Make your own lethal weapon

Step one: Realise that all your kitchen knives are disgracefully blunt and neglected, squelching tomatoes, bouncing off butternut squash. Feeble sharpening device too ancient to make a difference. Go shopping.

Step two: Choose between old-fashioned sharpening steel (requiring technique) and whizzy new device in John Lewis (requiring basic ability to saw back and forth). Buy latter, as easier than learning proper technique with steel.


Step three: Have fun restoring every knife in the house to razor sharpness. Feel satisfied, even smug.

Step four: Enjoy newly-restored cutting/slicing/paring power of kitchen knives. Make gallons of soups and stews. Become more self-satisfied, more smug. Consider (briefly) making roses from vegetables.


Step five: Relax. Discover inability of razor-sharp knife to distinguish between carrots and fingers.

Step six: Recognise that a little blood goes a long, long way.

Step seven: Include Elastoplast as an essential element of one's batterie de cuisine.