Being on a budget doesn't mean you have to scrimp on taste and nutrition. Food blogging phenomenon Jack Monroe, who's coming to Belfast next month, serves up top tips with Keeley Bolger
ONLY a few years ago, Jack Monroe had a budget of just £10 a week to feed herself and her baby son.
But when her blog, A Girl Called Jack, which detailed the thrifty meals she cooked, gained in popularity, Jack went from being a skint single-parent to being dubbed the 'poster girl for austerity' by newspapers across the world.
Such is the success of her writing that the blog - which she started as a response to a politician's spiteful comment about single parents - has now been turned into a cook book, also called A Girl Called Jack, and she is fronting a Sainsbury's advertising campaign.
Clearly, it's all quite a lot for the 26-year-old to take in. "I get a lot of messages from people saying that the blog is really inspirational and has changed the way they shop and think about food, or they're cooking different things for the family or learning to cook," Jack, who often bakes with her three-year-old son and her partner's three-year-old daughter, says. "I didn't set out to do any of this, I was just doing what I did and I'm constantly humbled and overwhelmed by how much people have seemed to have taken to it."
While life is looking rosier for Jack, who is an active campaigner for Oxfam and Child Poverty Action Group, at her lowest point she "deliberately isolated" herself, because "I didn't want to admit to people how bad things were".
If her success has proved anything, she says, it's that people are naturally supportive and kind. "I haven't done this all by myself," she says. "I've done this with a lot of help, love and support along the way, and one of the things that has really hit home in
the last year is that people are inherently kind and good, and I think I've seen the very best side of human nature." now in a better position, with her first book well received, it would be easy, you'd think, for Jack to splash out on her weekly shops. But she's eager to maintain her thrifty habits, and confidently rattles off the prices of store-cupboard essentials, quickly pointing out a price increase for tinned tomatoes. "My cooking hasn't changed," she says. "I still cook and eat the same way I did but there's less anxiety around it now. I know I'll open the fridge and there's food in there. I've not abandoned my principles; I still cook using basic food, I use leftovers and I cook seasonally.
Jack will be one the key speakers at an economic conference in Belfast next month.
The May 28 conference, hosted by the northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (nicva), will look at why, for the first time, working households make up the majority of those in poverty, and what should be done about it. Delegates will discuss low pay, the rise of part-time and temporary working, and the high cost of childcare.
For information or to book a place see nicva.org/events, email info@nicva.org or call 028 9087 7777.
* A Girl Called Jack by Jack Monroe is published by Michael Joseph, priced £12.99. Available now.