Pure Mince
Meat (Photo credit: Divine Harvester)
I’ve lost my copy of “Lanark” so can’t find the quote I want.
It’s an epic Scottish dystopian novel and at one part the protagonist finds himself eating dodgy looking pink stuff and realizes that he is now unwittingly a cannibal.
A quote I can remember from the book, though, is:
“Man is the pie that bakes and eats itself…”
This in turn reminded me of Michael Radford’s version of Orwell’s 1984 when Parsons, played by Gregor Fisher is in the canteen, and looks at his dinner and says:
“Looks like meat. Tastes like meat. Isn’t meat at all. Double plus good.”
I can’t find that in the novel – the nearest I can find to it is about Winston:
“He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among the general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat.”
On Friday night I was at a Burns Supper, starring haggis – and I was heartened by the fact that for my whole life I have never been too sure what was in a haggis – and yet can still eat it. It doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s good though. Sort of.
Then there was Jacob and Esau and poor old Isaac not being too sure about his food supply chain.
Then there was Europe in the midst of the horsemeat scandal.
So, today I went to the butcher and bought some mince.
And cooked it.
And ate it.
And took a step back from the brink of dystopia.
Something very popular about the cannibalism topic. Never could grasp that!
Probably just as well!
Being French I haven’t been as upset by the horsemeat scandal as the many Americans were horrified for the poor English. I also love pate and so I can see the wonderfulness of Haggis.
The fact that it’s horse doesn’t bother people (except maybe horsey people) – it’s the lies on the packaging “100% Beef”. I believe there are a few restaurants introducing horse as a gimmick on the back of the scandal. The food supply chain has been exposed as being unbelievably convoluted.
Here they focused on the horse part and not the false advertising. We can’t even get our GMO’s labeled.
I think that’s what lots of people are doing at the moment – going to the butcher and choosing their meat for themselves, and that way they should know what they are actually eating!
Yes, I think that Morrisons will do well out of this. Maybe they saw it coming and went down the own-farms, own-abattoirs route.