I am quite concerned about the new bloody beetroot burger that Tesco is offering. Especially as recently I have learned to make a passable beetroot burger myself. The main issue is how to get the ruddy thing to stick together so that it’s not just fried red mush. Roasting cauliflower has also been a disaster. It intensifies the flavour, the recipes say. To which you can only reply: why would anyone want to do that?

I will soon be fending off calls from MasterChef, I imagine, but I am trying to increase my culinary repertoire.

My youngest went vegetarian, as did my eldest when she saw a pig’s head in a market in Portugal and I had to explain what it actually was. I felt the same the other day when I saw pigs in cages that they can’t even turn round in – when pigs are brighter than most dogs.

What really turned my daughter off, though, was when she claimed she saw a dinosaur-shaped thing made out of reformulated chicken bleeding on a plate. Don’t tell me off, I was young and poor.

So yes, blood, the presence of it is an issue for vegetarians: they don’t want it. Vegetables that bleed are mystifying all round, appealing, I guess, to those who do want a bit of blood in their brioche, but don’t want to kill moo-cows. I have yet to encounter such a person.

The best meat to fake, though, is surely chicken because you can coat it in stuff that makes it almost as good as KFC.

Seriously though, if you go anywhere where the cuisine is vegetarian (such as most of south India) this bizarre need to replicate the bodily fluids of animals seems strange. Meat tastes as it does because of texture: sinew, fat and blood. Whatever next, vegetarian steak tartare?