Last December, in between hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas in the new house, painting and unpacking, I got distracted one night while cutting an onion and sliced 3/4 of the way through my left thumb tip. The injury was painful, but not nearly as bad as the experience of getting my thumb stitched back together. Fingers and toes, I was told at the ER, are the worst places to get stitches. My thumb still isn’t its old self again, and it hurts to do things like push buttons on the remote.

Read more on Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen…