Chances are you've used a knife that doesn't seem to do what it was made to do: cut. When you start to cut, the knife slips on the food or twists in your hand so your cuts aren't straight. Sometimes, the knife doesn't even cut - it crushes the food instead. Obviously, the solution is to sharpen the knife, but what if the knife just isn't any good? Buying an expensive knife should guarantee good performance, right? I tested eleven different chef's knives with prices ranging from under $30 to over $200. Conclusions Cooking For Engineers Recommended: MAC MTH-80 MAC Mighty Chef 8" with dimples ($110)

Whenever I shop for food, I look at the ingredients listing to see what went into it. It started off as just a simple fascination with what factories use to make foods, but now I'm looking to see if partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (an indicator of the presence of trans fatty acids) are in the food (as well as other "unnatural" substances). I have a tendency to shy away from foods that have ingredients that I cannot recognize - but what are these weird ingredients and what do they do? What are they doing in my food (especially since I don't have them in my pantry and don't use them in my home cooked meals)? Here's a list that I've been slowly compiling of food additives.