THIS fantastic print is hanging on my wall – I got it at the Urban Expression conference earlier this month, to hang by my desk. It says in full: “Bless those who curse you. What credit is it to you if you only do good to those who are good to you?” It’s by Micah Purnell and it’s one of […]
For the full recipe, click here: Jack Monroe’s kale pesto pasta recipe, The Guardian Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agirlcalledjack
Article in the Guardian, Comment Is Free, 29th October. To read the full article, click here: Some British people can’t afford to heat their food. Aren’t we ashamed? Jack Monroe, Comment Is Free. Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
So I’m home from a much-needed rest in Brighton and back in the kitchen with my sleeves rolled up… One of the most popular dishes I’ve been asked to take on is the humble lasagne – and I’ve been putting it off, firstly, because I’ve Never Made Lasagne Before. Ever. But, i’ve eaten enough of it to know it’s made […]
This week’s Guardian recipe uses soft herring roes, but if you can’t get hold of them, any white fish is a good substitute. Enjoy! For the full recipe, click here. Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agirlcalledjack
Tins! When you cook with as many tins as I do, it seems a shame to throw them away, even if your local council has a pretty decent recycling system for them. So, I’ve been washing up and saving my tins lately, rather than rinsing them and putting them in the Red Bin, and today decided to spend a little […]
Jack versus the ready meal, take two. (Mine’s the one in the silver container!!) Today’s challenge was to make liver taste nice. Yeah, I know. My only experience of liver was as a childhood dinner, and I have to admit I wasn’t looking forward to this one bit. But onwards – perhaps my palate has changed… The ‘ready meal’ version, […]
I had two sad little bananas in the fruit bowl this evening and fancied a quick comforting dessert – so here we have it, banana custard! Makes around 3/4s of a pint (served three): Ingredients: 2 bananas 300ml cold water 6 tsp dried skimmed milk 2 tbsp flour 2 egg yolks (the whites can be frozen until needed – don’t […]
So today I decided to set myself a new challenge, to cook a like-for-like replica of a supermarket ready meal, but cheaper. Harder than it looks, as the ready meals are made in bulk using low priced ingredients – and I have to buy those ingredients at ‘retail’ price, not ‘wholesale’. I decided on a basic macaroni cheese meal, 75p […]
Day three of the slow cooker experiment (£8 from Wilkinsons!) and I decide to try a risotto in it. Only I’m not using rice and this doesn’t have the characteristic standing-and-stirring of a risotto, so I’m not really sure what to call it, apart from bloody yummy – as I’m tucking in as I type this! I haven’t overloaded this […]
For the full recipe, click here: Jack Monroe’s sausage casserole recipe, The Guardian. And in case you missed it or are curious, here’s the whole shebang about the free range sausages: Ethics vs Economics: Choosing free-range. Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe.
