I've been composting for several years and have never chopped anything...not that I didn't try. I tried to chop leaves with a Black and Decker leaf blower/sucker but the plastic blades got more beat up than the leaves did. I tried mowing the leaves but that vaporized them, so I didn't have anything left to compost. Now I just pile the leaves up and keep them moist. Kitchen scraps go in whole no matter what size they started. I have composted many a pumpkin that went into the pile whole. I have also composted rats, a squirrel, and a dog all without chopping.

I'm about to get an edge-grain butcher block to replace the top of my island, too (it's currently stainless, and since our new counter will be stainless I figured I should go w/ something to warm things up a bit). I'm tired of having to wash the myriad of cutting boards we have, too. Basically any hard wood's good. Maple, yes, but I'm looking for something darker. I was considering brazilian cherry (jatoba) although I'm concerned it might be too red looking. It might just depend on the particular batch (for lack of a better word). Also considered pacific madrone which is local but it's very stripy unless you pay a lot more to cherry pick (I'd probably rather have stripes than too red), and I'm also willing to get reclaimed wood if its prior use was food-grade, e.g. wine vat oak which is fun w/ its occasion rose-colored stripe thrown in. Not as hard on janka scale but harder than some. Also would consider mesquite, teak and possibly edge-grain bamboo though it's lighter than I like. Here are some color examples: http://www.endurawood.com/material-options/ Here are color examples (some very different looking though same wood) as well as their janka ratings: http://www.devoswoodworking.com/Wood_Countertops_Samples/WoodsAvailable.htm This is the place that sells cherry-picked madrone. Uber expensive but beautiful beautiful wood (and very hard): http://www.thejoinery.com/about/commercial/counter%20top/index.php A nice example of jatoba (brazilian cherry): http://lumberjocks.com/Straightpiped/blog/11961 HTH!

We are redoing our kitchen with a very large island, and we are going with all butcher block countertops on that prep space. I intend to use it daily, often, as a cutting board. I do have separate boards I use for meat, and that practice will continue. I am actually in the camp that believes (backed up by science, although both sides can say that) that the antibacterial bugs inside the wood keep it from getting nasty - I still use a separate board for cutting meat but don't freak when a little steak juice escapes. BTW, my other boards are all wood as well (I am JK Adams' best customer!) Like Sharon, I constantly get admiring comments from those who see my current island (butcher block-topped), even when I haven't oiled it in a while. I'll try to take a pic of the island and post it. I love the feel of cutting on the wood, love that I don't have to worry about nicks and scratches when someone is there helping me in the kitchen, love the look of a used piece of furniture in the work space. Good luck with your decision. As most things kitchen, it all boils down to how you like to work, and that includes what you like to see in the kitchen space. Nica

Lars, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean that at all! I wasn't addressing only the women or lumping the men in with the women. I only meant that the proportion of women plumping for the raw size of rare was unusual to me. The men's responses seemed to be a normal or unremarkable spread. In the linked discussion, I could have said "people", but I said women just because I know about women's cooking behavior, both now and from my grandmother's age, as well as what I've read in old diaries and cooking articles. I don't know enough about men to say, though I have heard lectures about the kinds of implements that women used in the past, while I can't recall anything on the subject about chuckwagon cookies or other male cooks. My only memories of a being in a kitchen with a man making a reduction are by an astronautical engineer who is more precision oriented. I wasn't excluding men, per se, just didn't have any relevant information on how they do things so didn't speak for them. If something should like that should happen again, please chime in! There are some posters whose genders/gender identities aren't known to me, but I promise you I don't mean to marginalize men, and I certainly didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable. This is not a women's group, nor do I regard it as one. I have belonged to a women's group whose mission was to give women roles and authority, as well as a feminine voice, in what was otherwise a very traditional, traditionally male field, but even then men were welcome to participate so long as they didn't try to take over. This is not such a group and the only one I can remember belonging to which was 100% women only was the girl scouts. Neither textiles nor cooking are womens' fields (nursing babies is, though there are some men with acquired (rather than experiential) knowledge on the subject), nor does gender of any kind have much to do with them. While there are some sociological and biological differences in tastes, they're not prominent. That is something that desired meat temperature speaks to, however, which is why I made the remarks at all--it was a beside the way difference that I found interesting and educational.