These are surely two things that don't go together - baguettes and bandages. Except when you're cutting into one that's still frozen. And when you use the wrong knife to do it with. Those darn little chunks of delicious bread can turn on you in a hurry. Cooking late on a weeknight, my husband sliced wide and deep into the tip of his left index finger. (As a cousin researched this issue later, we learned that this is also called the "trigger" finger. I guess that depends on which hand you shoot with.)

A bit more blood was flowing than with the fishhook incident. We gave it a good 20 minutes before heading off to emergency. It was all a cheerful ordeal, especially since it followed our daily Happy Hour on the deck. Our terrific emergency folks remembered us from the fish hook/tetanus shot visit. Six stitches and a full hand bandage later, we headed home with the warning to "not use anything sharp." A kindly neighbor suggested that housework would surely cause it to go gangrene.

For the next few days, everyone wanted to know about it. We spent more time explaining what a baguette was than talking about the gore itself. As a last resort, we just started telling folks it was "French bread."