I think that I’ve always been afraid of  cheese graters. Frankly, any rational person should be. A cheese grater’s potential for inflicting fucked up amounts of damage to human flesh far outweighs its utility in the kitchen.

Granted, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m probably missing something when it comes to cheese grater technique. Taking a new block of cheddar and shredding it with a grater is pretty straightforward, but when I get down to the last quarter of the block, shit gets a little too real. Every downward swipe becomes exponentially more frightening, yet I feel compelled to keep at it due to the voice in my head telling me that I shouldn’t waste a perfectly good ounce of cheese. Swap the voice in my head with that of Tobin Bell and you’ve got yourself a scene right out of a Saw film.

“The key to your shackles is hidden inside that block of cheese.”

Needless to say I now purchase my cheese pre-shredded. It’s well worth the inflated price so that I can sleep at night without having nightmares about losing chunks of my finger tips the next time that I want tacos for dinner. That rule also applies to anything else that one could imagine using a cheese grater for, because no matter what I do  it always turns into some kind of shit show. I tried making hash browns from scratch the other day by grating whole potatoes, but by the time I finished the job the potato shreds had turned purple. Purple.

It occurs to me that if I ever find myself in captivity being tortured for information by some nefarious government, they’re likely going to Google this blog post and whip out the grater. It goes without saying that I’ll sing like a bird, so anyone thinking about sharing the nuclear launch codes with me should consider themselves warned. On the bright side, there would be little need for cheese graters after a nuclear holocaust.