looking forward to having a cheese knife without the holes for soft cheeses, so that I could stop picking out globs of brie and Roquefort from them.
“You do know that those holes serve a purpose, right?” He responded to me seriously. I did actually know that. The information was somewhere in the dark, cobweb-covered recesses of my brain and I just needed to be a bit more awake to blow those cobwebs off the correct mental shelf. “I know!” I replied, looking at him completely earnestly. There was an appropriately pregnant pause before I followed it up with a question.
“Um… what is it?”
**This was originally posted on Instagram and has been backdated on this blog.
The Feathered Rose 