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I DON’T WANT TO SHY<br />
AWAY FROM TALKING<br />
ABOUT DIFFICULT<br />
SUBJECT MATTERS<br />
Jack Monroe, award-winning cookery writer and campaigner<br />
against hunger and poverty, is still figuring out her ‘new normal’<br />
in <strong>2020</strong>. Although she’s experienced some tough times and<br />
severe trolling of late, Jack has found a way to turn extreme<br />
negativity into personal strength, while testing her professional<br />
abilities, and championing good food for bad days...<br />
Writing | Lucy Donoughue<br />
While many people<br />
across the UK were<br />
busy celebrating the<br />
Queen’s Diamond<br />
Jubilee and the Olympics back in<br />
2012, Jack Monroe was writing<br />
the essay that would mark the<br />
beginning of her career in the<br />
public eye. Hunger Hurts was<br />
an honest and heartbreaking<br />
depiction of a single, starving, and<br />
suicidal mum living in poverty,<br />
and explored the day-to-day<br />
struggle of keeping herself and<br />
her son fed and healthy, with very<br />
little means.<br />
Jack’s words resonated with<br />
others finding themselves in a<br />
similar position, and during the<br />
eight years that have followed,<br />
she’s developed the popular<br />
budget recipe website Cooking on<br />
a Bootstrap, regularly speaks on<br />
poverty and austerity issues, and<br />
supports the Trussell Trust food<br />
bank charity. She’s now also in<br />
the process of writing her seventh<br />
cookery book, to sit alongside her<br />
other titles including Tin Can Cook,<br />
Vegan(ish), and A Girl Called Jack.<br />
Jack’s most recent offering,<br />
Good Food, Bad Days, What to<br />
Make When You’re Feeling Blue,<br />
is possibly the one book that<br />
everyone should buy right now.<br />
Part-memoir, part recipe book, it<br />
offers up thoughts on how to feed<br />
yourself when you’re feeling at<br />
your lowest ebb, with Jack sharing<br />
her own experiences with mental<br />
illness throughout – as well as<br />
comforting, lifting, and soothing<br />
recipes including marmite, honey<br />
and peanut butter popcorn, jaffa<br />
cake mug cake, chicken porridge,<br />
and lemon curd ice cream.<br />
However, the launch of Good<br />
Food, Bad Days didn’t go strictly<br />
to plan, with the coronavirus<br />
lockdown and mass cancellations<br />
of events, drastically changing<br />
Jack’s professional landscape,<br />
and eradicating all work bookings<br />
from her diary.<br />
80 • happiful.com • <strong>July</strong> <strong>2020</strong>
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