Kathleen Stock article about Jack Monroe

[AnonWeeMouse]

Kathleen Stock writes:

unherd.com/2023/01/jack-monroe-the-acceptable-face-of-poverty/

Monroe responds by blaming these critical points on Kathleen Stocks GC views.

I don't think that's fair. I think Monroe is using that as an excuse to try and avoid criticism.

Her publisher has had to release a statement about the dangerous tips in Monroe's New Book and Trussel Trust are refusing to hand it out over safety fears.

I don't think it's right or fair for Monroe to try and hide behind being Non binary or trans etc. She hasn't claimed those identities for ages has she?

He makes some valuable points about what she could have done/be doing and in particular about providing meal plans and shopping lists that substantiate the £20/week thing.

I saw this site shared earlier, which does similar and seems like it should get the kind of airing JM does!

meal-plans.co.uk/emergency-meal-plan-2023/

Yes.

I have to say this thread does make me feel like I want to share my tuppence about thrifty eating.

I want to shout:

Soak a load of beans overnight
Stick them in the slow cooker (you can find loads donated to charity shops) with subtle flavours- some onion, a little fatty meat if you aren’t veggie, paprika, salt and parsley.
Leave them all day.
When finished, freeze half.
Use them as a side dish
Base for soup
Add chilli/herbs/smoked paprika/spring onion, maybe an egg or cheese and fry bean burgers
Add spices peppers and cheese, wrap them in tortillas as fajitas
Stick them in your cooking rice to make rice and peas
Add sage and blend with a bit of olive oil to make veggie pate to have in sarnies or on crackers
Have cold as part of a salad
Endless possibilities…

In lots of countries, beans are the way forward, because they give you a happy full feeling, with rice are a complete protein and they are much cheaper than meat.

Sorry, I’ll be quiet now.

Great tips, but don't you have to boil the soaked beans quite vigorously for ten minutes or so first for safety reasons? This certainly applies to red kidney beans. Not sure about other varieties.

I really rate Lorna's recipes! She has said it's impossible to feed your family for £20 a week now like her book title because of the cost of inflation, but she still has some great recipes and stuff my kids will actually eat as well, whereas I've never had any success with Jack Monroes recipes. I feel like with Lorna's you sit down to a big bowl of something simple and filling, whereas with JM you're mucking about a lot for little reward, and so many of us are poor in money and time!

I highly rate the feed your family for £20 website and cook books, much cheaper than the new JM book. Only thing I would say is she's a big advocate for adding oats or lentils to bulk out mince, and my kids and me didn't like that when I tried at her quantities, but I have persevered with the lentils and can now get away with a small amount when I cook mince.

I feel so conflicted about JM I really want to like her/them and believe her/them but there is something off there with the way she/they treats other people, their time and their money, which seems so self orientated and selfish, I can't get past it.

How is the book £19.99 as well? So either you're middle class poverty tourist who can afford that, or a food bank user getting a free copy. As though most of us aren't somewhere in that whole bit in the middle and could benefit from some thriftiness in the kitchen? Sounds like nobody is missing out on the rehashed rubbish recipes anyway, but still that price seems off.

Yes. You are right with red beans! My apologies

I always boil things first to get them up to temperature before chucking them in the slow cooker and I find that white kidney beans, haricot beans and other white beans are easier to slip into different dishes without the children noticing :)

It's only kidney beans you have to boil that long, soaking other beans is a great money saver otherwise, if you're organised

I think making huge quantities helps if you have unpredictable stuff going on, especially if you can freeze some, and the flavours also improve from a couple of days in the fridge.

Agreed, and more economical in fuel terms to cook a big batch than lots of smaller ones. I love pulses in all their forms.

Totally agree about the beans. Tinned beans are environmentally unfortunate, too. That said, they are easier for people with limited cooking facilities. Though of course dried beans are better, storage wise.

I like JM. I know she's unreliable, no use to the people she's trying to help, and totally feckless, but I feel she's fallen into it through her own inadequacy rather than connived her way into it.

I'm sure she is diagnosable with a mental health or ND issue. She should seek support and treatment for that though, rather than using it as an identity get out of jail free card.

I agree re beans Endlesstea ☘️ 👍🏿

It's been a while, but I think I just clicked on a link to cancel subscription and it was cancelled. Does it not always work like that?

I'm very anti JM, and I'm not trying to defend her at all. I just haven't had a bad experience on Patreon. Maybe all the people I follow are decent people and the process is smooth because of that.

