I should be on my way to Long Island, New York to visit my son and

his family.  But no, I am spending the day and the next little while resting

and recovering.  I have been sick since the middle of December with

one thing or the other, and this week I came down with a very devastating

stomach bug.  I haven’t eaten anything other than a few saltines in the last

few days- and I was close to becoming dehydrated- so now that I’m starting

to keep food down and can sit up long enough to type, I’ve decided to

just take it easy and recuperate. 

So- I’m going to take a break from blogging for a while, too.

I’m going to try and send out the salt mixes to Lilly and Johanna in the next

month, sometime- thank you for your participation and please send me

your addresses via messaging on Facebook.

I’m looking forward to much inspired baking and joyous bread time in the

months to come, but right now, I can’t even eat bread, let alone make any.

I may write a couple of posts sometime because I can’t help myself- but I

don’t want to feel any pressure or guilt (all self imposed) because I haven’t.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks- ready to share some great recipes!

Maybe by then the snow will stop and the ice storms- and the

sun will be shining.

I used to use a whetstone to sharpen my knives.

They are so messy- and my stone was small- by the time I finished, I hadn’t sharpened all my knives-

it was too much of a hassle.

My mother had this sharpener- metal circles that you pulled the blade

through the center and it pared the edges finer.

This is old.  The circles are rusty and don’t move as freely as they used to.

Pampered Chef sells this knife with a cover that has a built in sharpener-

the idea is that each time you pull it out it sharpens the blade.

Nice idea, but it doesn’t really work that well.

So- I’m going to try to sharpen this knife using a couple of gadgets.

The Rada  company has a sharpener that uses the same principle as my mother’s old one

– but there are only two circles and they are not rusted together so they work.

Look at all the metal filings in the center of the paper.  Those are from the edge of the

knife.  The blade is a little rough, though, since we are pulling it between the circles.

So I use the steel rod that will file down the rough edges on the blade.

And there is the edge- the new edge I was looking for- a sharp knife.

How do you sharpen your knives?