As we rapidly destroy more and more species of plants and animals, here’s what fine dining might look like two generations from now:

** Le Grainery — Los Angeles, California

Chef Thomas T. Thomas lovingly experiments with the planet’s three remaining grains. From his achingly sparse soupe au blé to his delightfully unsauced three-grained pasta, Thomas’s menu will surprise and delight the most discriminating of palates. Be sure to leave room for a bowl of Le Grainery’s famous Cheerios dessert served with a milk-like liquid and garnished with fresh wheat germ.

*** L’idée de Boeuf — near Angers, France

Nestled in the once prosperous farming province of Anjou, L’idée de Boeuf whimsically plays with centuries-old concepts of beef appetizers and entrées. Starting with a faux beef bouillon, Chef Jean-François Demers takes the diner on a tour of what beef cuisine used to be. Appetizers include a sliced jellied concoction vaguely resembling what was once known as calves’ tongue. L’idée de Boeuf is justly famous for its roast tofunderloin made from choice grade A tofu molded into a tenderloin.

** Champignons Plus — San Francisco, California

Thanks to this century’s dramatic climatic changes, the one environmental certainty is perpetual damp rainy conditions in northern California. Although depressing for most residents, it spells nothing but great news for area fungiphiles. Chef Pierre Laflamme scours the damp neighboring countryside in search of all manner of rare mushroom. Sadly, the lack of eggs precludes his offering any type of mushroom omelet, which older gastronomes claim is a dish to die for. But the ever-persistent chef does manage to please with his delicious personal creations like shiitake soup, champignons sur l’air and steak aux poivre et champignons sans steak.

*** Au Pied de Clone — Las Vegas, Nevada

Leave it to Las Vegas to be home to the latest cutting-edge eatery. Chef Paul Excuse, in partnership with Dow Chemical and Genentech, has produced a cloned, simulated menu that some food critics say comes as close to 20^th century haute cuisine as is possible in today’s almost animal-free world. Masters of culinary gene splicing, Excuse and his high-tech team are willing to try any food re-creation. Indulge yourself with faux porc tenderloin, faux medallions de boeuf and Chef Excuse’s signature dish — Phaux Pheasant® under glass.

* Fine Art Fusion Eatery – New York City

Given today’s limitations on food ingredients, it was only natural that someone would almost exclusively emphasize the visual delights of meal presentation. That someone is Chef Nicholas Marx, who has devoted his career to what he calls fine art fusion cooking. Starting with nothing more than a white vegetable paste and various food colorings, Marx and his team recreate great works of art in an edible form on a plate. The menu includes everything from Picasso’s “Guernica” to Michelangelo’s “Mona Lisa.” The restaurant requires 48 hours notice for any special orders of pre-Raphaelite or postmodern dishes.

** Descartes du Jour – Paris, France

Years ago, universities like Harvard offered courses in the physics of cooking. In a world without ingredients, however, Chef Louis de Seize has taken nouvelle cuisine to the next virtual level in what he calls the philosophy of cooking. At Descartes du Jour, diners are presented with historical menus from top 20^th century restaurants and take turns describing in delicious detail each listed dish. For the truly adventurous, there is even a wide selection of ancient wine lists to review and describe. Diners may go home hungry but will take comfort in de Seize’s motto that eating is a descriptive journey, not a gustatory destination.

When my wife goes away for the weekend, I miss her and longingly await her return. Well actually, if I’m being entirely honest, I sometimes take advantage of her absence to go a little crazy and do whatever I want.

For example, I might rearrange the various remote control devices on the coffee table in the TV room. It’s not a big deal really, but I like to have the Blu-ray remote between the TV remote on the left and the cable remote on the right. It’s fun to have the remotes arranged just the way I like them for an entire weekend, and of course I put them back in their usual spots on Sunday night so my wife has no idea what happened.

One of my favorite things to do when my wife is away is to alter the housecleaning pattern. Just for fun, instead of doing the laundry first, I’ll vacuum the house. And instead of starting with the upstairs bedrooms, I might start vacuuming in the downstairs rec room.

I don’t tell my wife what I’ve done and I have a good laugh watching to see if she notices anything different when she gets home. Usually she’s tired and doesn’t notice anything unusual, but one time she asked if I had vacuumed the entire house because it looked so clean. I smiled and said yes, but I didn’t let on that I had done it completely backwards.

One time I rearranged all the furniture in every room in the house and spent the whole weekend in what I call “Crazy House.” That was a wild, wacky weekend, but of course I moved everything back to its original location on Sunday night. I left a few clues like the easy chair being a few inches off, but my wife never suspected a thing.

Another fun time alone was a weekend last month when my wife was away and I decided to light a few fires in the house and make it a “Campfire Weekend.” Unfortunately, one of the fires got a little out of control and there was quite a bit of smoke damage in the downstairs rec room.

Luckily, I was able to get painters in right away and clean up the mess. By Sunday night when my wife came home, you could hardly smell any smoke at all. I just told her I decided to barbecue indoors because it was raining and I think she bought that.

A not-so-fun time was earlier this month when my wife went away for the whole week. It started out great when I blocked up all the drains and turned on all the taps. It was what I called my “Waterworld Weekend.” I floated around from room to room on pieces of furniture using one of our canoe paddles to steer.

That was lots of fun, but I’m not sure I’d do it again since I could only enjoy Waterworld for two days and then the next five days I had to have contractors and renovators come in and drain the water, dry the floors, carpeting and drywall and replace most of the furniture. Sadly, I couldn’t completely rectify the situation by Sunday night and my wife seemed very upset that I had flooded our entire house and spent all of our savings on repairing the damage.

Last weekend also didn’t turn out quite as well as I had hoped. As soon as my wife left on Friday night, I started rounding up animals for “Jungle Weekend.” As you can imagine, you can’t pretend your house is a jungle with just dogs, cats, squirrels and raccoons. Luckily, I found a place that rents all kinds of animals.

By Saturday night, the house was really starting to look and sound like a jungle, with a dozen monkeys, a lion, a tiger, a bear and lots and lots of snakes. I couldn’t find any zebras to rent so I just borrowed a friend’s pony and painted white stripes on him.

As it turns out, some species don’t get along as well with certain other species and, by Sunday afternoon, I had a lot of dead carcasses on my hands. I was also faced with a pretty significant bill from the animal rental place and a not insubstantial cleaning bill for the house (apparently it’s almost impossible to remove pony blood from shag carpeting). Sadly, when my wife got home, she refused to discuss the situation and instead called the police.

The downside is that I’m now living in a small padded room in a large windowless building on the outskirts of town. The upside, however, is that my wife is now always away and I can do pretty much anything I want that doesn’t involve freely using my arms.