Jack Monroe #293 Georgia Church Suppers, just like MamaPapa used to make!

[Valiofthedolls]

Couldn’t get in there before thread closed!

Why self berate?
Georgia country, not state.

Why you not weep?
Fixed my Tweet while youse sleep

 

[kachoochoo]

I have been BUSY today lads

you've probably all forgotten after the sweet, sweet georgia chaos, but after @Griftymcgriftface posted the link to the "game changing" soaking of pasta in cold water article in the manchester evening news yesterday, I said I'd give it a go

and I'd never be able to show my face round here again if I didn't do something I said I would do, would I?

so, here's my adventures in cold-soaked pasta

Spoiler: it's long and has many photos

so, as I've mentioned over in f+d, our cooker is currently out of action. why I sob? no oven or hob

we've mostly been having beige things from the air fryer, but, man, I could use some pasta. ok, I've had 2 pasta ready meals at work (lidl bolognese bake and sausage pasta bake, both ) but lovely, freshly cooked pasta at home? yes please!

so when I saw the revolutionary game changer pasta alert, I jumped at the chance to give it a go

legal bit - obviously, it's not strictly a jack cook-along, but it's definitely jack-adjacent, what with the terrible things she's encouraging people to do to food in the name of frugality

the lady in the article used fusilli, the only pasta I have open is spaghetti. oh well, pasta is all interchangeable and spaghetti's always fun, isn't it?

can't for the life of me remember how much it was, as it was purchased during the heady days of lockdown panic buying (nb, it's still in date and it hasn't been open for 2 years, don't worry, how dare you question me )

so we'll say the amount I'm using cost maybe 10p then, but £3.44 now, according to the vampire ballgag index

I anticipate this will serve 15 with generous leftovers for lunch tomorrow. exciting! let's go

here is a bowl of cold water

and in goes the spaghetti!

article was not clear how long it should soak. cites "overnight or a few hours"

it's gone in at 10am and I shall forensically check every hour on the hour

11am
slight bend with pressure applied, water getting starchy

12noon

bendy

maybe I should invert it to soak the other end

nice

1pm
other end bendy, there are a couple of straggly bits that have broken off and have fully submerged and I may just try a bit

cartoon filter applied for my security

how is it, kcc? I hear you clamour. well, it's exactly how you'd expect pasta to be after standing in cold water for 3 hours

it's cold. it's gluey. it's rubbery. it's still probably better than any of jack's creations. I'm going to eat some leftover chicken to get over it

2pm
fully submerged. still hard in places. flaccid sections feel like elastic bands

3pm
it's soft!

man, is it soft. water is murky

oh no, I'm going to have to do this, aren't I?

kettle's on...

drained of cold water

submerged in boiling water. looks quite normal here, doesn't it? don't let that fool you

checking temperature and texture. seems ok... for now. article says to leave in hot water for 2 minutes. I'm gonna grate some cheese. I've a feeling I may need it

hmmmm

hot, naked spaghetti

at this point I tried a bit

tasting notes:
strangely sweet (something to do with starch turning into sugar or something as it sits around in water???)
pasta doesn't usually make my teeth feel like they've got a coating
how is it both hard and mushy???
the hubby and kids in the article said it "wasn't too sticky" they are liars

otherwise, it's lovely!

butter and cheese sorts everything!

not this time

still weird sweet flavour, bizarre texture, butter made it taste like custard

no shade to the nice lady in the MEN, but this is appalling

in conclusion, is this a canny tip to help the nation in these straitened times? 6 hours for a bit of pasta in order to save yourself 10 minutes slaving over a hot stove and a few kilowatt hours?

I shall console myself with a cold beer and a chicago town deep dish done in the air fryer

don't forget the tip jar on the way out

have a nice day y'all

now fuck off x

 

[Geetbo]

I’m really hoping her next book is called “Georgian-ish”

 

[hellosailor⚓]

I'm late to this, so sorry if I interrupt anything. My Jack Origin Story is that I thought she was a stinking fraud the second I heard of her. That's because I was a (genuinely) single parent of a child the same age, at the same time, with no help from friends or fam. But we didn't huddle on a bare mattress because I got income support (I didn't have to look for work until my child 5, and that's another story) and had nothing worth selling coz I'd always been poor and even so, I didn't need to sell light bulbs and toys for pennies because I also got HOUSING BENEFIT. Why didn't Jack? Did she have too much in the bank? If so, why starve?

