Last week I was filming for Associated Press TV at a restaurant in Caerleon that has horse steaks on its menu.

The Stuffed Dormouse started serving the dish after the horse meat scandal broke in the media. Co-owners, Gareth & Simone wanted to give customers the opportunity to try good quality horse, rather than meat that was untraceable and unidentifiable, which most people have been eating in their ready meals.

Horse meat & chips is proving a very popular option at The Stuffed Dormouse in Caerleon

Horse meat & chips is proving a very popular option at The Stuffed Dormouse in Caerleon

The strategy was a risky one, but it has paid off. Gareth and Simone say some customers have visited the restaurant with the sole aim of trying horse, and they’ve had no negative comments about it. In fact horse has been so successful they have now branched out into other exotic meats, so zebra, crocodile and ostrich all now appear on their specials board.

As a vegetarian myself, I don’t have a problem with this. The animals they serve are all bred specifically for their meat, so to me eating a horse or zebra is no different to eating a cow or pig (in fact I’ve always wanted a pet pig!), but I think their experiment, and the horse meat scandal as a whole, shows that we in Britain need to be more aware of food in general.

I am lucky, I was brought up in a Welsh Italian household where we often had home-made, and the sauce was always made from scratch, never from a jar. Obviously we are all guilty of cutting corners from time to time (I always have some shop bought pasta sauce in my cupboard in case of emergencies) but we mustn’t make it a habit.

After all we are what we eat, which in my case after the Easter Weekend is a very large chocolate egg, albeit a tasty one! But I’m determined to eat more healthily, which is why I have cooked a large pot of homemade bolognaise that’s both delicious and nutritious.

So my healthy eating diet starts today, ok tomorrow… I’ve just finished a bag of mini eggs!