A cheap knife that has been properly sharpened will beat an expensive knife that has become dull. Knives get dull quickly, no matter how good they are (if you think otherwise, you don't know what a truly sharp knife is like). Sending knives away to be sharpened sufficiently frequently that they stay properly sharp is not practical. Resharpening services are not an alternative to home sharpening; they serve a different purpose (restoring the edge of a knife after repeated home sharpening). A good knife will take a better edge, and hold that edge longer, than a poor knife, but "good" and "poor" don't correlate precisely to price. How sharp a knife is when you buy it only tells you that it can be given a good edge; it does not tell you how well that edge will last, nor how easy it will be to resharpen the knife. The cheap "Fibrox" handled knives recommended by America's Test Kitchen work very well if you keep them sharp, and they are easy to sharpen. If you abuse them they are cheap to replace. We have expensive Japanese and German knives and cheap Fibrox knives; the expensive knives are better than the cheap ones, but the cheap ones are more than adequate. It would be a crime to run a fine Japanese knife through an electric sharpener or run it up a diamond "steel"; for the cheap knives, who cares? That means it's much less work to keep the cheap knives adequately sharp (not as sharp as I can achieve with a good hand sharpening on expensive Japanese water stones, but plenty good enough for the real world). This post was edited by PeterH2 on Thu, Feb 21, 13 at 18:39

What is meant by coping? In the broad psychological sense it is the way we respond to our environment and the people we live and work with. That is, coping is making the best of a situation; it is coming to terms with or successfully dealing with whatever comes our way. It is rolling with the punches and going with the flow. It is about handling or managing our life. Coping is about survival, about not being beaten into submission, and about not being pushed around by life. It is about rising to the occasion and taking charge of one's fate. Coping is more complex than it first appears. After all, when we do so, we have to cope on three levels, for we have to manage our environment, our feelings, and our body. Let's look at an example. Suppose a coworker that I'm obligated to work with always treats me rudely. Since I don't want that to continue, I have to handle my coworker (the environment), my feelings of frustration, disappointment, and anger, as well as my headaches, the knots in my stomach, and my tense muscles, all of which are symptoms of stress. Imagine a seed pushing through the soil, and after breaking free, stretching upward, twisting and turning to face the sun, while digging deeply for the sustenance of water. The lives of plants and animals are lives of coping. For life is, depending on how we look at it, an endless chain of difficulties, challenges, or opportunities. This being so, it is important to learn how to cope. Failure to do so will block further progress and stunt our growth. Coping does not mean abandoning one's responsibly by acquiescence. For example, if the lights go off during an electrical storm, you don't have to call a 'Coping with the Darkness' support group. Instead, do what you can: light candles or get a flashlight and check the fuses. Coping, then, is proactive, not passive. Take charge of life; don't let it just happen to you. There are many ways to cope, some are effective, others ineffective, and still others are harmful. Take Tony, for instance, he's a teen that turns to alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs to 'overcome' his shyness. Instead of gaining freedom, he's become enslaved. Even if he doesn't become addicted, he's become dependent on crutches to get by. Emotionally, he's become racked with guilt, regret, and feelings of worthlessness, all of which makes him even shyer. Add to this the anxiety and worry he will experience after learning about the damage he is doing to his body. This is an example of harmful coping. But harmful coping is actually non-coping. For coping is about resolving problems, not adding to them. if we are to successfully cope, we must stop before we act, go over our options, study their consequences, and choose wisely. Cigarettes or work-outs in the gym? Drugs or self-improvement? Alcohol or helping others? Progress, stagnation, or regression? Happiness or misery? We have inherited an incredible coping machine called the human brain, but it's not much help unless we choose to use it. Don't rely on crutches, rely on your brain. We can use rational thinking to handle our problems. Yet, we often abandon reason by giving in to fear, succumbing to anxiety, and by being swept away by stress. When it comes to effective living, if I were to choose one trait over any other, it would be courage. After all, it is a powerful tool for coping. When we face life, we also have to face death, so how can we live without courage? Much ineffective or harmful coping arises from fear. We try to 'solve' our problem by avoiding it, denying it, repressing it, or hiding it. However, the courageous face their problems squarely. They prefer planning for the future instead of worrying about it. They prefer learning from the past instead of feeling guilty about it. They prefer forgiving and accepting the weaknesses of others instead of harboring resentment and anger. They prefer to focus on the right thing to do instead of focusing on their fear. The good news is, if we're a little low on courage, it's very easy to boost our level. We need to get into the habit of deliberately choosing to do something we dislike and something we fear every day. By doing what we dislike, we develop discipline, and by doing what we fear we become courageous. And by acquiring discipline and courage we become successful at coping. Moreover, if we master the art of successfully coping, we become unstuck; we gain our freedom and can move from one 'problem' to the next. Most of all, we gain our happiness.The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind. Someone once wrote, "It is a wise person that adapts themselves to all contingencies; it's the fool who always struggles like a swimmer against the current." Both sentiments reveal another characteristic of successful coping. We need to accept what cannot be changed. Why bang our head against the wall? Why be stubborn? Why be rigid when it's so easy to go with the flow? Would you stand up and fight for something of no value? Of course not. So, it should come as no surprise that those who consider themselves worthless, can't cope. Before they can, they need to learn to value themselves. They can begin doing so by reading and applying what they learn in some of the many books on self-esteem that are available in libraries and bookstores, as well as the resources on the Internet. Study the lives of successful people and you will discover they all had a positive attitude. They have a take-charge disposition. They may take some punches, stumble, or even get knocked down, but they refuse to stay down! They are survivors because of their inner strength or resilience, which comes about because of the discipline and courage I mentioned earlier. Where others see disasters and catastrophes, they see challenges and opportunities; where others trek on the road to despair, they pave a path of hope. It's all a choice they made, a choice we can make.... You say he tells you to leave and never come back?Sadly,That goes to show you what kind of a father he really is.I can tell you from experience-its better to be alone than in an emotional abusive relationship.Not only for you,but for your little girl.Believe me,those kind of scars(the invisable ones) take alot longer to heal.When i was struggling to get out of a really bad relationship,not knowing where to go with 2 kids and no job (i was totally dependent on him)i remmember my therapist asking me...what if he were to die tommorow?What would you do?To which i answered:"i'd have to find a way to survive" i realized at that moment that i could do it and i did.... Hope this helps- Dcubana

