I was gathering my kitchen knives (including some old produce knives) for a trip to my local hardware store when Russ T. Blade popped up from behind the counter. “Rusty,” as most regular readers know, is the miniature, imaginary produce manager who occasionally appears to talk shop.
Rusty: OK, I’ll bite. Running out the door with your mismatched collection of knives. Why?
Me: Just a run to get them sharpened. A dull knife, as you know, is a dangerous knife, so a couple of times each year I get them sharpened using their service all at once.
Rusty: In the produce backroom, we have one of those off-the-shelf, drag-the-blade-through-type of sharpeners. Crude, but helps to keep an edge.
Me: I remember those things. We also used a sharpening stone, though even after all these years, I haven’t the patience or skill to get the brand-new kind of edge quality on my blades that I prefer.
Rusty: The drag-through sharpeners are awful. When we had more butchers in the store, they would sharpen customers’ knives, and produce knives too, on their stones as a regular complimentary service. No longer.
Me: The important point here is staying sharp. Even as I scratch out these weekly tidbits of produce observations and muses, it helps me, you know, stay connected. Stay sharp.
Rusty: I recall having a similar conversation with you about ten years ago on a similar kind of milestone.
Me: Milestone? About keeping produce and produce knives sharp?
Rusty: No, it was about hitting the 500-column mark. That’s a lot of knives, a lot of columns and recollections about using knives for countless trimming, cutting pallet wrapping, cutting samples of fresh produce for customers.
Me: Seems like just yesterday. Ten years ago — so, that means?
Rusty: You key-tapping dunderhead. That means this column is the 1,000-column point for this, “The Produce Aisle.”
Me: Are you sure? Let me calculate that for a sec; I may need to take off my shoes so I don’t lose count.
Rusty: Trust me. It’s 1,000.
Me: When I first started, I had about three typed pages of topic ideas. I didn’t know if I’d last 20 weeks, much less going on nearly 20 years now. Seems like every time I walk through a produce department or speak to a manager, it sparks one aspect of the business that I haven’t quite covered.
Rusty: We celebrate little achievements or milestones over the course of our lives, such as our personal ones like our wedding anniversaries and our kids’ birthdays. And just about everyone can immediately recall how long they’ve been in this wacky produce business, so yeah, it’s OK to pause to reflect on the 1,000-column mark.
Me: My reminders are all around me: the business and fresh produce books on my shelf, the produce-shipper ballcaps that adorn my top shelf, even the little stitch-scars on my knuckles still visible from years of trimming.
Rusty: I imagine the few produce trim knives included in your kitchen knife sharpening run are another constant reminder. Keep produce trimmed closely, right?
Me: Definitely. Gotta stay sharp. Figuratively and, well, literally.
Rusty: A thousand columns and counting. Looking sharp to me.
Me: Thanks, pal. It’s been a privilege.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for two decades.
