Kitchenella: The secrets of women: heroic, simple, nurturing cookery - for everyone

A passionate, personal account of the battle to feed and nourish family and friends.

The continuing story of the rise and fall of good food finds us at the end of a decade of exceptional growth and opportunity, yet once again in crisis. Our food culture has taken a turn for the worse. Recession has slowed the good food revolution as shoppers cut back on quality ingredients and head for the budget lines.

Education about food is limited to the voices of TV chefs, mostly men, whose testosterone driven pursuits include hunter gathering, butchery, deep sea fishing and cooking inimitably difficult recipes. Their programmes do nothing to solve the everyday predicament of real people: putting economical, common sense food on the table. Even when a woman gets her small piece of TV airtime, she is either the love interest that licks her chocolaty fingers to camera, or she is a former author of kitchen bibles advising viewers to cobble together meals using unhealthy and expensive processed ingredients. Progress is slowing down, thanks to food television.

We believe in food icons, from Delia to Jamie, but their philosophies are no longer convincing, because they cannot possibly understand the predicament of the average family, living through recession and trying to do it right in the kitchen.

Where are the cooks with wit, who work out the budget and plan an easy dish that efficiently feeds family and friends? In A Taste of Real Life Rose Prince calls for a return to a system of cooking that is nourishing and energy efficient. Food addressed to real people in real life situations.

Full of logical, economical and imaginative recipes that solve the modern cook’s dilemma, A Taste of Real Life will teach you the skills of those teachers who work without books, the ‘mothers’ and the cooks who subsequently learned from them, to decisively show you the easy way to cook and shop.