One night, I came home after a particularly gruesome day at work and found Esteban sautéeing mushrooms that he had picked up at the farmer's market. Delightful! Not only was he volunteering to cook on what should have been my night to wield the spatula, but I had picked up a package of ground round at a rural butcher as a subtle hint that I was craving his incredible ragu sauce. In fact, all of the pertinent spices and cans were sitting out on the counter already.

"What's up, poophead?" I said, because our terms of endearment are all names that 7-year-olds call each other on the playground.

"Dinner! I'm cooking tonight." He is always in a great mood when he cooks. I suspect that inside Esteban's head, he is taping a show for Food Network. Perhaps he has a studio audience, a la Emeril. I should ask him.

When he called out "Buen Appetito!" from the kitchen, I popped a bottle of red (antioxidants, don't you know),whipped up a quick mixed green salad and dished up a plate, light on the rotini, heavy on the meaty sauce. I'm currently trying to watch my glycemic load and balance the number of carbs I eat with protein, sort of a modified version of South Beach. Esteban has been extra-sensitive to my current plan, perhaps because the result is meals that have a lot of meat.

"Delicious!" I exclaimed, "So yummy and hearty!"

"I chopped up some extra firm tofu in there, so that you'd get more protein."

"It's awesome. Hey...did you use that ground round?"

"Um....uh. No, I guess I forgot. I got so into the mushrooms and tofu that I totally forgot about the ground round. Sorry. I can go brown some and add it to the sauce?"

"No, it's good the way it is. There's no meat in this at all?"

"No, I guess not."

"Then you know what we have here?"

"An accidental meatless day?"

"Damn straight."

We both pondered the implications. How had that snuck by, with zero fanfare, without whining or cringing?

Esteban finally broke our silent contemplation. "Does this mean that we get to eat meat on Thursday? Since we've got one in the plus column?"

I'm so proud of my little meatarian. Who would have thought that he'd come so far, so quickly? On deck for this week: meatless meatballs (no, he doesn't get to skip a week). --Weetabix