Luckily, these two items are not related.

I was in Porto Alegre last week, and got to see a new little baby.  Remember in a recent post about a young lady named Alice who just had her little one, whom they named Olivia?  Well, I got to see Momma and daughter when I was there.  And more importantly, got to hold the little one.This may be deceiving, but the baby is actually outside her body stuck under the wrap thing, and quite comfortable.When I held her, she was not comfortable at all.

Alice is also an expert cheese cake maker.  She likes to make a cheese cake when I am there, but this time, it was for a good man’s birthday.Now, the gory part ….

During the past two years that I became a Pumpkin Pie Master,  Hot Wing Master and MasterBeaner, I have acquired some nice sharp knives.  I envision that some day, I will be able to take knives and throw them in the air like they do on the cooking shows, but for now it is not the time in my life to be careless with sharp knives.  But I do keep them very sharp with a 15º edge, not the 20 from the manufacturer.

Last week, my friend on the 14th floor asked me to bring one of my knives to cut a hunk of frozen cheese in quarters for her.  No Problem I sez.  I have the knives to do it with.  Afterwards, I gently cleaned the knife in her sink and noticed there was red stuff in the water.

“What the heck.” I said.  “Where is this red color coming from?”  About this time, I began to notice my finger tip started feeling bad.  “What the heck.” I repeated.

Well, I took a slice off the end of my finger and I could not get it to stop bleeding.  My friend had some Cayenne pepper which is good for cuts as it closes the capillaries.  Unfortunately, my capillaries did not know this.  So, I wrapped it up in a paper towel and went home.I sat out on my balcony with a good cigar and book for about an hour.  When I went in for something, I noticed blood dripping out from the paper towel.  It took several hours for this little slice to stop bleeding.  But it finally quit and I placed a bandage on it to keep it from draining all my blood away.And now a week later …The offending knife is in the background.

If it took that long for a small slice to quit bleeding, I wonder how long it would have taken if I had cut my finger clean off.  Or my head!!

Be careful with knives.  Someone could get their head cut off.