SNOW BOUND....

First snow of the winter and from my window the hills are alive with lots of sunshine bringing that special, magic light into my house. Unfortunately, I have to leave this pleasant scene and head for Crewe , the land of Gwyneth Dunwoody, to review a restaurant. Staying overnight at a farm deep in the countryside. Hope I don't get snowed in.....

FOOD FOR THOUGHT......

So the clocks have gone back. It's pitch black out there. My roots need doing ( but they are not yet in the badger zone so will have to wait until there is spare money) and I currently face hard financial times in the hinterland of freelance journalism. However, a small respite from the travails of balancing the books as I head off tonight to the swanky Cheshire village of Alderley Edge ( not my natural territory) for a spot of freebie dinner.

Good food and drink is my second great interest in life after politics and that's probably because I was brought up in a working-class family in post-war England where bland, overcooked food was the diet of choice and/or necessity for most people with little money to spare.

Spaghetti bolognese was pretty exotic but it came from a tin and "curry" was of the dehydrated Vesta variety. Our basic fodder was spuds, meat and tinned peas with gravy made with Oxo and onions. Chips were a once a week treat with fish on a Friday (nuclear yellow haddock was the other option) and mid-week it was stew with shin beef, carrots and potatoes.

The Sunday joint came cold ( to make it last longer) and Sunday night tea was a lettuce tomato and beetroot salad with tinned fish and fruit to follow.

Such spartan fare has been wonderfully charted by the Observer's cookery writer and chef Nigel Slater in his autobiographical tome, Toast. And 40 years on like him I may have moved on to more sophisticated fodder but retain some culinary tastes from those days. Tinned salmon drowned in vinegar still tastes nicer to me than fresh, cornbeef is top with tomato and onion, and there is absolutely no substitute for pappy white bread toasted or served straight with crispy bacon and lashings of HP. And, oh, the joy of a Holland's pie, chips and mushy pies if you have a hangover. Nigella will never know what she has missed.....

£2 CHICKEN? NO THANKS

So ASDA is now selling a £2 chicken - and predictably they are flying off the shelves. The last time I saw a chicken at such a price it was in Netto (I was going through a bad financial patch) and I wasn't remotely tempted

Like cheap clothes from Primark, cheap chicken comes at a cost. In this case largely to the animals who are confined in vile sheds for the paltry six weeks of their lives, fattened up, pumped with antibiotics. And then killed.I would rather eat chicken once a week, and buy a free-range or organic bird, than fuel the coffers of the supermarkets and those who subject their animals to this most miserable of existences. Before anyone posts about me being a woolly liberal, I don't have a family to feed, so I accept I can afford to make that choice. I'm not a vegetarian, either, or unduly sentimental about animals.

But if people really thought about what happens to the meat they are eating then I believe more would eschew rock-bottom prices. Next time you tuck into a cut-proce bird, chew on this thought . According to pressure group Compassion In Farming:

"It is like putting a teenage body on an eight-yearold's skeleton - the bird's system simply cannot cope. A study showed that 26 per cent of British birds are lame at slaughter, and they are also prone to heart failure, sores and blisters." Still hungry?