Day Five. Friday. Day Five. Fed up and grumpy. Breakfast was lemon curd on two slices of toast. I don’t think I’m going to eat lemon curd again for a long time after this… 7p. Lunch was a leftover cold rice salad with courgette, and lemon curd stirred through to make a cold sauce. I’d left it at home by […]
Having spent most of yesterday in bed with yesterday’s migraine, today has become Day Four of my second basg at the Live Below The Line challenge… Here’s my ‘Leaning tower of toast’ this morning, at 7p. Washed down with a large glass of water, a fistful of paracetamol and co-codamol, and a generous lashing of self pity, and hi ho […]
I just thought, before I take my highly inconvenient migraine back to bed, that I would check the fundraising page for my Live Below The Line challenge this year…. And I’m staggered to have passed the £3k mark! Thankyou to all of you who have donated – there’d be no point in me taking the challenge if you weren’t all […]
Day Three. I was sent home from work this afternoon with a migraine. Well-meaning friends have suggested that I quit the challenge to look after myself, but I’m not a quitter. I get migraines every now and again, usually stress related, but I’m going to be okay. I went home, lay down in the dark for the afternoon, drank lots […]
I come to the end of Day 2 of my second take on the Live Below The Line challenge, or this time I’m stretching my fiver over seven days and I’ve tried to up my fruit and protein intake. So here goes: Breakfast, 2 slices of whole meal toast with lemon curd, 7p. ….and an apple, 21p: Lunch was a […]
At the end of today – a day I have spent mostly packing up my kitchen and handing most of the contents to a friend to look after in the face of my pending move – I wasn’t really hungry enough to warrant a ‘proper’ dinner. My shop for take two of the Live Below The Line challenge included whole […]
I’ve decided to reattempt the Live Below The Line challenge, taking on board my previous experience of white rice and lack of protein, and advice and comments from readers. The challenge is open until June – so I thought a second attempt would be an opportunity to raise additional funding for Oxfam, as well as awareness about poverty and food […]
Never forget the most simplest of hot puds. Slice and deseed any fruit….you’ll soon discover which one works best for you. We like plain old apple….but pear, pine-apple or orange are also good. A small knob of butter or other light fat in a pan that has been sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnammon and just “fry” until the fruit is browned and the sugar treacley. Serve with what ever you like or have, cream, ice-cream, yoghurt, creme fraiche etc. Perfick…. Rod To see your favourite recipe here, email it to jackmonroe@live.co.uk
Burgers 4oz Red or Brown Lentils carrot grated celery finely chopped onion finely chopped 2oz Breadcrumbs clove of garlic crushed 1/2 tsp Mustard 1/2 tsp Cayenne 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 egg Sauce 1/2 tin chopped tomatoes 1tbsp marmalade pinch chilli powder (more if you want) Boil the lentils according to the pack instructions Saute the onion in a little oil Mash the lentils, breadcrumbs, garlic, cayenne, mustard, coriander with the beaten egg, until all are well combined. Add the carrot, onion and celery Shape into balls and then flatten into burger shapes Chill for at least 30 mins to firm up or freeze for later use Fry in a little oil until golden brown For the sauce cook all the ingredients together in a saucepan until reduced and sticky I would serve with potato wedges , parboiled with the skins left on, tossed in a spoonful of oil and oven baked till crispy and a coleslaw of grated carrot, cabbage and finely sliced onion tossed in a little oil and lemon juice. Kate x To see your recipe here. email it to jackmonroe@live.co.uk
Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
My budget is not as tight as it once was, but when my son was small there were days when I was reduced to searching the cracks in the sofa for change so that I could buy milk. You don’t forget things like that in a hurry. Anyway, here is my modest offering. I’m not sure it really counts as a proper recipe. But it is, I have found, a very good way of getting even vegetable-shy toddlers to eat things they can normally detect and reject at fifty paces. You can adapt according to what’s in the fridge. On toast, it’s great comfort food, with rice or pasta it’s more substantial. It’s a kind of ratatouille, I suppose. I call it ‘rats on toast’, but I thought that if I made that the title of my e-mail you would probably think I was some kind of troll. This easily serves three of us, and although I’m small my son is now over six feet tall and puts away a lot of food. His dad doesn’t do so badly, either. Ingredients: 1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 clove of garlic, chopped (optional) 1 onion, chopped (you could certainly use less, but I like it good and onion-y) 1 small courgette (again, adapt according to what you have), chopped fairly finely 1 tin chopped tomatoes 6 medium mushrooms (or whatever you can spare), sliced 2 tablespoons of tomato paste (the squeezy stuff […]
Kindly sent to me by Lindsay from Fortnum & Mason. Not to be reproduced without permission. Top to bottom: 1. Claudia Winkleman and her famous friend! 2. Impromptu nervous speech, which lots of people on Twitter then called ‘the best speech of the night’. Possibly due to the line: “I thought you’d all only invited me here because you felt […]
