No men were injured in the writing of this post.

A few weeks back, Marianne and I wrote our weekend charter posts on how to get men to cook. You can read them here and here. I felt a bit iffy about doing this because I believe that men can and do cook, and that to come up with tricks and special recipes to get them cooking has a strong whiff of the double standard about it. Coincidentally, last night, while we were washing up for a large dinner party for which my husband had done all the cooking (well, I did boil the quails eggs), he took it upon himself to offer a few pointers for those women whose partners don't cook. And let's face it, maybe men can cook, and maybe quite a few do, but there's a hell of a lot that don't still. So something must be done and I will share with you those pearls of wisdom from a man that cooks (and makes minimal mess in the process).

Note that the phrasing of the advice may not always be his - but the substance generally is, (except in one fairly obvious case).