I closed my last post on Sunday saying I had a few days left to shop for Donna’s Christmas present. This was a bit of mis-direction – I didn’t want Donna to know I’d already selected and ordered a gift for her. She always comes up with something thoughtful and useful for me. More about Christmas later.

On Monday morning, I played in the 3.5+ pickleball round-robin. I played fairly well and had a good time. Donna and I returned to the pickleball courts on Wednesday morning for open play. We played several games, then it happened again. We were teamed up versus our friends, Ginny and Joe. Joe hit a low, short shot in front of me. I lunged forward and bent down to return the ball. Something in my lower back disagreed with the move. I could barely move without triggering jolts of pain. I was done with pickleball for the day.

A couple of people offered to give me a ride home in their golf carts. I thanked them and declined. I thought sitting in the golf cart might be too painful if we hit any bumps. I figured walking slowly might loosen up my lower back. It was a slow trip home. I took some naproxen and put a heating pad in my chair and have done that every day since then. Next week I’ll start working on some stretching exercises.

In the evening we got into the Christmas spirit by watching a movie on NetFlix called Christmas Chronicles. It was a comedy geared more for children but Kurt Russell gave an outstanding performance as St. Nick. We enjoyed it.

About 18 years ago, I bought a set of kitchen cutlery made by J. A. Henckels of Solingen, Germany. I thought they were pretty nice knives and they are decent quality. They’re in a butcher block knife holder along with a mish-mash of other kitchen knives. A couple of years ago, I bought Donna a Japanese Santoku knife. It’s just over six inches in blade length and only 1.8mm thick. It’s extremely sharp. Donna uses it for special cuts – like fileting chicken breasts into thin slices.

About 10 days ago, while Donna was prepping vegetables for dinner, I had a thought. I should get Donna a new set of knives. I did some homework and decided to get a set of Japanese kitchen cutlery. Most professional kitchens are equipped with either German cutlery or Japanese. Many avid home cooks choose one or the other, but honestly I think the average household is satisfied with whatever Chinese-made knives they found at Walmart or maybe a QVC-special Ginsu set.

German knife makers and Japanese knife makers take a different approach in the their knife design and manufacturing. The biggest difference is found in the most important part – the blade. German knife designs tend to be very robust and heavy with thick blade stock. Japanese kitchen knives are thinner, lighter, more elegant and specialized. German knife blades are usually sharpened with a double bevel and the edge angle is 20 degrees per side or more. Japanese knives have various edge grinds but they’re usually a straight grind with an acute angle of 12 to 16 degrees per side. For example, the Henckels eight-inch chef’s knife blade is 3.7mm thick at the thickest part of the spine by the handle. The Japanese chef’s knife – called a gyuto – is typically 2mm or less at the thickest part of the spine.

The Japanese knife makers get away with the thin blades and sharp grinds by using steels that are considerably harder than the typical German knife. A German knife steel is usually heat treated to a hardness of 52-54 on the Rockwell C hardness scale – the abbreviation is HRC, not RCH as you might think. Japanese knife steel is heat treated to hardness ranging from around 58 HRC up to the mid 60s. This is a big difference.

Japanese knives can be made sharper and hold the edge better due to the hardness, but there’s a trade-off. Japanese cutlery tends to be more delicate and prone to chipping or even breakage if abused while German knives are more forgiving and robust. That’s one of the reasons Japanese cutlery is so specialized – they have a different criteria for knife specifications for almost anything you might want to cut in the kitchen.

After researching and shopping around, I thought I found a great fit for Donna. Donna’s hands are on the smaller size, so I looked for lightweight Japanese knives with handles made for smaller hands. I decided on Global brand knives made in Niigata, Japan by Yoshikin. These are unique knives that were considered to be very futuristic when they first hit the market in 1985. They caught on quickly with professional chefs and were also popular in homes with lots of stainless steel appliances.

This was due to the design which uses stainless steel (Cromova steel) exclusively. The knives are made from three pieces of stainless steel – the blade and two sides of the handle. The handle has a hollow portion that’s filled with a precise amount of sand to balance the various blades used – you can’t tell there’s sand inside. The three pieces are welded together, then ground and polished, making the finished product look like it was sculpted from a single chunk of steel. The handles have dimples filled with black paint to make them grippy.

By the way – stainless steel is a misnomer. There’s no such thing as stainless – it would be better to call it stain-less. It’s less prone to corrosion than low-alloy carbon steel, but any steel can and will corrode.

Donna has used the knives – mostly the nakiri vegetable knife – a couple of times and she reports favorably. She says vegetable prep is much easier and faster with these knives. I watched her mince fresh rosemary, garlic and basil into nearly a powder in a few seconds. These knives are extremely sharp right out of the box. I demonstrated this to Donna by taking a sheet of thin tissue paper the knives were wrapped with and holding it up in my left hand. I sliced through the free hanging paper cleanly without catching or tearing.

Donna bought a goody for dinner on Christmas Eve. She came home from Albertson’s grocery with four lobster tails. She cooked them and served them with Australian style potatoes called crash hot potatoes. She made them by boiling small potatoes, then she placed them on an oiled cookie sheet and pressed them with a potato masher. Then she drizzled with a little olive oil, sprinkled with fresh chopped rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. She baked them at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. I love ’em. We had a dim sum appetizer and ginger carrot soup before the main entree.

Our Christmas dinner was covid compliant – we didn’t go out or join anyone, it was just us. Donna made a shepherd’s pie. The filling included a pound of brisket that I had chopped into small cubes and froze last week. The brisket I made last weekend ended up in several meals. We had the dinner when I first took the brisket out of the Traeger – that’s two servings. Then I had brisket sandwiches twice last week and Donna had two salads with brisket strips – that’s four more meals. The shepherd’s pie is enough for four servings for a total of 10 meals. The $48 I paid for the Prime brisket doesn’t seem like so much now.

I’ve only had shepherd’s pie once before that I can recall. It’s a great dish!

The weather has been great other than some gusty, high winds on Wednesday afternoon and night. It’s 55 degrees outside as I type this morning and we should have a high of around 70 degrees. The skies are blue and cloudless. Tomorrow we’ll drive out west to Wickenburg where we’ll meet up with my daughter, Jamie and Francisco at LuAnn and Jerry’s new house. LuAnn is my ex-wife and Jerry is her husband – Jamie’s step-dad. Google maps says it’s a 100-mile drive each way. We’ll stay overnight at the Best Western in Wickenburg and return on Monday morning.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!