Oooh, very good to know, thanks!

TRUE STORY

Jesus, she’s not criticizing, she’s explaining the recipe! Ellen literally mashed her ball into pieces without even trying. Like, being entertaining and making jokes during a segment to make it fun is one thing, but they were just being disrespectful!

Yeah, she was definitely better than Ellen.

I’ve heard great things about Wusthof! I haven’t invested in a real adult bread knife yet, so maybe I’ll check theirs out.

Don’t stab OR whack at the pit with a blade. It’s a terrible idea.

Yeah, I think that about covers it. Kitchen scissors are useful to have around, and I suppose those could theoretically count as a kind of knife. Steak knives and butter knives (and if you’re bougie, cheese knives) are good to have, but they’re more for eating than for cooking.

Fair.

Watching Ellen and Nicole Kidman REPEATEDLY talk over Giada was what tipped it into infuriating for me. Holy hell, that was rude behavior.

I used to totally hate her (no good reason, really), but she’s grown on me a ton in the past few years. She seems genuinely nice and competent. Before seeing this segment, I had positive feelings toward Ellen, and entirely neutral ones toward Nicole Kidman, but now I offically hate them both.

Hahah, yeah. Even easier to make the mistake of spelling it mandolin, like the musical instrument. I blame the French.

If you take the side with the pit in it, and slice that side in half around the pit again, you can twist off one side. Then you have the pit 3/4 exposed, instead of just half, and you can just grab it with your hand and twist it out.

Just eat it all! Problem solved.

I wonder if this is because serrated knives are hard to sharpen, so most people have fairly dull bread knives?

Counterpoint: A good sharp chef’s knife will work for almost anything, and if you have one and get really comfortable with it, it becomes like an extension of your body, so that using it safely and effectively is second nature.

Yes! A little pair of wire cutters might work well, too.

Mandoline? (Now I’m trying to imagine a dangerous madeline, though, which is entertaining.)

Try doing it this way: http://jezebel.com/1795093381

Yeah, I can imagine.

WHY? Oh my god, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. The only thing harder than trying to safely slice something round is trying to safely slice something round AND slippery.