Wednesday 16 January 2013

Back In The Saddle

Greetings my fellow ice cubes - how cold is it where you are? It is well below freezing here on the hill and we have dispatched Mrs B with frost free windows and a hot water bottle. I shall be heading out later and I will be deploying a pullover and a scarf as well as a stock of mint humbugs taken from my christmas leftovers.

It has been 30 days since last we communed and it would have been longer but I had an electronic kick up the bottom from someone who misses the blog! Luckily it seems to be a good day to recommence my ramblings.

Anyone fancy a beef burger? Or perhaps I should ask if anyone fancies a burger - beef optional.

The discovery of horse meat in burgers has sent a wave of horror and repulsion through the whole nation and Tesco and many other purveyors of cheap rubbish, are clearing their shelves as we speak.

As a meat eater I must confess that I would never choose to eat horse knowingly, although having holidayed in France and Bulgaria I suspect that some of the meat we were served may have neighed rather than mooed.

We are a little hypocritical in this country with our food. We eat cows and chickens, pigs and little fluffy lambs, even goats, ducks, geese, rabbits, pigeons, hares, turkey, pheasant, boar, quail, guinea fowl, partridge and not forgetting Bambi. I love a Bambi-burger!

If you were hungry enough I bet you would be able to eat rat stew or squirrel fricassee, maybe even hedgehog cooked in mud.

Just about anything goes but not horses...or dogs. (Can I just say that if you do eat dogs I hope you choke on the collar).

Imagine the scenario, the weather is really bad...a UK style blizzard has struck and there is two or maybe three millimetres of snow on the roads and the whole country has ground to a halt. You are unable to get to the shops so you struggle to your freezer and clumsily you open the door.

(Clumsily because of the three pairs of woolly gloves you have on. Obviously not pensioners as they will be nice and toasty with the heating turned way up to 90 degrees thanks to the winter fuel payment).

You survey the contents of your freezer and realise that the only thing you have to eat is a Tesco value burger! It is a choice between starving to death or risking that a little bit of horse may be lurking behind the ground up bits of beef that did not make it into Waitrose premium burgers.

Could you do it?

Could you baste Black Beauty?

Could you curry Champion?

Could you fry Flicka?

Could you put The Pie in a pie?

Roast Red Rum or stewed Shergar anyone?

We only have ourselves to blame. If we insist on shopping in these awful places, if we don't care where the food comes from only how much it costs then we will end up with Dobbin and not Daisy on our plate.

So there we have it. I have spoken and if you don't like what I have said you can only blame yourself for reading it.

Hi Ho Silver...pass the gravy.