The day starts calmly enough. First it s the frozen stuff and the produce. Cooking is about heat, but prep work is just as often cold. You re in and out of refrigerators and freezers, and if there s fish or seafood on the menu, you get to experience a kind of localized hypothermia from having your hands in ice water too long. You feel the cuts only later.
Cooks can trace their careers on their hands.
The scars on those two fingers are from chopping vegetables. The next one was a lesson in why not to gesture when you re cutting meat. A careless co-worker s knife left its mark on the other hand. Evidence of the burns disappears sooner, but at the time they re even worse. Grab a pot handle that s been left over the burner and you ll carry the memory long after the wound itself heals.