Jack
Monroe is a British food writer and campaigns particularly on poverty and
hunger. She has published several ‘austerity cook books’ where she creates low
cost recipes. However, what’s interesting about Monroe is that she actually rose
to fame when she herself was struggling with severe poverty with her young son through
her blog A Girl Called Jack. It was a food blog on feeding herself and
her son as a single parent with meals for £10 under. The post that made her
famous was ‘Hunger Hurts’ written in 2012 and is actually now studied at GCSE
English level. She states ‘I think back
to this time last year (written in 2013) when you've got to the point where you
have unplugged your fridge and you have unscrewed your light bulbs and you have
sold everything you own and you are eating value kidney beans out of the pan,
or using the child's formula milk that the food bank gave you. Where was I
supposed to find £14 back then?’ She encapsulates the real struggles of poverty
in 21st century Britain and has empathy for her readers as she
herself as experienced extreme poverty, so people can relate to her. Monroe says:
‘Food poverty comes in two strands. The first is not having enough money to buy
food for yourself and your family. The second is poverty of education’. She
therefore tackles both through her ingenious recipes.
The layout of her blog is very simple and easy to navigate
around just like her recipes. They are split into categories of bread,
breakfast, soup, beans and lentils, pasta, rice, microwave cooking and snacks/treats.
Another
section on her blog is vegan recipes. However, she states: ‘Choosing
to go vegan is a privilege, if you’re eating on a really low budget, being all
virtuous is probably not your main concern.’ A unique aspect of her recipes are
that all the ingredients she uses are costed and even in the title the price of the meal is listed.
For example perfect Yorkshire puddings 8p, Carrot,
Cumin & Kidney Bean Burgers 9p, or Shakshuka 49p. This shows her main priority
for her recipes is the cost factor. The kitchen equipment she uses is also very
basic and so is hassle free and minimalistic. Most of her recipes are very
quick and can be cooked in 15 minutes and under and are filling and nutritious.
One
of her recipes is sort-of paella, 67p and from the title we are not expecting
perfection but it is good enough! She replaces traditional paella ingredients
with cheaper alternatives for example saffron with turmeric and paella rice
with long grain rice. She says ‘a rice is a rice is a rice,
as far as I’m concerned’ therefore conveying her minimalistic and laid back
approach to cooking. It is light hearted, and no stress is involved. Her voice
in the recipe is non-judgmental
and definitely isn’t pretentious. She says ‘feel free to add
chopped peppers, seasonal vegetables, any meat or fish of your choice, a glass
of white wine, a splash of sherry – whatever your budget or your cupboard will
allow’. So it is versatile and can be easily adapted
to individual budget and preference. She also uses basic brands. Monroe tells
us ‘The
star of the show in this paella is the simple coloured rice, cooked al dente,
accentuated with bright red tomatoes and little green peas’. Thus,
she shows us how to make a colourful meal that’s filling, nutritious and very
cheap so it kind of ticks all the boxes!
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