How to Get Your Husband to do Chores

Yes, ladies, I have learned a very valuable secret that I will now share with you. An answer to the big question of how to get your husband to willingly volunteer to do chores. You have to plan in advance for a few weeks to get this to work. Here's the secret: deprive him of meat. Serve meal after meal of food grown in your garden - you can use small bits of meat to flavor your food if you need to so he doesn't die, but don't give him big chunks of meat. He will enjoy eating the garden produce and find it a fun challenge to see just how many different ways zucchini can be prepared, along with green beans and tomatoes and broccoli and kohlrabi and peppers and cabbage and beets and kale and... you get the point. So after at least two weeks or ideally more of eating this way, decide that it's been a long time since meat has entered your diet in any significant fashion and get out a roast from the freezer and cook it. Let the delicious aroma of slow roasted meat with a roasted vegetables filter throughout the house during the afternoon. When he walks through the door and smells the smell that hasn't been in his home for so long, he will nearly swoon with pleasure in anticipation of a delicious melt-in-your-mouth piece of meat. Add in the aroma of freshly baked homemade crescent rolls and his senses will reach the outer limits of delight. He will be so overcome with gratitude that he will immediately set about cleaning the house - even before supper! He will clear out the dish rack, clean off the bathroom counter, sweep the floors, and clear off the table. Once supper is done, he will then proceed to do the dishes and help put the laundry away. And the best thing about it? You didn't have to ask for any of the help! So there you have it ladies. Anytime you feel the need to get some household help from your husbands, you now know what to do. You're welcome.

A new food to enter our produce-laden lives from our garden now are these beautiful muskmelons. They are huge. One of them alone weighed ten pounds.

Normally this container holds a full muskmelon when I cut one up. I even ate a bunch of it as I was butchering it. I needed my girls home from school to eat enough of it to be able to put the lid on it. 

I have to limit their melon consumption as they will eat and eat and eat until it is gone. Once they got home from school, they ate it down to where the lid finally fit on it. I asked David to help me eat it before they got home and do you know what he said? He said, "No thanks." What?! What sort of person says "no thanks" to a juicy sweet homegrown muskmelon? Can this person truly be my descendant? On the positive side, he has learned to not despise the melons like he used to. Now he's just ambivalent about them.

What about you? Are you a meat lover? Do you have to have meat at every meal?

Do you love muskmelon? It's okay if you don't. We can still be friends. Maybe not best friends.