So...I tried something new and as it turns out, broke one of my few cardinal rules in life...

The story is that on the 16th Steve and I celebrated another month of being together by going out to dinner at this great restaurant on Market St. -- neither of us had ever been but I'd heard good things about it.

On the menu they were offering sweet meats. Neither of us had ever tried them before, so we thought, why not? This is a good restaurant, I'm sure if anyone will make it taste good, they will...

...and it was delicious. The texture, of course, was weird, and if I thought about what I was eating too much it got a little hard to continue, but other than that, they really made it taste fabulous.

Now for the cardinal rule part. It was VEAL sweet meats. Having driven past a veal farm day after day after day for 6 years on my way to school, I have, for all of my life, declined to eat veal, knowing how those little calves are chained to the equivalent of dog houses, never to frolic, graze, run, or live a free existence. I know that all kinds of things that I eat probably go through the same process, but having been a witness to this so consistently, I just can't eat veal.

So what moved me to eat it this time? For some reason that I can't explain, when they said veal sweet meats, my mind translated it as venison. Now previously I wasn't one to eat venison either, but I tried it for the first time this Christmas because my uncle shot the deer himself and made it himself, and it was delicious. So thinking that I'd expanded my pallet to include venison, I erroneously ate veal.

In retrospect, I'm really sad, though I definitely don't see this as changing the rule -- I'll still avoid veal like the plague. I'll just look out for tricky mental blind spots now too...