And speaking of animals, here's a very pleasant way to eat them, a dark, thick French stew courtesy of the prodigiously talented and charming Sasha Castel. We're eating it tonight; I've added nine cloves of garlic, and liberal amounts of whatever seasonings were to hand, as is my wont.

Culinarily, however, Samuel Pepys his wife put me quite to shame back in January 1660, when she "had got ready a very fine dinner-- viz. a dish of marrow bones; a leg of mutton; a loin of veal; a dish of fowl, three pullets, and two dozen larks all in a dish; a great tart, a neat's tongue, a dish of anchovies; a dish of prawns and cheese." Our gluttonous forbears certainly knew what was good, and they'd be'd rightly ashamed of our current whim to restrain ourselves.