We had enough to eat. I did an OU degree for free (life changing) during this time then won a scholarship to do an MRes. It wasn't easy, especially when the bairn went to school and I was battling the job centre (again, another story, and actually the hardest part of my pov).
Anyway, I came from nowt and am now okay. I've been as poor as Jack, still use charity shops, still don't drive, still can't afford holidays but can afford an annual camp out with friends. You make the best of your lot.

I know that now it's much harder to live on benefits (I work for a homeless charity) and much more desperate. But I can not and never will understand the song and dance that Jack has made about being in income support with housing benefit 10 years ago. The people who enable this performance are insulting the dignity, intelligence, resourcefulness and cheer of people who have genuinely lived on benefits. And as I said, things have changed a lot in ten years. What Jack's doing now , and what the blue ticks and The Food Program are promoting will actually harm people now (in my opinion).

ETA: sorry so long! Feel free to skip, it's all me me me

 

[traumatised sideboard]

Thread title courtesy of @Griftymcgriftface congratulations, you have won an all expenses paid weekend away in the Georgia of your choice!

Wiki is the pink button for newbies. Please refrain from thread titling until the latter stages of the thread. Use the words 'thread title' in your nominations and don't use any bad words.

In the last thread:

Let's face it, the most important thing that happened in the last thread was that Jack listed her favourite Eastern European cookbooks, failing to notice that a book called Georgia Church Suppers was not in fact from Georgia The Country but from Georgia The State. She did not admit her mistake (natch), only deleted the original tweet and reposted it in the middle of the night with the offending book removed. She did mis-spell another author's name though. Nobody knows how this happened as she is always so forensic and accuracy is her flex.

 

[Jay-cloth Cow]

Ok listening back and transcribing;
JCC: do you know how a Georgian person would pronounce Tblisi?
Now into voice notes
Friend: Woman why on earth do you want to know that?
JCC: well I am a member of an Internet forum and people are wondering as there is a fake chef who pretended to read a Georgian cook book, and I know you've been there so I thought I'd ask you, I'm very invested in the conversations
Friend: Is Mr C (obv didn't say Mr C IRL) home tonight?
JCC: no, I'm home alone
Friend: thought so. I could tell you but I won't as I think you are crazy, it's Saturday night and you need to get a life. I will text Mr C and tell him he shouldn't leave you alone. I love you very much but you are a mad woman. Put a film on please

 

[Switchstreetz]

In the previous thread Jack treated us to yet more pearls of wisdom.

Did you know if you turn an Easter egg box inside out...you can make a box, to put things in?



She posted her take on Stroganoff

why you scream
Stroganoff green

Jack has officially graduated from name dropping "OH" to name dropping her "partner" or "other half."

(Squiggles she's begging you, please just ask her about Harold. Jack is going to explode like a depression mozzarella if she has to keep dropping hints for much longer.)

The real star of #292 though was Jackie's decision to share her favourite eastern European cookbooks.

And by "favourite" she means "books she just quickly googled" which unfortunately for her meant that one of her favourite 'Georgian' cookbooks turned out to be a book about church suppers in the American state of Georgia.

Huh, you'd think she'd have noticed when she read it. If only there'd been some sort of clue as to the book's origin, like say...the back cover.

Or, the contents of the book itself.

Spoiler: The Fraus had a lot of fun with "St Georgia's Day"

Our very own patron saint made a comment on the situation

and a few other squigs also chipped in.

After a bit of ridicule, the tweet was quietly deleted in the dead of night, with the mistake left unmentioned by Jack

BEST. CHAOS. EVER.

ok just one more love you canal

 

[lilamay]

Help I can't get anything to rhyme with Tbilisi.

HMRC.

 

[Veronicaaa]

I love it when people get it.

