Mmm, it's like damien_wise said... You don't need a whole set of kitchen knives. You just need one good knife. Either a chef's knife (larger blade, blade somewhat longer than the length of your hand including fingers) or a utility knife (smaller blade, blade length from mid palm to fingertip) is all you need, and you can chop everything with it, except bones. For that, you need a chinese rectangular steel cleaver, and you can buy those in Chinatown for maybe 20 dollars. The utility or chef's knife, you do need to save up, and then spend the two hundred-ish dollars that a really good one will cost, plus another thirty or so for a sharpening stone (don't bother with a steel - unless you're going to steel the blade after every single use, it's pointless), and the one knife will last you for a lifetime. I highly recommend the Trident/Wusthof range, but there are others that are good too. They aren't cheap, but all you need is to buy one, once. Alternately, you can go with just the chinese cleaver - I did for a number of years, and it's a perfectly viable option. But don't do that until I make a post on how to use one... They're not like a western knife at all, and you don't use them in anything like the same ways. The differences are subtle, but problematic, and problematic and knives is a bad and scary thing.