Does anyone else think that Delia's use of short cut ingredients in her new series is a bit over the top. So much so that besides the odd leek a dish was just a combination of ready prepared products.

not at all! if you're talking about the shepards pie, yeah it was tinned meat & frozen potato but she used onion, carrot & swede as a base, then the leek & cheese on the top.

not everyone is a big foodie, not everyone enjoys cooking or is a talented cook. i dont think its fair to be negative about what delia has set out to do - encourage busy people to cook a healthy meal, rather than resort to a microwave meal full of e-numbers

i got her book the week it came out, it's great - made the fish pie with frozen mashed potato disks as a topping, it was BRILLIANT!! the product is just potato, milk, butter but frozen so it is convenient for busy people or novice home cooks. she doesnt use any cheat ingredients which are high in fat/sugar/addatives, just natural food made quick & easy for modern life

long live saint delia!!

Well she is not so popular on the BBC site, they have closed down lots of threads criticising Delia as it is overwhelming the board.

i think a lot of people are being really closed minded. i guess most people registered on forums like these & the BBC are massive foodies & think using canned or tinned food is totally awful, but they cant see delia is trying to reach out to people who are not so culinary minded, being realistic about people with busy, hectic, modern lives who want to eat something they can prepare as quickly as possible!

Delias program is not aimed at expreienced foodies, she is aiming at the millions of people that don't want to spend a lot of time in a kitchen,when they would rather be out doing other things, to most people food is necessary to just to cure hunger,but in a palatable way and lots of people from all walks of life, i know as a checkout operator buy aunt bessies stuff,because they either can't make it themselves or don't want to, people who want home cooked meals without the prep that usually goes in to,it just because they are'nt interested,so all she is doing is showing the population that likes these products how to get good meals out of them and if it does inspre them to do more,then her efforts are not wasted.The BBC board is full of negative comments from expereinced cooks this same negatives comes from the same people, has been applied to Rachel Allens series, complaining that the recipes are too easy ,but to many who don't cook and can't Rachel Allen and Delia and Nigella are appealing

The complaints are not about recipes being too easy in this case, its the amount of prepared products used. I wouldn't say what Delia has done is quite in the same catagory as Rachel and Nigella. I don't think Rachel has used many ready prepared products if any. Nigella does use some but not to the same degree as Delia.

Maybe Delia uses less of them in future programmes, I hope so. I have found that although the addition of these products gives the impression of making the meals quick and easy, with all the additional extras then added on top, the quick and easy element seems to disappear.

I also feel it would be rather sad if all the "experienced foodies" (nice name) didn't come out and protest about the tinned mince

well the sad fact is many people buy them from all groups of life,like i have already said, and in the holiday area of Inverness,where i live many people buy them that have a home to stay,while they tour the area and prepared food as described are a good way for people to get cheap meals from prepared foods which they an cook and prepare in a caravan or in a holiday home and not spend ages cooking and washing up,when they are on holiday and lovely Delia shows how you can use them. and of course people on limited incomes do buy this stuff and its good for them to see what they can do with them. regardless of dissapproving foodies who think tined mince is disgusting.

This isn't a recipe book for people on limited incomes though is it, quails eggs, capers, cornishons etc. These recipes are expensive to make.

I agree food in tins do have there uses, I used to have a tourer caravan years ago and used tinned unpeeled potatoes, carrots and all. Even pot noodles have its uses in the desert, I saw Prince Harry eating one. I wouldn't expect Delia to produce a recipe using one though.

If you had never heard of Delia or her reputation what would you make of this programme standing on its own merits ?

on a personel note i don't find prepared food like aunt bessie stuff very un appealling, i can make my own mash potatoes and roast potatoes and yorkshire puddings ,in fact today i got some more goose fat for my roasties for tomorrows roast beef dinner,but i can understand where and why she did these programs,unfortuantely we live in a world of fast wanting of everything, people are all in such a rush ,the world is just so busy, working in a supermarket checkout i see people getting inpatient waiting their turns. This is a fast pace life of gettting so much done in a day with not enough hours for many people.

i mean i won't bother with aunt bessies type stuff, i have been at work all day,had a sherry and a glass of wine with my lovely ready meal curry and so i am feeling quite merry

I can't see what all the fuss is about - all Delia seems to be doing is to encourage people to assemble their own DIY 'ready quick' meals.

The target group being people who are at work all day and want something as quickly as is possible (i.e. not labour intensive) when they get home.

Personally, I would rather go for a nice frozen ready meal that you just pop in the oven and plate up when it's done. I usually have a frozen oven-ready fish pie with some frozen peas once a week.

But if you want a bespoke version, then Delia's ideas are probably a good way of going about it.

I doubt that it will encourage many people to get further into the basics of cooking. Delia has clearly seen a gap in the market and has gone for it - but then isn't that what most of the celeb chefs do?