@Carl Arnold, welcome to the cooking forum! And if you really are a person trying to join in, and not trying to drive traffic to some outside website (why I mentioned no link, but sometimes there's a post that's sort of on topic, and the link comes later), you really are very welcome. As Sherry said, we have problems with bots. Your post was overwritten—very beautifully—for this kind of message board. Your follow up was more normal in tone, but unfortunately the new AI is capable of it all. That said, while we do run to older females in traditional families, we try not to exclude our younger, male, non-binary, non-traditional, unique and diverse posters, and it's right to call us out when we fail in that. Your point about cooking roles being more dependent on individual skills than gender is on topic, and an important POV, no matter how many of us have experienced the calcified classic gender roles in the title of the post. I bought a little table top barbecue last year, and have a littler freestanding one that's cute, but harder to use, and generally too small. I'm not really into outdoor cooking, and don't live in a climate where it's necessary. My little barbecues make my menfolk snicker. They have big and bigger gas grills to cook on...but really only for outdoor parties. I don't get the point (it not being an outdoor kitchen for all cooking in too hot and humid for indoors weather). I think barbecues should burn charcoal and aromatic wood chips to be worth the bother. I use a chimney starter. Barbecues are bad for the air quality, however, so mine are minimally used. The ”outdoors” cooking for us is not a gender thing determined by cultural norms, just a combination of attitudes and druthers that fall that way, informed by weather and circumstance.

I'm still reading through this thread, and very much enjoying it. I personally function better and am more relaxed in a space with most things "put away," but when it comes to actually doing things, visible storage is required for me. I too am an avid cook, and being able to look at a large shelving unit that's open with all of my ingredients helps me greatly, otherwise, like OP's husband, if there's something behind another thing, unless it's commonly accessed, it gets lost. For me, keeping everything in one place (or 2, if both are high-traffic) is a necessity, otherwise things get forgotten I had an old dresser that i used to store uncommonly used items in the laundry room at our old place and threw out so much very old food when we moved. Same thing with medications, they all need to be stored in one easy to access location. My husband will get things out, use them, imagine another use, and then leave them on the coffee table until I pick them up and put them in his hobby room, and it makes me crazy. A landing strip next to the door that's most used is required for us. Keys, wallet, stamps, extra cash, etc all go there (I have a little tray to help keep it contained, if there's more than fits on the tray, that means we need to do some management). But overall, removal of flat surfaces is the key to this for us. I'd like to have a dining table, but when we had one, it became a clutter pile and didn't get used as a table, so we got rid of it. I highly recommend reading up on the clutterbug organizing styles, there's a quiz, might be worth having your husband take (it's very short) which will give you a better idea of what organization style works for him, and how to fuse the 2 together.