A biography for Jack Monroehasn’t been written yet.
“Food is such a basic need, a fundamental right, and such a simple pleasure.”
“Yes, scrambled eggs are lovely, and I've eaten them, and enjoyed them, and that was OK. Now I don't want to any more, and that's OK too.”
“But I know that trying to black out my past with oblivion will just damage my future. I made the decision to stop running from my fears, and to walk slowly and deliberately towards self-nurture, self-respect, and better mental and physical health.”
“We have an odd culinary relationship with tinned food. In higher society, rare and supposedly exquisite goods such as tinned baby octopus, foie gras and caviar come in beautifully crafted, artistically designed tins.”
“I remember loving food tech because of the precision and the creativity, the weights and measures, the tiny glimpses of flavour.”
“If the thought of cold tomato soup makes you shudder, take it from a veteran, it's like a creamy gazpacho, but in a decent society, nobody should have to find out.”
“I was working with the fire service in a job that should have been a job for life, with career progression, with a pension and promotion, and within a year I was sleeping on a sofa under a section 21 notice being evicted from my home and not eating or four days.”
“Gas prices and train fares seem to be the two commodities for modern British life that base their prices on a whim, or numbers plucked out of thin air, without a thought to the real cost to those for whom those price hikes mean unimaginable sacrifices in their day to day lives.”
“A startling confession for a food writer: all through high school, I struggled with a severe eating disorder.”
“I tend to tell my readers to go for the cheapest ingredients every time, unless they're unbearable. If so, you only need to have them once and the next week switch up.”
“It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.”
“I'm very careful with the money I have, I pay myself the living wage, and I try to save the rest, because if life has taught me one thing it's that you never know what is around the corner.”
“Talk to families in poverty and ask them what they need, instead of prescribing it for them. Ask what the barriers are. Ask what would help. And then deliver it.”
“I have always been an oddball. I was a loner at school, and largely still am, preferring to shut myself away with my work and books than go to parties.”
“If I've learned anything in the last seven or eight years it's that my career flies by the seat of my pants and that every time I'm booked for something, I'm ill, and anything - like a TV opportunity - I treat as my last ever one because it's maybe my swansong.”
“I was a young mother with a dependent. I went from nice flat and fire service job to cold and hungry with a child. I lived rough for two years, with six months relying on the food bank.”
“You can pretty much make anything with a base of tinned tomatoes. If I don't have tinned tomatoes in my cupboard, I start to panic - it's a genuine thing.”
“At 11, following comprehensive psychiatric and cognitive assessments, an educational psychiatrist appointed by my high school recommended that I attend a school for 'gifted and talented' children.”
“Learning to cook at school gave me the confidence to experiment in the kitchen when I left home in my late teens - I wasn't intimidated by it.”
“I had such a run of bad luck that you lose faith that good things are going to happen any more. I still don't answer the door because I went through so long expecting it to be a bailiff.”