Horses for Main courses?

The big news this morning, apart from my helicopter lesson going badly wrong, obviously, was the revelation that some frozen beefburgers made and sold in the UK and Ireland actually contained traces of horsemeat. In some cases 25% 'traces'.

Now, I don't buy frozen value burgers from Tescos, and I've not been to Iceland since about the time it stopped being called Bejams, so I'm not worried that I might have inadvertantly eaten the stuff.

My immediate reaction was: Never mind the horse, the quality of the beef in those things was probably highly dubious!

I know, little predictable ol' me.

But, horse or no horse, cheap beefburgers generally contain the worst cuts of 'meat' from the worst cattle, padded out with additives and fillers and mechanically-recovered anus tissue. I bang on about this sort of stuff because I'm a fan of really good quality beef and really good quality burgers.

The initial media reaction was equally predictable - shock, horror, outrage! How dare they put this in our beefburgers?!? and so on.

And then, continuing the predictability, came the 'but why is it outrageous?!?' backlash with the good old unbiased BBC asking why Britain doesn't eat horses when we eat cows, pigs and other farmyard creatures.

I wasn't asked for my view for some reason, but one or two 'experts' had some, frankly, strange opinions and these rather bizzare arguments for why we don't eat it triggered a bit of friendly office debate.

B-V on (whistle-stop) Tour

Question: How many of you have eaten or drank in four different countries in the same day? Possibly not many.

I have, obviously, or I wouldn't be asking. I don’t think I’d managed more than two in a day until last week, and certainly didn’t intend to achieve this unlikely feat. It just sorta happened.

And here’s how:

With a few days to kill and an impulsive desire to visit a part of the world I hadn’t hitherto seen, I booked us a last-minute trip to the Cote d’Azur. Just one night, but two long days – plenty of time to explore the region and enjoy some top-notch food.