Not many TV chefs actually use the kitchen equipment that they endorse and get paid huge sums of money for. They know it's inferior to what is generally recognised in the catering trade as good quality and fit for purpose, and so they wouldn't look twice at it in their own kitchens.

I don't suppose Delia would give her family one of her quickie meals, but then that's life.

I suspect a lot of cooks add tinned tomatoes, tinned beans, lentils, and frozen ingredients, etc, to their recipes and don't look upon it as cheating.

Delia has just taken things a few steps further.

If someone enjoys cooking and has the time to do it all from scratch, then that's fine, but why on earth start being all judgemental about people who don't have the time or interest to do so?

The truth is a lot of the people on the BBC cook-board have little else to do other than make jam, bread, etc, etc, in between spending a good part of their day sat in front of a computer posting on the Food board.

The cooking came over slightly better this week from what people as saying. The use of tinned fish not as distasteful to most as the mince.

However the brainwashing regards E numbers being "sound" (I think the words were) I felt were misleading and a kick in the teeth to all those who are trying to encourage us to pay more attention to them.

well hopefully more people will be encouraged to read food labels,though i do admit i am not sure of some of the numbers and ingreident names,the salt amount is the one of the important ones to understand.

I love the idea that people are moaning about her using QUALITY prepared ingredients and then pleased when they buy tinned tomatos at 15p from morrisons. I dont think I know a single serious foodie who doesnt use prepacked ingredients in some form - vacummed chestnuts, canned chick peas, etc etc and if there are really good short cut products I want to know about them, I thought the recipes looked great on screen and when I can find the frozen potato i intend to try the roquefort bread recipe. I also use auntie bessie yorkshires...but then thats jsut cos i somtimes like being lazy...

What is way overdue is shopper friendly labelling on food packaging.

A lot of it is so small that you need a magnifying glass to read it, and you need a degree in food nutrition to make head or tail of it.

I looked at the calories on a tin of something or other yesterday, and thought, hmm, that's not too bad, but then on a second look saw that the calories mentioned were for a third of the can?

I think we need a 'at a glance' system of labelling that is standardised to say 100g - perhaps a bar chart with white for salt, yellow for fat, red for calories, etc.

Has anyone tried those frozen mash tablets that Delia uses? Come on be brave and own up ! lol ... I'm curious to know what they taste like?

I was pondering just the other day whether what Delia is doing is a sign of what we all might be doing in 20 years time, what with an approaching world shortage of food and the ever increasing price of fresh ingredients... hmm!

Gastrosurf, I agree it is so annoying trying to find and read the ingredient lists. I have only just found out that after going on about ingredient lists to my mother for years, she has been reading the daily recommended lists for fat, sugar and calories and has not understood me at all.

I must confess that although I don't intend to make any of Delia's recipe's I am still looking forward to watching tomorrow night

Hi Grisinni

I've only seen one of Delia's programs so far - mainly because I keep forgetting to record them.

I'm not sure I can see very much practical value in what she is demonstrating and it looks to be quite costly. But I can't see why some of the people on the BBC food board are getting so worked up about it.

I use tinned tomatoes, tinned beans, lentils, etc all the time, and occasionally I add a jar of bolognaise sauce into meat dishes - I put half a jar in to a cottage pie the other day and it gave it a lovely rich flavour.

In the program I saw, Delia was using frozen potato wedges - my son had a thing for those when he was small and the darned things are a nuisance to cook because they come in such a wide range of sizes, so if the large ones are just cooked then the smaller ones shrivel up. It's much easier to slice a few similar sized potatoes into wedges and give them a swish around in a little oil with some spicing added. But hey ho I suppose the frozen ones fit with her general way of doing things, even though it's a more expensive way and likely to be less successful. However, in terms of her previous high standards of teaching about food prep, it goes against the principle of chopping veg uniformly in size to ensure even cooking, so I think she has let herself down in some ways.

I do like Delia though and I feel slightly sorry for her - she even got a spot on the Harry Hill show, which I couldn't help but laugh at.

ATB.

I thought the lowest point last Monday was when Delia opened a packet of frozen risotto. OK Delia added a few mushrooms, why ! just for colour. If it were for taste that doesn't say much for the frozen mushrooms in the risotto.

To me that was just an advert for the risotto, the instructions on how to cook it would have been on the packet.

Also the football is beginning to bore me

I think Delia may have been inspired by flat-pack furniture - instead of needing a screwdriver and an Allen key, you just need a tin-opener and a freezer :-)

I'm expecting to see her fronting adverts for frozen foods soon - M&S perhaps ... "these are not just any old frozen prawns - these are M&S frozen prawns as recommended by Delia!"

Although a lot of foodies think she has sold her soul to the devil - I hear the shops are struggling to get the kind of foods she is recommending out quick enough.

grisinni - if you dislike the show so much, i have some advice for you - stop watching it?!?!?!?!

Only the football bits bore me. I enjoy watching the cooking bits even though I have not come across anything I will cook yet. Someone mentioned that Delia is doing a Fanny Craddock I am still keeping an open verdict.