You know all those things you should do to keep your knives in top notch shape? Yes well, I don't do any of them. I mean to, but I don't. I use them on plates and countertops instead of the cutting board. I put them away without drying them. I use them to open bags of chips. I keep them piled up in a drawer.

And those long pointy things you're supposed to slide the knife up and down against before using? Yeah, it didn't do anything for me.

I figured that Lazy Ladygoat was destined to a life of being squirted in the eye by tomatoes and/or buying new knives every year.

And then ... I discovered the Professional Knife Sharpener.

Not too far from my house is man who sharpens knives out of his house for a living. It's at the top of two flights of creaking wooden stairs on a hill, darkened by many tall and imposing trees. When I first went to get a set of knives sharpened, I had to leave them on his porch, because was not to be at home. Thus the house was dark and especially spooky, and it occurred to me that this could all be a sinister ruse to trick the young and innocent into a chamber of horrors, unknowingly bearing the tools of their own tortuous murder with them.

No one jumped out from the shadows.

Nevertheless, I admit to being a little nervous when I went back the next day to pick the knives up. (Perhaps psychotic killers prefer to use sharp knives just as much as the home chef).

But no: he was really just a knife sharpener. And an excellent knife sharpener at that. It only cost me $20 to get four knives done, and the difference was amazing. They were like entirely new knives. Even the one with had had a sizeable dent in it from being smacked with a hammer (don't ask) was remarkably sharp and was now was one of the preferred knives in the kitchen and made chopping tomatoes amazingly easy.

So what is the lesson here? Get your kitchen knives professionally sharpened, of course.