 

[ameliaprimrose]

So this is a bit random and sorry if it doesn't fit in with the current topic of conversation, but I was having a read of the wiki on here and I noticed that you've got a bit about autism where it says "The first mention of Jack having autism seems to be on the 27th April 2019 in a Guardian article." But I think I can shed a bit more light on that, since I followed Jack for a few years and I was sure I remembered her talking about autism a few years before that article came out. I don't want to just share my random memories without proof to back it up, so I decided to have a look and see what the earliest mention of it I could find was. Since a lot of her tweets have been deleted over the years, there's some stuff I remember seeing years ago that I can't find anymore, and I looked at some of her old tweets on the Wayback Machine but I couldn't find a lot. But I did a bit of googling and the oldest mention I could find was an article from September 2017 about Jack calling out a PETA campaign, and the article describes her as 'an autistic British food writer.' So she must have talked publicly about being autistic by September 2017.

Old PETA Campaign Linking Milk to Autism Has People Outraged

A PETA campaign titled "Got Autism" is sparking outrage nearly a decade after it was first launched, and protested.

uk.movies.yahoo.com

This probably doesn't make much difference to anything, but accuracy is kind of my flex or whatever, so I just thought I'd share it. I'm not really trying to make any particular point here, just trying to give more accurate information.

 

[Terrible]

I think the very funniest bit of it all was her declaration that a book she’d obviously never heard of, let alone looked at, was (checks notes) “an absolute banger”.

 

[Jay-cloth Cow]

I just texted my best friend (she's Romanian, lives in Iasi which is pronounced Yash! I know not all Eastern European countries are interchangeable but I thought she might have a better idea than me) to ask her how to pronounce Tblisi, told her why and her response was 'you are crazy, I could tell you how Georgians say it but am not going to tell you because it is Saturday night and I think you need to get a life'

 

[panda_eyes]

A fictional one.

 

[FridayFunDay]

There's something about this weighing cereal that's made me feel a bit meh

My beautiful boy has Type 1 diabetes. To accurately calculate insulin doses we need to carefully count the carbs in every meal, every snack, every day. It's hard. And her performative weighing and granular maths is exactly what families like ours do day after day but not to work our how many pence the ketchup cost, but to establish how many grams of carbs are in it do our amazing kids don't go hypo or out or range. To see a blue tick go 'yay you can can relax and put away the scales now' was a bit of a kick in the teeth. My boy can never put tbe scales away.

He has 30g cereal and 100ml milk at breakfast. Usually with portion of grapes and a yoghurt as well. It is a wee portion and made us realise how much cereal we used to pour the kids. We gave 30g because that's the weight you get the info for on the pack, but we can calculate more or less if need be and he gets more if and when he wants it. We're what you could say, forensic with portions and calculations. His health and life depends on it. Oh such jolly fun that cunt has had weighing and counting all week. Enjoy going back to normal.

Also in amongst all the chat about calorie counts on menus... let's see carbs there to make life a bit easier!!

Sorry guys, we all have our sore points and she's found mine with this performative bollocks.

 

[Yel]

I tried all of the eastern European shops here and none of them stocked the Georgian speciality cheese "Velveeta"

I already had a can of chicken bits and ranch dressing all ready to try the dip recipe

 

[Lazarus]

 

[ThriftStoreLeCreuset]

It's like 10,000 tweets when all you need is a life.

 

[panda_eyes]

Rattle rattle.

 

[Satisfying Click]

Jack

Also Jack

 

[Ouchyfingers]

I am a Russian-speaking Frau 🪆 and the Georgia stuff has just reminded me of a time my parents came to visit me (I studied there) and I took them to a lovely Georgian restaurant which was the best ever, so much so my parents clapped and wanted to go back. So we went back a 2nd time. On the first night, Mum had asked for red wine and the owner asked what she liked, so she said merlot and he nodded and brought us a carafe from a barrel. The second time, she asked for tempranillo and he nodded again, and brought the same wine from the same barrel. He had a whole wine list and one barrel of wine, it was wonderfully farcical. It was some of the nicest wine I’ve had in Russia (some truly awful conpetition but it was genuinely lovely) so whatever it was, it was not a problem (advertising standards might not like it but I did) - and I’ve just drawn a connection with bouquet garni - perhaps as all herbs and all Georgias are the same, all grapes are the same?