I spent New Year's Eve at the Falcon pub in St Mawgan, which embodies all that a typical village pub should – good food and drink, roaring fires, friendly faces and no loud music. Besides, it has one of the most magnificent magnolias that I have ever seen in its beer garden, it's worth going later in the year just to see it in bloom. I have a vague memory of singing Auld Lang Syne outside in the street, along with the rest of the customers, as the church clock chimed the midnight hour. I like New Year's Eve, it's the only time I can sing without people complaining. And so this is 2007. My new year resolution is not to make new year resolutions, and I can't break that one because it would be ridiculous to tell everyone in April that I had just broken by one resolution by making a resolution. The national media has, of course, started the year as it no doubt means to go on. Printing pictures of Saddam's execution one day then reporting the next day how many people had objected to dreadful pictures of Saddam's execution being printed while naturally repeating the pictures all over again. Nothing's changed there then. There will be a few more health scares soon – I've already heard the word 'pandemic' being bandied around. Health scares are the meat and drink of newspapers in thrall to the post-Christmas dearth of good stories (goodness me, I seem to have swallowed a dictionary, it's the fault of all those crosswords I've done over the festive season, I'll try to tone it down). Anyway, we'll soon be back to the terrors of bird- flu (two sparrows, a swan and a chicken farmer from Sri-Lanka), or some form of E-coli (a bottle of Tia Maria, the rest of the mince pies and an iffy plate of eight-day-old turkey soup). And whatever happened to Listeria? The only disease to sound like it ought to be planted in a hanging basket. Speaking of health scare stories reminds me of the time I'd been on holiday in San Francisco and hadn't seen a British newspaper for at least two weeks. The city papers had, not surprisingly for the US, not a jot of European news, apart from the '500 killed in earthquake, not an American amongst them' sort of story. I'd also been shown round one of the smaller papers, a visit arranged by a kind friend who thought for some reason I wanted to spend an afternoon in a newsroom on my holidays. They were as bemused to meet an editor from Cornwall as I was to meet people who didn't know where Cornwall was. Anyway, I missed any news from Britain, which led me to repeat several times in the next five years 'I didn't realise so and so was dead', because you lose track when you're away. When I staggered into the arrivals hall at Heathrow, in a trance-like state after an 11 hour cigarette-less flight, I spotted a headline on the news-stand which stated 'flesh- eating bug strikes again'. Wondering if it was some kind of giant cockroach on the loose, I walked outside and saw my son, who had driven to meet me, walking towards me. Now I could have put any amount of money on a bet as to which would be his second words of greeting and I would have been right. 'Hello Mum. Have you heard about the flesh-eating bug?' What a shame there wasn't a bookmaker on the concourse! He insisted on regaling me with detailed descriptions of the creature all the way home, which didn't sit well with a stomach already assaulted by various egg muffins or what approximates for a full English breakfast on an American airliner. Over the next few years the flesh-eating bug has made a comeback in various guises, not funny if you have had it, but just another example of media frenzy when it comes to medical scare stories. A flesh-eater round every corner. We're all obsessed with bugs and germs now anyway. On New Year's Day I was slumped in front of the television, wondering yet again how there can possibly be 40-plus channels and not a decent thing to watch, when my channel hopping happened on a sort of juvenile health programme. Juvenile in that it was hosted by bouncy young things all smiles and acting school mannerisms which leapt from subject to subject so that those with a low attention span didn't get bored out of their tiny minds. One minute we were in somebody's bedroom and a young man with lots of shiny white teeth and tousled black hair was showing us a container of dust-mites he, or rather some poor minion, had vacuumed up from an ordinary bed, something guaranteed to give you a poor night's sleep on the first night of the new year, the next we had leapt into someone's kitchen. Here, a giggly girl and a man too young to be a real food inspector, were lecturing us on the rules of fridge stacking. No, he said sternly, you shouldn't put uncooked meat products, in this case fresh sausages, on the top shelf, even if wrapped. They were, he said, lowering his voice dramatically, teeming with bacteria and this would work its way downwards onto all the food below. This would be BAD for all the other things. One was left with the impression that the entire fridge, even if cooled to the proper temperature, was a war zone of SAS bacteria, all pouring down the shelves to attack the iceberg and the half a cucumber in the veggie drawer at the bottom. He was practically distraught with disapproval when he found a packet of opened cooked ham on the last but one shelf, all ready to catch the moving hordes on their way down from the bangers on the top. To say nothing of ambushing the open packet of best Irish cheddar on another shelf or sneaking into the yogurt that time forgot in the corner. Nor, I thought to myself, would he approve of the cooked chicken often to be found in my fridge which may or may not have been the subject of a hand to paw and claw battle when something furry has slithered up to the kitchen counter into shopping left unguarded for a few seconds and got its teeth into the business end and looked like winning the tug of war for a few moments. What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve, as granny would have said. I left the pair contemplating moving into the loo intent on illustrating the dangers of not shutting the lid of the lavatory when flushing, hopefully not too graphically, and switched off. I know health and hygiene are important, but things have got a bit out of hand. Health scares do just that, scare people. Food hygiene rules are becoming so rigid that we'll soon need our kitchens examining by health inspectors if we want to invite people to dinner. I've also noticed an increasing number of people who won't eat leftovers. They're the same people who won't eat anything on its sell-by date and would rather die than eat anything past its sell-by date. That's their choice and fine by me, even though I find it totally irritating. I do try to abide by their rules, however, and besides, getting the 'reduced' labels off things is often impossible. I do, however, object to the ban on leftovers, and I'm not talking of old leftovers, but things left one day which they won't eat the next. What is happening is that this could totally remove some of the best dishes in British cuisine in the next few years, and we haven't got that many best dishes left that are totally British. Tandoori chicken, lasagne and doner kebabs don't count. Future generations will not, it seems, enjoy that grand old tradition of 'the remains of the Sunday joint'. Shepherd's Pie on Monday, rissoles on Tuesday, soup on Wednesday. Anyone who could stretch it to Thursday was considered a truly great housewife. If it wasn't rissoles, which lets face it are unique to these islands and the secret of making them will soon die out, we had one of my grandmother's specialities, slices of cold meat in batter, or Nell's fritters as they were called. If you want to see a health inspector blanche just give him or her a recipe for these little delights. Slices of cold, roast beef, pork or lamb. Batter made of milk, which was unpasturised because we got it from the farm, one egg, from our own chickens fed on all the leftovers which were left over from the leftovers. Flour and seasoning. Dip in the batter and fry in lukewarm shallow fat because nobody owned a deep fryer and the Rayburn wasn't really up to getting any fat (dripping usually) smoking hot. The finished fritters looked quite good, although when you cut them trapped fat oozed out. If not all are consumed, serve for tea with pickles. Mrs Beeton gave recipes for curry, which even then wasn't a new thing by any means, but we never tried anything that exotic. What we did have was the creme de la creme of leftover meals – bubble and squeak. You can't actually make this without using leftovers, or rather you can but it doesn't taste the same. It's especially good at Christmas, but this year when I made a huge pan full of it only two of us would eat the delicious mixture of potatoes, sprouts, swede, parsnips, carrots, bread sauce, stuffing and chestnuts. Sad, isn't it. But then they won't eat day-old curry, moussaka or any pasta dish, all of which taste better the next day. As does leftover bubble and squeak, served the next day with a fried egg for breakfast. Of course, I do realise that should I fall ill in the next few months, the chorus of 'I told you so' will be deafening.