I maintain a sightless kitchen since the happenstance that robbed me of my ability to see. Yes, I'm a blind architect--and, in my private life, a blind cook as well. I tried many, many cutting boards. Cutting boards with tactile surfaces in which I could feel each yawning crevice where my mighty blade had carved the record of its path through a soft, yielding tomato or a difficult but ultimately vanquished carrot. This is the record that the cutting board left me: the record of my fingers. Then one day I was rushed to the hospital: the doctors later said that I'd contracted e.coli 0934a(e) from those faithful crevices, and my old board went out the door. Cooking seemed to be impossible--I'm one of those chefs who, if I can't Chop! Chop!, am uninterested in the project. Let others slap chicken filets into a pan or sprinkle herbs de provence over their sauteed spaghetti...I want to feel fruits, vegetables, and bony meats yield under the steady and unrelenting pressure of my cold steel blade. My wife noticed my depression and began napping throughout the course of the day, waking only to urge me to walk the dog. But then someone "hipped" me to the Henckels Birch Cutting Board. My gosh--it was as if I could see again. I began chopping everything in sight. Carrots, potatoes, zucchini, some old pasty stuff I felt around for on the bottom shelf of the fridge, soon I'd chopped up everything in the house, including some old hand-me-downs we'd been keeping around and a couple of pieces of furniture I didn't particularly like because I was always tripping over them. I think I can say with full confidence that the Henckels Birch Cutting Board saved my sanity--and my life.