“You’re just going to sit there and eat that steak in front of me?” my daughter asked across the table of the little bistro in Paris.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I definitely am. And I’m not even going to pretend it’s not delicious. Because it IS delicious. I mean … Béarnaise sauce on a steak? Talk about decadent!”

“You know that poor cow had a life before someone came along and slaughtered her, right?” she said.

“Yes, I do know that,” I replied. “And by the taste, I would say she lived a rather good one.”

My daughter grumbled at me and glared.

It had been one of my few forays into the world of red meat in over a year. I can count on one hand the number of times beef had gone down my gullet. Two burgers, a burrito, a meatball calzone and some unidentifiable substance on a sandwich in New York that may have contained meat by-product.