I found this tutorial on how to cancel. It does seem quite easy. I wouldn't want to see people being discouraged from using Patreon itself because of one bad apple.

support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045311672-Cancelling-a-membership-on-Desktop-Video-tutorial-

I have a separate card with Monzo that I use to pay for all my subs, Patreon, Netflix, Audible etc.

For 6 out of 12 months last year I had to throw extra money into that account because Patreon had taken £30 (across 3 different creators) that I had repeatedly unsubscribed to.

I sent date and time stamped screenshots of the cancellation being “confirmed” on the website, and the corresponding payment coming out again on the 1st to each creator, each time.

Only 1 of them refunded me, and only ONCE. There is no way to contact Patreon; I spent hours and hours looking. I contacted them on all the SM they have; no response. All 3 had just stopped creating, deleted all their SM.

It’s not just JM. Patreon as a platform is rotten where you have no recourse if you don’t get what you’re paying for.

God - that's desperate!

No support anywhere, The Truth Is Out There, so rapidly allies herself with the one and only group which is Beyond Criticism.

I couldn’t finish it because it seemed so catty to me. I doubt she’d have written it without JM’s history.

She wouldn't have needed to.

It's JM's history that makes it relevant.

I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for JM.

Yes we all know she's a pathological liar and an attention whore.

But she didn't seem to realise at all how transparent she is and how obviously and repeatedly she contradicts herself, while repeating that she's autistic and therefore absolutely incapable of telling a lie.

I feel she should be better protected by people closer to her. And there are many people involved ie publishers and publicists who are apparently also prepared to make money while she over exposes herself in a difficult and troubling way.

As Andy Dynes points out, the book should have been read and edited and potential problems picked up by someone. It's not ok for things to be published and advertised without basic checks being made - the recipes being possible to make or the hacks being vaguely safe and legal for eg.

Vodka doesn't freeze solid - water does, and it expands, putting pressure on the glass which can shatter (dangerously) at any moment.

I can't feel sorry for her. Even now, on twitter, there's screens shots of her saying how she was photographed in a bath full of 2ps and bangs in about them getting everywhere.

Turns out, there's an Instagram post of a behind the scenes of the photo shoot and it plainly shows the bath wasn't full, there was a sheet over her and a few coins on top.

So why lie? Why say one thing that you clearly and so obviously know is not true? What is there to gain other than misleading your 550k followers?
It's to big herself up and purposefully present a scenario that wasn't anywhere near the truth.
Theres no gain from it, it's just idiotic.

She posted on her own thread on the gossip forum almost 2 years ago so she must be well aware that tons of onlookers can see (and are tracking) her contradictions.

Being aware that others have noticed your inconsistencies and being able to stop the inconsistent behaviours are two completely different things, of course.

My relative would historically move on to a new social group/job/area whenever they were rumbled - not possible for a social media ‘celeb’.

I wonder if the pattern funds are there for a few months in a private residential facility, an accurate diagnosis and some help with drawing up a life plan?
Seems like the last thing JM needs now is to be left alone with booze and sideboards…

"behind the scenes of the photo shoot and it plainly shows the bath wasn't full, there was a sheet over her and a few coins on top."

I'd still call that full, and the 2ps got everywhere. I'm not particularly literal minded.

And the lying- some ND people believe what they say in the moment. My DM can tell such a pile of porkies and rewritten history, but she completely believes itN

That's a good point. I'll see if I can find it again. And screen shot it.

Jack says something like, ."it takes 10000 2ps to fill a bath"
Photo shows there was nowhere near 10000 2ps in the bath. Maybe 100, tops.

The funniest lie she told was about the Georgia Church Suppers recipe book. With most of the others she could partially explain them away with misunderstandings about timings and so on. With Georgia Church Suppers she claimed it was "an absolute banger" of a cookbook of Eastern European recipes. Of course it turned out to be from Georgia in the US. She claimed that the misunderstanding was down to her poor geography, but obviously she'd never read it as the kind of food they cook in Georgia, US is very different from the food you'd get in Eastern Europe. A harmless enough lie in one way but illustrative of the fact that she just lies for the hell of it.

It wasn't really a sheet, it was more like a big wodge of copper-coloured padding.

She described almost choking under the weight of coins on Twitter. 🙄

She lies about such stupid stuff. Memorably, there being only one viennetta left in the supermarket freezer and putting up a picture where you could see more viennettas to the side of the shot. 😂Which she quickly deleted.

Is she a fantasist? is she just trolling everyone? It's just bizarre.

I don't feel sorry for her, because she's so bullish about it all. The Times has done a piece basically rewording the Guardian article she thinks is so great and it's all terrible lies suddenly.