Delia, The Return

Fear not dearest Nigella. Delia will definitely NOT be overtaking you in the express cooking stakes.

I must say that I was sadly disappointed with Delia’s comeback on TV and it seems I’m not alone when I say I feel Delia should probably retire and stick to football, which has obviously overtaken her food obsession since we last saw her in the kitchen.

Gone is the plum in her mouth, and the condescending tone, but both at a price (I was never a great fan of her TV persona). Us busy people should now be cooking with tinned mince, and frozen mash potato, which I never even knew existed until Monday. Even my cat wouldn’t eat it if his young life depended on it (and he eats most things). Peeling a potato, it would seem, has ever been so easy. Our children never need know what that small brown jewel of the soil either looks, or tastes like, thanks to our once great Delia. Never mind, that she used enough of the tiny frozen demons to plaster a wall, there was no mention of how much they would cost the oh-so-busy wannabe fake cook.

My tip: Give up the job, lose the salary and actually prepare it yourself. I bet you’d still have enough money left over for a curry!

Every meal she prepared in the first episode contained her new found friend. Fish bake, shepherd’s pie and, the once ‘queen’ of the cooking world, even managed to bung a couple in a soup, make bread AND a cake out of the gruesome stuff! I think if she’d had more time, she would have even bathed in the stuff advertising its health benefits!
The only thing worse than the mash portions was the unconvincingly, groveling support of Nigel Slater. Was he given shares in NC to appear? I wonder.

I do think our dear 'D' has somewhat lost the plot. We have been exposed to so much over the last few years on sourcing and cooking good food. Most importantly on knowing where our food comes from or how it's made. Once she was an inspiration to us all. She boasted that fresh was best and we believed her. Recently, the likes of Hugh and Jamie have opened up a whole new world. OK, the fact processed meat was full of crap and it's actually killing us has been shoved down our throats until we finally get the point but we can't turn back now. THESE are the chefs that got ME in the kitchen to try and cook a healthier diet for my family and THESE are the mentors who got me trying, and mostly failing, to grow my own.

It happens that I now enjoy being in the kitchen, when once it was a chore. Busy or not, we need to emphasis the importance of what we put in our mouths, not play it down because we're too busy with the rat race. We got back to basics, we can't start cutting corners again.

I thought the days of Mash get smash were dead and buried!

Ask yourself - Are you really too busy to peel a potato?

Fortunately for Delia, and her publishers, she is a top-selling brand and any book by her will fly to the top of the bestseller list. She has a diehard, albeit in my opinion, sight challenged fan base, who as I type are burning my posts and recipes. One loyal member posted, ‘If you don’t want to use tinned mince, use fresh’ and ‘you can always substitute this ingredient for that ingredient’. Err…hello??! What’s the point in buying the book then!

Incidentally, the site was advertising McD’s on its homepage until I eloquently pointed it out to the Editor who replied in its defence by saying the ads are run by an outside agency, over which they have no control. She added ‘no ads, no site. It’s that simple’. Much like Delia’s latest quest to wow us with her, once inspirational recipes, I fear her site, like her has well and truly sold out.

Remarkably though, the MacD's ad later disappeared.

We can but hope that other TV chefs won’t all trade the humble potato for the Pound and jump on the Delia gravy train!

Let’s face it, had anyone else come up with such a farce of a cook book, would we, or I, even be giving it lip service!

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