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This book is totally backward and sending out the wrong message...the RIGHT idea is to try and get people back into the kitchen by tempting them with quick and easy recipes that are made from fresh ingredients. As some people have said anyway - most of the ingredients are much more expensive than buying fresh and how hard IS IT to make some blooming mash potato or fry up some mince?? Seriously?! If you're too lazy to do that, you'd be too lazy to bother making delia's "cheat" recipes anyway.

There are so many decent things we can make in LESS time than most of delias recipes take using FRESH ingredients for half the price...so, why on earth would we choose to do this? You may as well just buy a ready meal, it will take much less time, cost less and probably not taste much worse.

The point? If you REALLY want to stop buying ready-meals - then start cooking, for real! There are plenty of cook books on amazon for quick meals - try Delias chum Nigel Slater! His fast food books are actually inspiring, rather than leaving you with a horrible deflated feeling.

Warning: This book has one seriously bitter after taste.

Avoid at all costs!

This book doesn't tell you how to cook what so ever, you might as well go and buy ready meals. Using a can of mince in a dish has to be a sin, and I think she must have been slipped a back hander from the supermarkets for all the product placement there is. British food has improved greatly over the last 10 years, and she is trying to take it back 20 years by using frozen or tinned ingredients, instead of fresh produce. I recommend Jamie Oliver or Nigel Slater if you want to learn how to cook.

Took me agessssss to get some of the ingredients to make some of these recipes, and what seemed to be such a good idea, I think it would of been less time to actually just get the 'hard way?' ingredients in the first place.

What I think Delia hasn't realised is, that alot of the ingredients she reals off, are items that some northern supermarkets don't stock. Such a shame I only found that out 'after' buying the book.

The cooking time was cut by literally five minutes and the meals looked like they were School Dinner rejects. I had to walk around the supermarket for about an hour just to get the ingredients- as opposed to ten minutes up and down the main aisles- had to ask for help several times just to find stuff.

The whole idea has backfired on her. Awful.

I am sure we have all been there, the cupboard is bare and the weekly shop is 12, 24 or 48 hours away. There are tins and packets in the cupboard and "stuff" in the freezer.
Having read through the reviews for this book, I decided to buy it and have not regretted it. Having read the recipes, but sadly, not tried any yet, I am impressed with how much one can do with so little. My only adverse comment is the section on store cupboard ingredients, which are a little pricey, but then there are alternatives available.
I have offered to buy a copy for my son, who is off on his way to University this coming Autumn term, and who has very little experience of having to cook for himself, but even he said he could, and would, try several of the recipes in the book.
I would have to agree with another reviewer, that a photo of the finished meal, would definately be a help to my son for instance, to show what it should look like when finished.
Otherwise, three cheers Delia, a definate hit I think