Life is too short to stuff a mussel

To paraphrase Shirley Conran . . . Last night I abandoned frugal cooking for the evening and bought in one of my favourite local dishes from the traiteur (basically an upmarket French takeaway which supplies home cooked dishes)

Stuffed mussels are a bit of a delicacy here in the Languedoc - an odd surf'n'turf combination of giant mussels stuffed with minced pork served with a garlicky tomato sauce. They taste a bit like a faintly fishy meatball - nicer than it sounds to those to whom it doesn't sound that appealing.

I justified it on the grounds that they weren't outrageously expensive - just over 10€ (about £7.50) for the two of us - and that I'd never get round to stuffing mussels myself. We drank the modestly priced Merlot we bought the other day to make up for it.