So… I won’t keep you all in the same suspense that I was in tonight – I’ve just got home and thought I’d better write something scrambled and incoherent about the Fortnum And Mason Food And Drink Awards… “Tonight’s Judges Choice Award, made at their discretion in recognition of a piece of work, an individual or a campaign thought to […]
Small Boy off to the Fortnum & Mason Food And Drink Awards… With me of course, but I’m not as cute in my shirt and tux as he is!! We’ve been very kindly invited up to the inaugural F&M Food And Drink Awards – I don’t expect my humble offerings are in the same league as ‘the Queen’s grocer’ – […]
I was very excited to receive your invite for recipes, I am sure you will be inundated, but here’s one of my own. Possibly my favourite lunch though I would happily eat for every meal of the day. It serves as a sandwich/toastie filler, topping for crackers/oatcakes or a baked potato, or in cold cooked rice or pasta. I haven’t ever considered giving it a name, and I’m sitting right now trying to think of something clever, but nope nothing’s springing to mind and its shortly going to become 9 o’clock so I better go and hit send before the working day begins…. This will suffice for approximately 2 sandwiches, generously. I am not exact as to the weight of the chickpeas – I tend to shake into a bowl what looks right – but this won’t be far off. I soak and boil 125g dried chickpeas for various purposes and use roughly a quarter of that. Ingredients: 30g cooked (or tinned) chickpeas 25g cheese (Asda smartprice, I find it very tangy and flavourful, so you don’t need much, for this or any other recipe) ½ a medium onion, thinly chopped (preferably red, if you happened to have one) 1 tablespoon mayonnaise (Asda smart price, tastes very nice, I find and not too bad calorie-wise either) Roughly mash the chickpeas with a fork. Add the chopped onion, grated cheese and mayonnaise and stir to combine. All done!! If you were […]
One of my recipe suggestions is sausage pasta. Buy cheap pack of port sausages – you can get about 12 for £1. Cook some of the sausages and when cool, chop them up and put them in the fridge. Next day, cook the pasta with onion, carrot, passata or chopped tomatoes and a bit of tomator puree and some marmite or vegetable stock cube. Any other veg left over can be chucked in. To finish, sausages can be thrown in and the dish warmed up with grated cheese on top (if no cheese, then yoghurt or coriander) Delicious! Good for leftovers. Keep up the great work Laura (mother of two very hungry children and skint!) To see your favourite recipe here, email it to jackmonroe@live.co.uk
Here I send you a recipe my mum used to cook when I was little, it is not expensive at all. it is a Spanish recipe, although I’m from Chile. It’s very easy and low cost, I make it to treat my self from time to time. I gave you approx quantities cause I’ve always cooked without measures, but it really depends for how many people. Make enough butter so you don’t have anything or much left. I hate to waste! Ingredients: 1 bag of spinach leaves 2tb sp flour 1 egg some milk (can be soy milk, doesn’t matter) oil 4tb sp of sugar optional,cinnamon, vanilla or any other spice if you want to add to the mix Method: Heat up oil in a pan. We mix the eggs, milk,sugar, flour and spice and we will have a liquid butter,we soak the spinach leaves in it and fry. Serve it warm and sprinkle sugar on top. Maria de los Angeles Rodriguez Correa To see your favourite recipe here, email it to jackmonroe@live.co.uk
I have a recipe for you. It is a simple fried rice I prepared for today’s lunch. I guess you may want to try it yourself. For two persons: Splash of vegetable oil – 20 ml Rice – 125g Sesame oil – 10ml Dark Soy Sauce – 30 ml 1 big carrot or 2 medium carrots 1 spring onion 50g bacon 2 eggs 1/2 garlic clove salt, pepper Cook the rice per instructions (It is best to cook the rice the previous day or use leftover rice) Cook scrambled eggs in the wok, set aside. Do not add salt. Chop the carrot and the bacon, mince the clove Put them in a splash of hot vegetable oil in the wok Let them cook a bit Add the rice and the soy sauce. Raise the heat, stir a bit and wait until the rice “pops” , then lower the heat In the meantime, mince the spring onion Add the reserved eggs and the minced spring onion Add the sesame oil (fragile, best to add just at the end of the cooking and not too much because it has a strong flavour) Add salt and pepper to taste Stir and NOM! Best regards, Marie-Cécile To see your favourite recipe here, email jackmonroe@live.co.uk
I’ve been asked a few times by different people what I would do differently if I could do Live Below The Line again. (Which could be a serious consideration, as it runs until June, so plenty of time for a second crack at it!) Firstly, in the first five days I only used up half of my food budget, with around four small meals each day. But, as it was pointed out to me by both well wishers and my own plummeting energy levels, the meals that I had were high in cheap carbs and very low in protein. So what would I do differently? Firstly, I think I’d lose the cornflakes and have toast for breakfast instead, but I’d trade the white bread for whole meal, to get more whole grains and fibre. When you’re eating such a limited diet, it’s important to maximise the ‘goodness’ wherever possible. I wanted white bread, because I thought it would be a ‘treat’, but I found myself peaking and crashing with inadequate nutrition and far too much starch. (50p) Secondly, I’d buy some meat. I did some swift calculations and the value sausages provide 6g of protein each, at 7p each (8 for 58p). The 670g bacon for £1.09 provides an average of 19g protein per day if split over 5 days, and the 650g turkey drumstick for £1.75 is the highest in protein at 44g per day if split over the […]
