Having gone the “meatless Fridays” route the past few years, it didn’t seem too great an additional burden to extend the restriction throughout the entire week. I do appreciate the carnivore’s lifestyle, though, so rest assured that the required element of sacrifice is still there. But let’s be realistic: I’ll still be eating seafood and animal products (dairy, eggs, honey). Apparently this dietary combination makes me a pescetarian rather than a vegetarian, since of course, true vegetarians do not eat fish.

Incidentally, is there a word for the vegetarians who eat bacon? If not, there should be, because I’ve met my share of those in my day. Hey, I sympathize: if ever I were to attempt to extend my Lenten dietary restrictions year-round, that would be my downfall as well. Bacon’s tasty, yo!

The New York Times just ran a piece on the challenges incompatible diets can pose for romantic relationships. In it, author Kate Murphy included a hilarious quote from Anthony Bourdain’s compulsively readable 2000 memoir and industry exposé Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly: “vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”

Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. But I certainly don’t have to understand it.

So I may be off meat for a month and a half, but I can still indulge in delicious cheese. And wouldn’t you know: Fairway Market had just gotten in a fresh shipment of burrata, the highly perishable curd and cream delicacy from Campania, introduced to me by MLF a couple of weeks ago.

I picked up one of the leaf-wrapped pouches, and hurried home with my bounty….

…and cut right in, unleashing the oozing creaminess within.

Now that’s sinful.