Get the book!

Sketchplanations podcast photo of Rob Bell, Tom Pellereau and Jono Hey

Prefer to listen?

Try the podcast

🎉 Help keep Sketchplanations ad-free 🎉 Keep this ad-free 🎉 Help keep Sketchplanations ad-free by supporting me

Use serrated knives for foods with a hard outside and soft inside

Copied!

👇 Get new sketches each week

Seems so simple now, but I swear I was in my 20s before I figured this out.

Published 18 Mar 2014

Get the book!

Big Ideas Little Pictures

Prefer to listen?

Try the podcast

🎉 Help keep Sketchplanations ad-free 🎉 Keep this ad-free 🎉 Help keep Sketchplanations ad-free by supporting me

Keep exploring

Everyone’s a geek about something

Compose a cheeseboard

What is the difference between traditional Stock, Broth and Jus explained: a large cooking pot of water has bones thrown in to make Stock. A second pot has meat added to water to make Broth. The cooking tray used to roast a chicken is tipped up to pour out the Jus, made from pan drippings.

Stock, Broth, Jus

A fisherman illustrates the parable of the fishing net by concluding a minimum size of fish because they never see any smaller in their nets — you get what you measure

You get what you measure

The tomato slicing test to see if you need to sharpen your knife. A knife running over the surface of a tomato followed by a disaster needing sharpening or some perfect precise slices

The tomato test

Public commitment pledge

Of all my sketches, I have a soft spot for this one. We had some lovely family friends who were massively into birding. As a schoolboy, I was more interested in birds than most, but one day, my Dad and I went to stay with them. They talked us through trips they'd been around the world to spot rare and remarkable birds. They had an amazing telescope trained on the birds at the feeder in their garden. They had wonderful binoculars we used on a bird walk, which showed me birds clearer and closer than I'd ever seen. They knew what birds to look out for and had tape recordings of specific bird calls that brought the birds to nearby bushes. It was impossible to be around them and not start to love birds. As I've gotten older, I've realised pretty much everything and everyone is like that. Premier League football is boring if you don't pay close attention to it, but if you follow every detail, it can be engrossing. I didn't think much of textiles, but after spending an afternoon weaving in Laos, I loved it. Pretty much everything has the thing they're deeply interested in. The physicist Richard Feynman said: "Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough." And here's another similar sentiment from the writer Henry Miller: "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." It reminds me that just because I don't see something as interesting now doesn't mean that it's not or that people who are into it are somehow weird. Everyone's a geek about something. And that's wonderful. I revised this sketch in March 2025 for the podcast episode. Here's the original And here's the updated and expanded version.Of all my sketches, I have a soft spot for this one. We had some lovely family friends who were massively into birding. As a schoolboy, I was more interested in birds than most, but one day, my Dad and I went to stay with them. They talked us through trips they'd been around the world to spot rare and remarkable birds. They had an amazing telescope trained on the birds at the feeder in their garden. They had wonderful binoculars we used on a bird walk, which showed me birds clearer and closer than I'd ever seen. They knew what birds to look out for and had tape recordings of specific bird calls that brought the birds to nearby bushes. It was impossible to be around them and not start to love birds. As I've gotten older, I've realised pretty much everything and everyone is like that. Premier League football is boring if you don't pay close attention to it, but if you follow every detail, it can be engrossing. I didn't think much of textiles, but after spending an afternoon weaving in Laos, I loved it. Pretty much everything has the thing they're deeply interested in. The physicist Richard Feynman said: "Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough." And here's another similar sentiment from the writer Henry Miller: "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." It reminds me that just because I don't see something as interesting now doesn't mean that it's not or that people who are into it are somehow weird. Everyone's a geek about something. And that's wonderful. I revised this sketch in March 2025 for the podcast episode. Here's the original And here's the updated and expanded version.

Newer

RRandom

Older