At the end of today, surveying the £5 food shop I did last Sunday, I have left: Bread, 4 slices. Lemon curd, one third of the jar. Cornflakes, 250g. Unsweetened soya drink: 200ml. Long grain white rice: 200g. Chopped tomatoes: 300g. Kidney beans: 200g – already made into kidney bean burgers on Tuesday, and frozen in patties. Frozen mixed vegetables: 300g. Spaghetti: 400g Onion: – NONE! Finally used the blighter! Broccoli, carrot, courgette and green beans: 120g – now eight days out of date. Mixed herbs: most of the jar. I could eke this out for another three days – but I need protein, fruit and whole grains. A week is more than long enough to demonstrate what nutritional deficiency there is in such a cheap food budget. Reading friends reported experiences during the challenge, who survived on 11p noodles and cheap crackers, I know I’ve done well to work in carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, tomato, courgette, peppers, bean sprouts and onions this week. Save two days when I managed to forget my lunch at work, I ate four times a day, usually toast for breakfast, cornflakes as a snack, rice and vegetables for lunch, and rice and vegetables for dinner. I averaged around 1000 calories a day – 600 below the recommended minimum daily amount for a woman of my age, height and activity level. I managed to consume around 30g of protein a day – less than half […]
I have received a few messages from concerned friends and strangers since I announced that I was extending the Live Below The Line challenge to use up the last of my £5 supplies, and I would like to try to alleviate some concerns. I’d like to first thank everyone for their concern for my health – it is something I take seriously myself – and to clarify that I have sought advice from a dietitian about the challenge, who confirmed what I thought about my nutritional intake at the moment. It’s lower than it would ideally be, but I’m not at any real risk to my health if I continue for a few more days, and I will return to my normal eating patterns at the end of the challenge – which is higher in fruit, dairy products and protein than my current supplies! I decided to continue with the challenge for two reasons, firstly because I am still fundraising for Oxfam, and secondly because I am finding it challenging on a personal level. People often level accusations at me about my normal food shop and lifestyle that ‘not everyone has a herb garden’ or cumin and paprika in the cupboard. I know. I have lived through worse – regular readers will know that in the worst days last year I missed meals for days on end just to feed my son. Those who don’t know the story, I recommend […]
This should be the end of my Live Below The Line challenge. Tonight, this should be all over. But for people living in poverty, in forgotten households and pockets all over this, one of the richest nations in the world, there isn’t a store cupboard to go back to. There isn’t a shelf with paprika and garam masala on, or a trough on the window ledge with coriander and chillies in. There’s no magic cupboard of carefully built up resources to fall back on. I remember those days all too well. Scratching around in the bottom of the fridge for half an onion and yesterday’s tomato pasta, cobbling together something, anything to eat. Picking the green spots off the side of a week old loaf of bread and pretending you can’t taste the sour yeasty tang that kicks at the back of your throat, because mouldy bread is better than no bread at all. I have raised well over £2,000 for Oxfam as I sit on my sofa and type this. But is it enough? How can I stop now? I have got left the following items from my original £5 food shop on Sunday: Bread, 11 slices. Lemon curd, less than half the jar left. Cornflakes, 390g. Unsweetened soya drink: 650ml Long grain white rice: 485g Chopped tomatoes: 400g Kidney beans: 300g – already made into kidney bean burgers on Tuesday, and frozen in patties. Frozen mixed vegetables: 525g […]
Day five dinner, living below the line challenge. Like a faux risotto, hence the name, this is a lot more delicious than I expected it to be. Funnily enough, the further into this challenge I get, the more delicious everything is… 70g rice, 3p 120g mixed courgette, carrot, broccoli and green beans, five days out of date, 15p 100g chopped […]
At the end of yesterday, day four of my Live Below The Line challenge, I had the following food left from my £5 food shop on Sunday: Bread, 13 slices. Lemon curd, approximately half the jar left. Cornflakes, 390g. Unsweetened soya drink: 650ml Long grain white rice: 555g Chopped tomatoes: 500g Kidney beans: 300g – already made into kidney bean […]
To donate to Live Below The Line, a global poverty project, click here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/agirlcalledjack If you are taking part in this years Live Below The Line challenge and want to share your experience, get in touch at jackmonroe@live.co.uk Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
The Ilonqua Daily, 2 May: http://paper.li/ilonqua Ms Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
The Live Below The Line leaderboard this evening, number 19 out of almost 5,000 UK participants. (I know it’s not a competition, but I’m pretty astounded by that!) To donate to Live Below The Line, a global poverty project, click here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/agirlcalledjack If you are taking part in this years Live Below The Line challenge and want to share your […]
COOKING ON A BOOTSTRAP 