My beef stews used to stretch through the week in different forms, it would start off as a beef stew saving some aside. Part of this would become an 'Italian' concoction to serve with pasta mid-week and then the remainder would become a curry or a mild chili with rice towards the end of the week. So I suppose it was like a kind of scouse lasting through the week with the addition of sweetcorn, peas, baked beans or tinned kidney beans to make it go further.

The cost of ready meals are expensive in comparison and until recently you could not even be absolutely sure of the origin of ingredients in it. The ones I hate are the so called cheaper range of ready meals that contain 'shaped meat' that thought alone conjures up all kinds of horrors to me.

My 86 year old mum watches all of the cooking programmes and she delights in all of the culinary expertise and is quite the critic too bless her but I really think it is because she secretly fancies Raymond Blanc!