So, I’ve caused a minor furore with my latest Guardian recipe by using free range sausages at £2.79 for 6. Not as big as the furore I caused by (quelle horreur!) using basic baked beans and rinsing the sauce off them to reveal little white haricot or cannelloni beans underneath (more on that later) but a furore all the same. I hardly eat meat at all these days, maybe twice a week, and usually sausages or chicken. I tend to get my proteins from beans, pulses, fish and vegetables – I lead a pretty hectic, active lifestyle, and am a healthy size for my height with good general health, so I think I’m doing alright. I do a lot of research into nutrition, and have a permanent mental list of great sources of B vitamins, iron, protein and vitamin C – a lot of which are staples on my shopping list – but I’ll blog that in detail one of these days. The point is, I try to get as much nutrition for my budget as possible. If I didn’t care about nutrition, I’d never have started this in the first place – I’d have carried on feeding SB a third of a ready meal and staring glumly across the table while he ate it. Times have been bloody hard over the past year, and I bought Basic 80p sausages for my Live Below The Line challenge earlier this year, […]
Food banks are not new, nor news. Commenters on all sides are quick to point out that they first sprang up under the last Labour government, but the need for them has increased dramatically since the introduction of the bedroom tax in April, and harsh sanctions for benefit claimants. The latest figures from the Trussell Trust show that demand for […]
Photo: The Guardian. Over 350,000 people received three days’ emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks between April and September 2013, triple the numbers helped in the same period last year. The Trussell Trust says that UK hunger is getting worse and the charity is calling for an inquiry into the causes of UK food poverty and the consequent surge in […]
I’m often asked by my readers and on Twitter what I would suggest donating to a food bank, so I have compiled a list of ambient products that can be found in most supermarkets. They’re ambient on purpose – so that neither the food bank nor the recipient will have to worry about storing them in a fridge, and there […]
Who remembers 22 meals for a coffee? A few months ago I urged readers to give up a luxury, like their morning latte, and instead buy the equivalent shopping for their local food bank, or donate £3 to the Trussell Trust by texting FBUK13 £3 to 70070. Well the response was overwhelming, with hundreds of readers donating both by text and from their shopping baskets, and if you Google ’22 meals for a coffee’, it was mentioned on other peoples blogs far and wide. But as new figures show that food bank use is still on the increase, it’s time for me to ask again if you can spare one little luxury that you might take for granted – be it your morning latte or takeaway breakfast, or that pint after work, or a packet of ten cigarettes – and instead donate the money to your local food bank, or to the Trussell Trust by texting FBUK13 £3 to 70070. The Trussell Trust are launching a similar campaign tomorrow called Give It Up For Foodbanks – and I can’t emphasise enough that a three day emergency food box, or an extra three pounds, is absolutely crucial to some families. I’ve got a list of suggested food bank donations that I wrote for the Women’s Institute and Urban Expression last week, and I’ve blogged it here. Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe.
After last weeks porridge experiment, several of my readers got in touch to tell me that they do something similar, but with dried skimmed milk. Well, I rushed to the supermarket to pick up a bag, to solve another household problem. So Thankyou dear readers for this ingenious idea – I’ve made a Super Express Portable Porridge pot from a […]
From today’s Independent on Sunday: “When the first Pink List was published in 2000, it was essentially a list of 50 influential people who were brave enough to be “out”. This year we received more than 1,300 nominations and had to reduce thousands of potential contenders to just 101. The judges decided that a Pink List contender can no longer […]
Last night I was invited to speak at the Womens Institute at Westcliff on Sea, for their ‘Bountiful Harvest’ themed evening. And a bountiful harvest it was indeed, with members bringing in dishes that they had made costing less than £1 a head – which I had the very difficult job of tasting and judging – and a bulging table […]
Last week, I was trying new things for upcoming recipes for my Guardian column, when I came across a bag of kale on special offer at Waitrose – 75p for a massive 200g bag. Anyway, I used a scant handful of it for a recipe, and this evening decided to make the rest into kale pesto… Ingredients (makes 14 portions […]
It’s been a while since I posted a reader recipe, but I got this one in my email inbox recently and just had to blog it. I’ll be making this for my lunch myself this week as I fancy experimenting with the value range soft cheese, and the other ingredients are things I usually have in the house. Here’s Ali’s quick and easy go-to lunch, which she’s worked out at just over 30p per portion… “My current go-to lunch is pretty instant but I think for your readers who don’t have time to cook it could be good! So all the ingredients are from the Sainsbury’s Basics range… Tomato & Onion pasta and sauce (17p) cooked until 2 minutes from done. Add 100g of frozen mixed veg (7.5p – 75p per 1kg) and 20g of soft cheese (6p – 61p per 200g) and finish cooking (microwave or pan). It’s really tasty and at least you’re getting some veg and calcium in there too! Perfect if you just don’t have the time to prepare something or if you’re injured and can’t chop anything. Oh, and adding a bit more veg and a slice of bread each makes it enough for a lunch for two.” If you have a great frugal recipe you’d like to share, email it to jackmonroe@live.co.uk – thanks!
