All Organ Meat Meal

We had a delicious '97 Burgundy Grand Cru and a 1986 Silver Oak Napa Cabernet last night in celebration of a friend's birthday. This is my foie gras with one succulent bite of the liver already gone so you can see how pink and beautiful it is. Yum. I had sweetbreads for my main course. A most politically incorrect meal. The sweetbreads were probably once the thymus gland of a young calf (dare I say the veal word?).

This delicious meal was at a venerable Austin restaurant whose name will not be revealed here because vandals have the handle as Dylan said. Although the vandals' attack on another restaurant had the effect of costing them in clean-up but making the foie gras sell out halfway through the evening. Go figure. As we are constantly pointing out in this space: things don't always happen like you expect.

I'm sure this meal is supposed to be damning my health, too. I buttered several small rolls to eat along with my two dishes, too.

Birthday celebrations. Hoping for many more. And we eat and drink. But is it really an accident that my most gourmet-minded, organ-meat-eating, vintage-wine-drinking friends are the ones soldiering on with me in the greatest numbers?

Perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of the way I live my life is that it is becoming a sort of experiment. My 90-year-old dad went along last night. He didn't drink too much. He had steak. He told jokes.