A fine local restaurant has a wine steward named Mr. Cork (he’s actually the owner, but if you ask about a wine, here comes Mr. Cork). That fills me with such glee as cannot be explained. But I don’t drink wine, so when I assess the meal I had the other night, I can’t bring the wine into it. I believe the table had a couple of bottles of a Pinot Noir from Cloudline. There was a general sense that this was a Very Good Choice.

I had the French Christmas dinner: pate, lobster bisque, rack of lamb, peas francais, with a slice of buche de noel for dessert.

What I didn’t realize until partway through my meal was that I had never had lamb before, aside from the odd gyro. I had to beg the waiter not to bring out the little ramekin of mint jelly–considering the Mintcident of my childhood–and he was gracious enough to agree. That didn’t stop my brother in law from minting up the place in a gleeful disregard of the mint sensitive among us.

The pate was wonderful, the buche de noel flavorful, and the lobster bisque to die for. I wasn’t sold on the peas, but that is probably due to my shocking lack of bacon love. They were more like bacon with peas than peas with bacon, and I could happily live my life without ever having bacon again.

But the star of the show? Lamb. It was is lovely, very pink and very tender. And the next morning I thought about it and said, “I ate Bambi!” only it was more like “I ate Lambi!” and I felt some guilt.

Food guilt. I’m not often prone to it, though I really can’t justify eating mammals to myself. I like meat, but I might like pillaging villages if I tried it. That wouldn’t make it an ethical choice.

I can eat lobsters without a qualm. Perhaps I should build my diet around shellfish. It’s workable so long as I never decide to become an observant Jew, but I figure the whole atheism thing I’ve got working will prevent that from happening.

And since I won’t be able to afford much, this could be the weightloss plan of the century. That’s what’s wrong with vegetarian diets. I can afford too damned much rice.