I believe in good food, not just eating it but also growing it, preparing it & sharing it with others – as a young child my mother taught me to cook, Delia, & later Floyd were our favourites, both passionate advocates of simply prepared but stunningly flavoursome dishes.

Thirty years on & thousands of meals later, I am still amazed how by simply combining a dozen or so ingredients & cooking with passion, that it is possible to produce a dish that is savoured by those that eat it 

In recent years it has become evident that the old saying ‘You are what you eat' is absolutely true. The Food Industry has been allowed to manufacture then sell quick & easy ‘convenience’ food to us by us, the consumer, because we have less time to do it ourselves.

However, the backlash has begun. We know that recent studies into food have show that the <country-regionw:ston><placew:ston>UK’s population is getting larger, that our salt intake is increasing, that we & our children are consuming a cocktail of artificial additives, preservatives & colourings.

Though the levels of pesticide residue found in fruit & vegetables once they have reached the supermarket shelves has reduced over the past few years, the practice of ‘chorine rinsing’ to remove the harmful chemicals is worrying in itself.

Animals, farmed intensively are significantly more likely to be given digestive enhancers, growth promoters, antibiotics & food colourings in their feed. The conditions that animals are kept in is, if not morally wrong then raise some serious questions about animal welfare issues.

The counter argument is cheaply pre-prepared food. Well, I hear that but let us be serious – when comparing a manufactured ready meal with a home made one just look at the list of ingredients! Of course it is cheaper to use emulsifiers, additives, preservatives, bulking agents and water than produce food that is grow or reared – it is not a like for like comparison.