Sunday, 16 December 2012

This is the exact transcript of an online conversation with Sheila Dibnah, widow of the late, great Fred Dibnah. The post starts with a comment about Saturday Kitchen. Please make up your own mind about how it all developed. To protect the "innocent" the names have been replaced by initials



  • Just watching Saturday Kitchen, with the little cooking films they put in the show. I couldn't do a veggie Christmas. No turkey, no sausages wrapped in bacon, no sausage meat stuffing - nut roast just wouldn't do it for me on Christmas Day.

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  • VS likes this.


  • MK: its actually quite nice. x

  • James Wilson I'm absolutely 100% with Judith on that one!


  • MK: No its not for me but my step sister is vege and she has made it for us.

  • Sheila Dibnah Each to their own Judith...I've been a veggie now for well over 30 years and have never missed meat. Nut roast with all the trimmings and traditionally served is just as nice. Too many people write vegetarian food off as 'boring'' without even trying it or cooking it properly!

  • James Wilson Disagree Sheila - I've tried lots and lots of veggie foods. Things to avoid are those items that "pretend" to be meat. I'mm 100% omnivore, but there are loads of vegetarian dishes that are absolutely delicious. One of my favourites is vegetarian lasagne, but pasta dishes in general lend themselves to vegetarian options. HOWEVER - I still adore me turkey and al the trimmings!

  • Judith Wilson I used to go out with a vegetarian Sheila, his entire family were vegetarian including the cats and the dogs. I tried many varied dishes, bulgar wheat and celery au gratin, carrot and mushroom pies, nut roasts, all sorts, his sister in law made some of the most varied and unusual dishes, some of which I still cook now, so I have tried many. But, I adore meat, the one thing missing from many veggie dishes is a bit of meat. There isn't a hope of me ever having a veggie Christmas dinner, I want the full works. I'm sure if you don't like meat or enjoy meat then it wouldn't be hard to be a veggie, the smell of cooking meat to me is heaven.


  • NH-B: i'm veggie, but i don't like the texture of meat, the way it feels in my mouth makes me heave, but having said that i like chicken and fish. guess we are alll different.

  • Sheila Dibnah It's no big deal - people will eat and drink what they like and that's how it should be without comment from anyone. Life is too short to bother about what others are eating - that's why I never comment if people wish to eat meat in front of me. Only if I think someone is 'judging' people who are veggie do I speak up - and then have plenty to say about it. Some people seem to have a high attitude about what others chose to eat - be it flesh or no flesh. At the end of the day, it's personal choice. But it doesn't worry me one way or another if people are stuffing their face with turkey on Christmas Day and feeling pity for us poor veggies. If I wanted to eat meat I would; how difficult can it be? There are people dying of hunger and thirst in other parts of the world who would eat anything

  • Judith Wilson I don't judge vegetarians at all, I know plenty, plus piscatarians as well. I have however deleted a lady who was rampant vegan, who sent me endless pictures of dead animals and criticised me for drinking milk, she said I was a hypocrite for choosing free range eggs and free range chicken, because they were still killed. She bored me rigid with lectures on how good almond milk was and rice milk and how evil the milk industry was. She was right, I was wrong, end of subject, so the delete button was pressed, I found her so nasty and on her high horse about her superior diet and how she was saving the planet. She can chew away at her tofu and give me a chicken leg.

  • James Wilson I reckon I'm pretty hypocritical - I like my meat to be dead when I eat it; properly cooked through, and I'll eat big lumps of cow, pig or hen as long as it's muscle. Stick brain, stomach or tongue in front of me and I'd very rapidly consider a vegetarian future!

  • Sheila Dibnah Oh-hum, it's the silly season again where us poor deprived nut-roast eaters come under fire as 'normal' people fuss and fret over cooking a dead carcass served with intestinal/giblets gravy or whatever it is! Food is fuel, that's all. What does it matter what people eat? People need to eat to survive - why speculate at all about it? If they want to use their body as a burial ground for dead flesh it's up to them; no one else and if people want to abstain from eating meat ( or don't like it) that is also up to them. Perhaps some vegans/vegetarians may not get so sticky and uptight if they didn't have to keep putting up with elitist propaganda of meat-eater making out that all people who decline flesh of animals are some kind of lesser band of cranky tofu eaters! In my opinion - carnivores should go along and see how meat is produced and then see how smug they are...and as any veggie will tell you, butchers shops smell of one thing: DEATH!


  • JLB I have to make nut roast for my son. But I know want mean

  • Sheila Dibnah Oh, poor you Jayne! If I were you, I'd be concentrating more on the fact he wants to spend his day with you rather than on what he prefers to eat!!!

  • Judith Wilson Sheila, Jayne above all people is incredibly lucky to be spending Christmas with anyone. She survived a life threatening brain tumour several years back that left her in a wheelchair for a few years. She was a young mum, with young children, a young husband and a new business. The one thing that Jayne is thankful for is being ALIVE and able to spend her Christmas with family, and grand children, in fact everyone. She lives her life to the full and makes the most beautiful handmade wedding gowns. If anyone gives thanks for being alive to enjoy every Christmas she is given, it is Jayne.

  • Sheila Dibnah Yes, I know the feeling...my husband is dead so he's not here to enjoy it.

  • Judith Wilson An apology would have been nice Sheila.

  • James Wilson Well, very interesting. I've just looked back through these comments, and find nothing that particularly criticises omnivores, carnivores or herbivores (eat owt, eat meat or eat veg). I did however see excessive defensive posts where none was necessary, that quickly degenerated into something quite offensive - all based on completely innocuous remarks about a ruddy nut roast! At least Germany had to invade Poland to start the last World War.

  • Judith Wilson Could someone tell me at what point my comment about a nut roast on Saturday Kitchen turned me into a raving attacker of vegetarians, because I can't. I'd quite like an explanation from Sheila why she took such offence to suddenly go off on one? I had no idea she even was one. She's actually deleted me from her page, so I can't get either an apology or explanation from her, as I would quite like to have one. She wrote a half page rant on her page about freedom of speech and 'silly season' picking on vegetarians - but why and how she suddenly went off on one is beyond me. I find her comments upsetting, nasty, totally unwanted. I thought her comment to Jayne was nasty, Jayne simply said she made nut roast for her son, and did not deserve a nasty and sarcastic reply like that. I have stuck up for Sheila when someone called her a gold digger, when someone said she made a living from her dead husband and when she her late husbands programmes were being belittled - and she goes and rips my ruddy head off over a nut roast. To be honest, I'm glad she's taken me off her friends list, because to be spoken to like that isn't something a so called friend does, well, not in my book anyway.
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