Ryan McKern

This has been a week of bar­gain shop­ping and self grat­i­fi­ca­tion. It's remark­ably dif­fi­cult for some­one with a birth­day that butts ass-backwards up against Christ­mas to truly be self­less this time of year, and my recent spend­ing spree only rein­forces this statement.

On the 22nd I picked up an 18" John Boos end grain wal­nut butcher block cut­ting board. It's about two, maybe two 1/2 inches thick, and appar­ently sells for $250 new. It was on the clear­ance shelf at a local Big Box Kitchen Store, with no tag or wrap­per. Some­one prob­a­bly left it there because it weighs about 25lbs. I took it to the front counter, where I asked if it should have been in clear­ance or if it was a mis­take. A fran­tic, har­ried look­ing woman pointed to another girl there and said "I have to ask her. I don't know, but she will."

She then asked a girl who looked about five years younger than me (read: prob­a­bly col­lege stu­dent who doesn't really know any­thing about the store, but needed a job for the hol­i­day sea­son), who said "I have to check the com­puter." This girl then pulled up the Box Box Kitchen Store's web page and looked for "cut­ting board". It listed about 90 prod­ucts, with pho­tos. None of them were this board. I sug­gested she try "Boos" and go from there but she pooh-pooh'ed me (I am just an old man who doesn't under­stand com­put­ers, after all), and said this was every­thing. She then said that since she couldn't find it she'd have to find some­thing similar.

While she was off look­ing, I searched for "Boos", found it, priced it (EXPENSIVE), and closed the browser win­dow. She returned with a tape mea­surer and said "I think this is the one on sale but I have to mea­sure it to be sure". Get­ting a rough diam­e­ter, she then said "yeah, this one is $49.95." I just smiled, and offered to carry it to the reg­is­ter for her.

Some­one is get­ting hollered at dur­ing inven­tory, but it's not going to be me.

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Addi­tion­ally, the local cut­lery shop sold me a slightly used Global 3" par­ing knife and a name­less, but vin­tage, car­bon steel par­ing knife for $10 this week­end past. The car­bon steel knife is a clipped point knife set in a wooden han­dle with a half tang, going back prob­a­bly 20 or 30 years, and is in remark­ably good shape. The blade is tight in the han­dle and the pins through the tang are still solid. No cracks, no pit­ting, and just a slight car­bon steel patina.