Liese - also realize that she was using a dull knife. A knife she should have sharpened at the end of the previous night so that it was ready to go when she needed it again, but dull none the less.

yeah, but her technique was crappy. She was sawing at those onions. Even my crappy Henckles "eversharp" would have done better.

Huh. That reminds me. I need to sharpen my knives. I was so used to having el-cheapo all serrated knives that I don't always remember, now that I have a reasonable set.

See? Watching television is good for you!

You know, skimming the posts about shows I don't watch leads to some interesting readings ... I went from BB, and Evil Dick, to "he went through those chickens" ... which may have been more entertaining than either of the shows really was.

BB: OMG, anyone else watch Amber and Daniele on Power of 10? Drew Carey just asked Amber if being in the house was "starting to get to her at all," when she (of course) started crying like she does.

Edit: Ha ha ha! And he asked her what it was like being scrutinized all the time, and she said she doesn't know what scrutinized means.

Why is Drew still wearing the fake glasses? He got Lasik years ago. Couldn't he start working a slightly new persona for his new game-show host career?

I missed that but I did see him ask if it was hard being scrutinized all the time and she answered that she didn't know what scrutinize meant.

Editing crosspost, as I attempt not to do a solo watch-n-post.

So, here in NYC we get two channels of football tonight, so no BB until latenight. Lame! I had nothing at all queued up on the DVR last night, and nothing tonight until 9:30, what with no SYTYCD and a TC rerun.

My DVR is also giving me the "this is how you record shows" no love message.

So, I'm cooking a mushroom and mozzarella risotto and thinking about Top Chef. In lieu of an episode, I want to talk about knife skills. What are they? Who has them? How does one obtain them?

I was cutting my onions tonight, and thinking, how do people cut onions? 'Cause I sure don't do the weird horizontal slicing thing Casey was doing. I used to do the awesome blossom sort of cut, where you'd slice downward into the onion in a grid, then turn it on its side and slice off the little chunks. But now I've gotten to the point where I cut off both ends (I figure the crying is a small price to pay if I can get it done faster.) then I slice the onion in half. I lay the halves flat, so it's easier to maneuver, then I slice them vertically and horizontally. Then I chop, if necessary, until I get the right consistency.

What do you do? What am I supposed to do?

Liese I pretty much chop onions the way you do. I start opposite the hairy end because I've heard cutting the hairy end is what makes tears but I still have to put my head in the freezer especially when I'm cutting the stinky white ones. To me knife skills just means using the knife the way it was designed, you use your thumb and forefinger to guide the blade as opposed to having a death grip on the handle and you chop with a rocking motion to prevent food from sliding out from underneath the blade.