Because pumpkin soup.
I love mucking around with a cleaver and a pumpkin. For years I just used a large kitchen knife, and it was always a hassle, so I didn’t cook pumpkin much. With a cleaver, pumpkins are easy – and fun! I channel the kick-arse women of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when I’m using mine.
Although every now and then the Cleaver that pops into my head is rather more rumpled…
Richard Roxburgh as Cleaver Greene in Rake (ABCTV)
Categories: arts & entertainment, Life
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
100 books by women in 2016 
Sunday Poetry: Agendas by Elaine Gallagher 
Vale David Bowie 
Hoyden About Town 
Still Life with Cleaver?
Cleavers freak me out a bit, probably because I don’t know how to use them properly. I usually manage pumpkins with a big kitchen knife, but Mr angharad doesn’t like pumpkin so I don’t cook them very often. On the other hand I have been in the situation of cutting up small (or large) birds and badly wanted a cleaver for that.
I remember when my wee fella was only a year old and just barely walking, I had him with me on a day I was working in a theatre. He found a prop cleaver, with blood and everything, and came out proudly showing us how he could walk while holding something in both hands. One of the more hilarious sights in my life.
When the Boy Who Will Not Sleep was younger we used to call him Danger Baby. Partly this was because he could not put his hand in the kitchen drawer or reach up to the counter without coming away with a sharp knife. Even when he was too small to see what he was reaching for. We quickly learned to keep all the sharp knives in the house at the back of the counters against the wall, but not before having a few hairy incidents where we had to chase a one year old toddler round the house trying to wrest from him the large, very sharp chef’s knife he was waving over his head.