tk – The Globe and Mail [Video]

When I cleared out my mother‘s apartment after she moved to an assisted living home a few years ago, I scavenged a few things from her kitchen: the palm-sized rock from the shores of the Indian Ocean that was used to grind spices, a set of stainless steel bowls, a wooden press for making string hoppers, a Sri Lankan noodle dish.

Her trusty knife she‘d used for decades, however, went into the donation pile.

It was a steak knife with a black plastic handle and a serrated edge that had never seen a sharpener. You can buy a dozen of them for $23.99 at Canadian Tire. I think she’d had hers since the eighties.

It was a mom knife, a.k.a. a nonna knife, a.k.a. an amma knife. Maybe your mother, aunt or grandmother uses one to finely julienne carrots, to slice onions, to face off against giant heads of savoy …