There comes a time in every married man’s life that he is faced with the difficult prospect of having to cut tomatoes. If you have had any experience with vegetables, you’ll know it is a painful and difficult experience. I’m sure making someone cut violates some fundamental human rights, but I’ve not been able to find the relevant law yet. I’m still working on it.

In the meanwhile, I’ve come up with some innovative strategies that I’ve been using over the past few months to avoid getting assigned any work, especially cutting tomatoes. I call these strategies Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance or PETA.

Strategy #1: The preemptive denial
The preemptive denial is a very effective strategy, but it needs to be executed very delicately. The core of this strategy is to avoid getting assigned the cutting of tomatoes in the first place by making oneself seemingly unavailable. And for this strategy, I must extend my most sincere thanks to Mr. Lalit Modi for creating the Indian Premier League matches. You see, the IPL matches are all highly optimized for PETA (Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance). All matches are in the evenings, exactly during cooking time, the time when you are most likely to get assigned tomato duty.

Here’s an illustration of how to use this strategy:
Pretend to be deeply engrossed in the match while simultaneously keeping an eye on the tomatoes.
As soon as the Wife approaches the Tomatoes and is about to say “Can you please….” scream like this:
“WOOOHOOOO!!! Hohooo!!! WHAT A SIX! This McCullum dude is awesome! Did you see how he hit through the line by picking the ball of the bowlers hand and turned his wrists along with the anticipated spin on the up? Too much….”

It is important that you use the appropriate cricketing jargon so as to make it convincing that you are really engrossed in the match. If you don’t time it right, then this will happen:
Wife: “Can you please cut the tomatoes?”
If you forget to scream at this point, or if the wife completes her sentence, you will have to respond
You: “The Tomatoes? OK, I guess…”
GAME OVER.

Strategy #2: The negative learning variations
This strategy has existed for a very long time and is already widely practiced, but I have come up with some innovations of my own here. Basically, the strategy involves doing such a bad job that you don’t get asked to do it again. But this is not as easy as it seems. You have to be quite thorough and meticulous in doing the bad job. You have to do a good bad job, otherwise it won’t be bad enough and the tomatoes will come back again the next time.

To do a really effective and efficient bad job, you foremost need to have a calm mind and think clearly. The first strategy involves taking the Tomatoes, and saying that you just saw an amateur jugglery show on TV and have learnt how to juggle. You then take a few tomatoes and throw them into the air, and let them fall and generally make a mess. Bonus points if the tomatoes fall on the sofa, because if that happens, you won’t be allowed anywhere near a tomato for several years. Mission accomplished.

Another useful variant is to say that you saw a show on Discovery Channel that showed how to properly cut tomatoes using a food processor. Now, if you try to cut tomatoes using a food processor, it makes a royal mess (and some tomato soup, but no cut tomatoes). Don’t ask me how I learnt that you can’t cut tomatoes using a food processor. Anyway, when it is realized that you’ve made a mess, then you won’t be asked to do it again. Success!

Strategy #3: Gross incompetence strategy.
This is actually an extreme version of Strategy #2. In #2, you demonstrated that you can’t be trusted with tomatoes, but this strategy takes it to the next level by demonstrating that you can’t understand instructions. You have to act and behave like a complete idiot. Again, this is not as easy as it seems, and it takes a lot of will power and discipline, although it comes naturally to some people like me.

According to this strategy, when you are asked to cut tomatoes, walk up to the fridge and take out some cabbage. Then proceed to cut it. Experienced foodies will immediately realize at this point that cabbage and tomatoes are not very substitutable, and that annoys the hell out of the person in charge of the cooking. So much that they will do the cutting of the tomatoes themselves.

Another way this can be accomplished is to do the following. When you are asked to cut tomatoes, run down to the local grocery shop and buy 2 Kgs of tomatoes. Now you have twice as many tomatoes, and none of them are cut, increasing the ratio of uncut tomatoes substantially. It is my repeatable experience that this almost certainly leads to you not being asked to do ANYTHING again, which is really the jackpot.

Now that you’ve learnt all the PETA tactics, go ahead and use them. I wish all of you a tomato-cutting-free life!

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