Knives are awesome. You can chop celery, ward off intruders, and perform circus sideshows with them. In the high end kitchen market there are two dominant brands, Henckels and Wusthof. Both of these brands are incredible and are fairly evenly matched. I personally use Wusthof knives, but if I were to buy again today I might make a different choice.

There are a couple key things to look for in your cutlery. First is the construction of the blade. The two types of blades are forged blades and stamped blades. Stamped blades are machine cut from thin pieces of metal and then ground into a knife. Forged knives are hand shaped from a thicker steel blank and then ground into a knife. It’s easy to tell which is which by holding a knife. Forged knives are heavier, while stamped knives are flimsy. Forged knives also hold their edge much longer - always buy them.

It’s also important to have a full tang blade. The tang is the part of the knife that extends into the handle. Full tang means that it extends throughout the whole handle, while other types of tangs extend only an inch or two in. Having a full tang means that the knife will be weighted better and that there’s less of a chance of the knife breaking. All high quality knives are full tang.

Weighting and balancing are also important. When held properly, you want for the knife to be evenly balanced so that no effort is required to keep it straight. This seems like a minor consideration, but cutting herbs with a handle-heavy knife will get annoying very fast because you can’t use the knife’s weight to your advantage.

Besides Wusthof and Henckels, there is another high quality, forged bladed, full tang, well balanced knife brand out there called “Cook’s Knives”. I was very suspicious initially since they’re made in China and I’d never heard of them, but one of my chef friends loved the ones he bought.

I ordered a cleaver since I didn’t have one, and I was very impressed when I got it. Its construction was actually so similar to my Wusthof Classic knives that the casual observer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The cleaver was fantastic, making it very easy to chop through 8 young Thai coconuts (which are very hard to cut traditionally). I’ve also had the opportunity to check out my friend’s more extensive collection, and I am equally impressed with those.

The knives are forged, have a full tang, and excellent balance. The one area where they fall short is that they are pure stainless steel. Ultra premium knives like Wusthof and Henckels add things like Carbon and Beryllium to the knives to make them keep their edge longer. If you want the very best, buy a set of Wusthof or Henckels knives, but if you want 95% of the performance at 10-30% of the price, check these out.

You can buy them at JC Penney

I hate microwaves. In my old house I never had one, and in my new house it came built in but never gets used. They warm food up, but they make it mushy or tough. No matter how you slice it, there’s always a better way to cook or warm up any given food.

The problem is that these superior methods of cooking often take a long time, particularly the oven. If I have leftovers from a restaurant, I like to put them in the oven. Three hundred fifty degrees for about 15-20 minutes makes them taste just like they did the night before. Unfortunately it takes much longer than that in practice because the oven must be preheated.

Welcome to the world of the Panasonic Light Oven. This sucker has been around for several years now, but hasn’t really been popular because no one can tell if it’s a microwave, toaster, toaster oven, or something else. The answer is that it’s basically a cross between a toaster oven, an oven, and the divine warmth of jesus.

The Light Oven works through two methods that you’ve never seen before. The first are these weird ceramic bars inside the box. The bars are infrared heaters which heat the middle of the food. This isn’t like a microwave where they heat the middle of the food and turn it into a leathery mush - it’s just as if an oven heated it.

The second method employed are super bright lights. Don’t be fooled - these aren’t like the 60 watt bulb you used to put in your barbie oven as a kid. These bulbs are so bright that they can instantly heat the chamber to about 500 degrees. No need to preheat! They’re so bright that wimpy reviewers complain that the oven is too bright - don’t listen to them. It’s glorious.

You can use the oven to bake, but I rarely do it. My foolproof method of leftover recovery is as follows:

1. Remove other packaging and wrap leftovers in tin foil. I even do this for thick soups. The tin foil is nice and thin so that your food can heat even quicker.
2. If possible, make your little tin foil package as even in height as possible. If something is too big to allow this, don’t worry about it.
3. Set the light oven for 17 minutes at 355 degrees.

That’s it! After 17 minutes your food will taste perfect and be the perfect temperature. I do this many times a week and it’s always fantastic. When I went to Boston a few weeks ago and didn’t have a light oven I went crazy trying to reheat food. The regular oven and toaster oven both took too long.

Buy it at Amazon.