On using the mandoline when really really hungry

DON'T DO IT!

I did, however. Picture below sums it up.

Warning: slightly graphic images after the jump (involving a small slice of flesh that once belonged to my thumb)


So I came back from class yesterday evening, feeling hungry. I started preparing dinner (fried potatoes and jerusalem artichoke -- that stuff is good!) only to find the cooker to be dead (electricity down on that circuit). Great. Some pondering ensued. The oven still seemed to work, so I sprinkled some oil on the food and shoved it in the oven. I'll deal with the stove later, I thought.

Five minutes later, boom. The light goes down, the oven dies, no more electricity. Everything dead this itme. Food still raw, awesome.

Turns out that only our hall was affected. Called the guy responsible, waited half an hour (getting real hungry now) just to see him open up the circuit board and flip some fuses (took 10 seconds, but we cannot access the fuses ourself, neat).

Ok, so I'm really hungry now, and I remember I still have some cheese left in the frige. That'll be awesome on those oven-roasted potatoes and jerusalem artichokes!

I reach for the grater and start start grating away. Takes too long. Brilliant idea: use the mandoline! That'll definitly be quicker! Bear in mind that this was a block of old, hard cheese, so I knew I needed to use quite a bit of force. First stroke. Gripping cheese firmly in fist. Cheese somehow skips over knife. Thumb somehow doesn't skip over knife.

... CRAP ...

I look at the side of my thumb, it now has a flat piece that used to be round. Blood immediately started flowing through a small bloodvessel that was clearly cut. I look at the mandoline to see what happened there. Instead of a nice slice of cheese, I find a disturbing slice of thumb:

Here is a close up of the piece. You can clearly see two dots in the center. That's the bloodvessel that was cut, causing the excessive blood leakage.

Also note that in all pictures, the piece started to curl up a bit. The pictures were taken about an hour or so after the incident happened and the thin edges of the flesh were starting to dry out and contract, making it curl up.

Lastly, an impression of what I saw after cutting it, with a blood stained towel in the background:

Maybe I'll post some pictures of the thumb itself later on. I really hope it will heal up nicely...

Valuable lesson learned: don't use a mandoline on hard cheese when starved. Ever.