Oh, Delia, what have you done?

[ina]

Naaahhh ... Kidnapping implies that either the aliens wanted her or that we would want her back ...

OK, it wasn't so much the kidnapping I'd been thinking of - more the Dr Who plot!

[MKG]

Cathousefood wrote: As for the chicken debate, who remembers the days (and they weren't so long ago) when chicken was a luxury?

Well, I do - very well. In the late 50s and early 60s, battery farming hadn't really come into its own, so chickens were the things that scratted around in Enid Blyton farmyards. As it should be. But chickens were a luxury not because they were particularly expensive but because beef was so cheap (and no-one cared where it came from). Everything except salmon was cheaper than chicken. But it wasn't the government who changed things - it was us. Normal people. No politician ever demanded on our behalf that chicken, of all things (I mean - who would have chosen chicken?) should become the de facto Sunday lunch (which most people at that time would have called Sunday dinner anyway). We asked for it and we got it - via battery farming techniques. We can't possibly blame the mothers in low-income families (and it WAS them and not the fathers) for choosing to follow everyone else and buy cheap chicken, thus fuelling the battery farmers' enthusiasm - this was all part of post-war prosperity.

And it was terribly, terribly wrong. We know that now. Let's not look back on halcyon days of error. My Mum was one of those housewives who went for the cheap chicken ideal. She doesn't buy crap any longer, and she's 81. If she can work it all out, I'm sure that anyone else should be able to do it.

[Millymollymandy]

Thanks, I don't quite go that far back but I do remember not having chicken very often for our Sunday roast when I was a child and teenager (late 60s/70s). I hated having lamb or pork (enjoyed beef) but would love to be able to afford to eat lamb or beef now!!!

And I still remember my mum giving us rabbit and pretending it was chicken. We knew it wasn't chicken but I have never been able to touch the stuff since. I just have a horrible memory of the bones being very, very wrong for a chicken.

[newbiemum05]

I'm 25 and I remember we used to have some sort of nice meat on a sunday , but less during the week.
But our food budget must have taken up a lot of our weekly overall budget, maybe 30% as having good wholesome tasty food was really important to my parents (esp my dad who was born in 1940 in Nazi occupied Austria and food of any kind was a luxury).

My mum and dad are both brilliant cooks and can stretch good food a long way. Like others have said - I grew up enjoying the taste of real food not MSG. My hubby is now the same but its taken 5 years of marriage to retrain his taste buds as his mum was a jar of dolmio sort of lady.

We as a family (me, hubby, 3yr old son and one on the way), don't eat meat everyday, and only eat quality meat when we do, we find it fun to get it to go further.
We get a pack of free range chicken thighs/drummers off farmers market for £2.50/£3 which does us for 2 meals. And if we have a whole chicken its goes on for days :LOL

I think as a whole people in the UK want luxury food for no effort. But they also don't want to pay for it. They want to only spend 10% of their income on food and blow the rest on (allegedly) much needed material goods.

We are by now means well off money wise but our priorities are different from a lot of people we know.

[newbiemum05]

and I have no idea who the book would appeal to, not people on a low budget, or people who want to learn to cook.

Delia will have to survive without my money lining her pocket LOL

[ina]

I think my background is similar to yours... Both my parents had gone through two wars (in Germany), and had known hunger! They certainly knew how to "stretch" food (they even called one particular type of sausage "stretch" sausage, because you could stretch it over so many sandwiches...). "Proper" meat was for Sundays, and no leftovers were wasted.

[ocailleagh]

Ah, if only I'd known about this site when that Delia article first came out, I could've come here to rant! It does my heart good to see that there are so many people out there who feel as strongly as I do about this kinda stuff!
Personally speaking, I went off Delia back in the 90s after watching a special vegetarian episode of her then-current show in which she not only made no distinction between veggie and non-veggie cheese, but even went as far as to suggest chicken stock in one recipe...anyone think the woman just has it in for chickens? lol!
As you can gather from the previous paragraph, I am indeed vegetarian so don't buy chicken anyway-the only way I could eat animals is if I'd raised them myself (eyes up the dog). But I don't agree that cheap, intensively reared produce is the way to go, nor that buying free-range or organic is impossible on a low income. I myself am on benefits (around £50 a week) yet can afford to buy free-range, cruelty-free eggs, organic dairy and veg and that kinda thing, so I just don't understand how people on higher incomes can't afford it. It genuinely puzzles me!

[ina]

so I just don't understand how people on higher incomes can't afford it. It genuinely puzzles me!

Aah - but they need to spend a lot of money on all those gadgets that keep coming out new every month... (I've long lost track what they are all called.) I pity them, in a way.

[ocailleagh]

Its madness is what it is! But you're right, damn those gadget-hungry fools!