How to cut a watermelon

We live in a small home with limited kitchen space and no pantry. It is not an optimal situation and we have to be judicious in our culinary strategic planning.

I bought a large watermelon a week or two ago and it was still sitting on the coffee table this morning, the only available space. I told Leslie that I was going to cube it today. She agreed that today was the day, enough fridge space had opened up to make it a go.

And then she asked me the cutting question. Do you know how to cut a watermelon? 

This cut right to my own core. Of course I do became I think I do. I have cut a hundred melons in my time, having grown them as a young lad in Texas and even stole a melon or two when I lived by the patch in Carlsbad as a teenager. But I am sure she had a different idea.

"Why don't you go on YouTube and look up cutting watermelons."

I muttered to myself,"YouTube, ShmooTube, YouTube knows everything..."

So I went online and found a woman that indeed had a better idea than I had. Might be old hat to you but it was a new method for me. In the past I would make quarters out of the melon and basically go from there.

Today I cut the melon in half, chamfered off the top and then cut the peel and interior skin off the sides with my sharp Shun chef's knife.

I was trying to save as much fruit as possible but my wife was unhappy with my technique and took over with the knife, getting a bit more aggressive.

Which left us something like this.

I grabbed the cutlery back and made a series of perpendicular cuts to my rough half circle. 

Then I made a series of horizontal cuts and was left with a nicely cubed watermelon.

Not a bad way to go.