Sabatier!!
Many moons ago I actually got a christmas present I wanted and had been dropping hints about for months.

It was a beautiful Sabatier cleaver. I had wanted one for years and now it was mine.

It was sharp enough out of the box, but once I had finished with it using my sharpening stones it was like nothing else I have ever known!

I had many happy months dismembering chickens with ease, making big bits of cow into exquisite small bits of cow and scaring the hell out of root vegetables. My cleaver became my tool of choice, I would use it for everything (like Homer and his gun in the NRA Simpsons episode)

And then ... my downfall.

2 beefburgers, frozen together straight out of the freezer.

No problem, my utility cleaver will separate those with ease!

You can see it coming can't you!

Sclippp, schlockk!

I didn't actaully feel any pain at all. Not even when I got to the hospital. There was just a dull throb that slowly grew (mostly in my ears strangely enough) until the painkillers kicked in.

The little finger on my left hand was, well, pretty much off. There was just a sliver of bone and a flap of skin holding it on.

I remember calling upstairs to my wife (the kitchen is in the basement) asking in a polite quiet voice if she could pop down and give me a hand. The rest is a bit of a blur as by the time she had testily come downstairs asking why was I bugging her, the kitchen looked a bit like the set of the 2008 remake of the Texas chainsaw massacre "full throttle"!, all 4 walls, the ceiling the windows the floor, everthing was covered in blood!

Luckily my wife is of solid country stock and managed to avoid either fainting or slipping in the gore long enough to call the ambulance. I even seem to recall a bag of frozen peas being applied. They breed em tough up her way!

Screams, fussing, fainting neighbours, and eventually at least 2 pints of claret later, an ambulance arrived.

I was lucky that the best micro surgeon in the area was on call that day and almost 10 years on I not only still have the finger, but pretty much full movement in it.

And the beautiful Sabatier Cleaver?

I have never used it since, although it still hangs on my kitchen utensil rack, oiled and sharpened regularly in case one day I get my nerve back!
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Sat 9 Aug 2008, 23:28, Reply)