Cutting my finger and realizing the limits of my cooking

Last weekend, I hosted guests at my home, making for a fun but hectic weekend.

On Monday, once things had settled down, it happened while I was chopping cabbage for okonomiyaki. The knife, which I had just sharpened and was razor-sharp, gouged the skin on the outer side of my thumb's first joint.

I didn't feel the pain immediately, but blood began to ooze out slowly. It was a 'well, I've done it now' kind of feeling. These things happen when you let your guard down. Usually, I cut with the side of the knife resting against my thumb's first joint, but this time, because I was cutting a large cabbage, the blade of the knife rose higher than my thumb.

Over the previous weekend, I had been doing more complex cooking than usual to prepare meals for my guests. That fatigue, combined with the relaxation that comes after getting through it, might have been the factors that led to the accident.

The multitasking required for cooking is quite demanding; when you try to make multiple dishes at once, you have to keep your mind and body running at full speed to keep up. You need to assess the cooking times and processes for each dish and incorporate the necessary tasks accordingly.

If you don't think carefully about things like 'I'll use onions for this and that, so it's less work to chop them both at once' or 'I'll preheat the oven while I'm doing such-and-such,' the cracks will grow until everything falls apart. It went well this time, but since any flaws in the process show up in the appearance and taste of the food, cooking is as cruel as it is fun.

Restaurant chefs are amazing, and so are the people who cook every day. People who are good at cooking must have very quick minds. I feel that for me, my limit for simultaneous cooking is two dishes. This time, I tried to make three at once, which felt like it pushed me past my capacity and left me exhausted.

Fortunately, the wound wasn't very deep, and it is now scabbing over and starting to heal. I was literally made to feel the pain of needing to be careful when handling a knife.