My Husband and the Diet, Part 2

My husband's not doing very well on this diet. He tells me he's doing it for me, because if he's on a diet, it will make it easier for me. I told him, I've been on diets plenty of times without him, and it doesn't really matter, but THIS time, he needs to watch what he eats just as much as I do. Still, I don't think he gets it.

My husband's not fat. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, he can carry a fair amount of weight. But he could stand to lose about 20 pounds, and he'd feel much better. Then there's the health issue part. His doctor told him to cut down on fats but increase his good cholesterol. That worried him quite a bit at the time, but it seems that now he's put that worry out of his mind and is simply dieting for my benefit. Men!

Every night after dinner, just as he's swallowing the last bite, my husband turns to me and says, "I'm still hungry." This is a man who could finish everything piled high on a plate and still go back for seconds, but he doesn't "get" the fact that as he's finishing the last bite, the food still hasn't hit his stomach. He's not supposed to be full yet--give it a few minutes for goodness sake! I, of course, usually look at him and roll my eyes. Hopeless. You'd think I'm starving the guy!

So last night, after the customary eye rolling, I headed back into the Sweat Shop for some quality quilty time. A half hour in, I started smelling something funny, so I came out to see what was going on. There was my husband, in the smoky kitchen with the window open and the exhaust fan going. Apparently he had gone rummaging for food and decided to try a 100-calorie snack bag of microwave popcorn.

According to him, he read the directions which said to microwave the popcorn on high for 1-1/2 minutes and stand by to stop it if it should finish popping early. He told me that at 30 seconds into it, the bag started smoking and burst into flames.

So, he tried it again. Goofy man that he is, this time he set the microwave for 30 seconds. Then 10 more seconds. Then 10 more seconds. Then 10 more seconds. I think we probably all know microwaves and popcorn don't really do very well with the start-stop-start-stop method of cooking, right? Sure enough, this time he had a bag of half-cooked, half burned popcorn.

I finally took pity on him and popped him up a bag. As expected, the popcorn finished cooking just as the timer hit 1-1/2 minutes. A couple over-done kernals, because I don't think you can avoid that with the kettle corn, but pretty much a nicely popped bag.

Good thing he isn't really starving, because with these cooking skills of his, he'd never live! Good thing too that I had the foresight to buy the 10-bag package of microwave popcorn--I think we might need it.