I received this lovely email recipe from a reader after I posted my Express Porridge idea, and loved it so much I thought I would share it. I know my Small Boy would love this! Good morning Jack, I saw your recent post about creating your own instant oatmeal. Here’s something I make that’s cheap and easy to make, and my daughter loves it. One 450g/500g tub of yogurt Some cheap, fine cut value oats *fruit (optional) Spoon the yogurt into a bowl, and gradually add the dry oats and stir them in. Add enough oats so the mixture is between overly creamy and dry. Put the top on the container, and keep in the fridge overnight. The next day you’ll have creamy, fluffy yogurty oats to spoon into a bowl and enjoy. *Most of the time, after I pour the yogurt into the bowl, I add some frozen blueberries, frozen blackberries or raisins before stirring in the porridge. This is made in our house once a week, and it provides about 3 breakfasts for myself and my daughter. It goes down a treat. Best wishes, Laura. If you have a recipe you want to share, email it to jackmonroe@live.co.uk
The question we were asked to answer today, was “are food banks a sign of hope or failure?” I think we all know the answer to that – or at least we think we do. Here’s my story. You might think you know it already, but listen carefully. Here it is without any media spin, without any internet commenters, without any details carefully left out by left wing or right wing newspapers that don’t want to upset their readers. I’m a girl called Jack. I’m 25 years old, and I was unemployed for 18 months and claiming benefits. However, I had my first job at the age of 14 or 15, working as a waitress in a local restaurant owned by a family friend, earning myself some pocket money on a Saturday and Sunday. Before that, I had spent weekends at my grandfathers guest houses, folding sheets and making tea for a tenner in my back pocket. I have worked in retail, in coffee shops, and eventually, Essex Country Fire and Rescue Service. I left the Fire Service after having my son. I returned from maternity leave to find that working two day shifts and two night shifts, on different days and nights every week, with an 18 month old boy to look after, was next to impossible by myself. Comments on the internet imply that I sailed out of my job because I knew the welfare state would pick […]
Published in the Guardian, Thursday 3rd October 2013: Jack Monroe’s beetroot, red lentil and feta salad. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agirlcalledjack
So, if you’ve made the Beetroot, Feta and Lentil salad that I kicked off my Guardian recipe column with – or you have some lentils and spinach still kicking about, here’s a recipe for a quick warming winter dinner. It’s easy and filling – I love mine with pitta breads dunked in… Ingredients (serves two): 1 onion 1 red chilli […]
Another brief but very exciting announcement that I’ve been keeping up my sleeve: I’ve been offered (and joyfully accepted) a regular weekly recipe column in The Guardian newspaper – new weekly recipes, still focusing on small budgets and simple ingredients. When people ask me what I do for a living, I’m usually stumped as to how to describe the smorgasbord […]
This is one of the best blog posts I’ve read for a long time and articulates brilliantly some of the things in my head that haven’t made it onto paper/the Internet yet! I have been quietly following Joanna’s blog for a while, and enjoy both her food and her philosophy: “Growing my own vegetables has brought the issue of food justice more sharply into focus than anything I have ever read or watched on the television. Harvesting bowl after bowl of raspberries from just a few canes in the back garden has made me both more grateful for the food that I have and more angry about the fact that so many are not able to do even this very little thing. Giving away lettuce to anyone who would take it and still feeling that we would never get to the end of it exposed for me like nothing else the lies that dominate our consumer culture and fuel a system where around 4 million people in one of the richest nations in the world do not have access to a healthy diet. The lies are perpetuated by the god of consumerism, a god that needs us to be fearful of not having enough, because otherwise we might stop buying things.” Please read Joanna’s article for the rest, I find her writing a refreshing calm among all the noise: Garden Rage by Joanna Dobson Jack. X
COOKING ON A BOOTSTRAP 