Jack Monroe #81 It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a wife

[Bugger13]

Day ten in camp.

The celebs had won several tasks thanks to ‘rock hard Eamonn & his nerves of steel’ but were fast becoming despondent at having to survive on Jack’s slop. She would allow nobody else in the camp kitchen.

The camp was fizzing with excitement as the celebs took the thumping big jugs of lemonade, liver sandwiches with lettuce, potted spam & gingerbread cake out of the cupboard along with their bathing things and headed down the cliff-path to the pool, glinting in the moonlight.

‘My mom invented midnight feasts’, droned an adenoidal whine in the darkness.

Stony faced Eamonn longed for a hair brush with which to spank Jack but he knew the inevitable wailing and teeth gnashing would wake either Ant or Dec. ‘Clear off Jack’, he snorted scornfully, ‘or I’ll set my cousin on you’.

The celebs unpacked their midnight feast and started to tuck in. Suddenly a tremendous, anguished death rattle filled the still night and everybody froze. Surely the producers would have heard and their feast would be scuppered? What on earth could it be?

It was, of course, Jack, who had run to catch up after fetching the rancid salad bag pesto from her locker and was now trapped under a rock.

Eamonn shone his torch to see Jack, biting her teething necklace as she tried to wriggle free. ‘It’s my Mediterranean arse’, she panted. ‘I’m stuck fast’.

Footsteps could be heard coming down the path, and in a panic the celebs swept up their crumbs and fled the back way to the tower, leaving Jack pretending to be dying.

‘Get to absolute fuck’, wailed Jack, tweeting the tale to her followers as she brandished her penknife at a horrified and very angry Dec.

 

[Pocahontas]

@TriviaNewtonJohn you are a thread title wizard! I’ve lost count of the amount of times you have wowed us with your words. 88 reactions

Recap of thread #80

1. She was shocked and outraged that her son wanted to walk home with his friends instead of her. No more 10p potato cakes and cooking scrap bacon breakfasts for him. SB: Okay.
2. SB FOUND ONE OF HIS FIFTY FUCKING COATS.
3. See @colouredlines charming vignette of their imagined archaic domestic scene here.
4. Just so you know, she doesn’t buy battery farmed anything. What’s that you say? Red Tractor? Don’t weigh her down with labels, asshole!
5. She did it, she actually did it. She made the salad bag pesto. The bog of eternal stench in a bottle is just lovely poured over soup. Never has a bottle looked more threatening, even in certain pubs during the World Cup qualifiers.
6. She inspired someone else to make it. For the love of god, people - don’t keep it in the fridge for 3-5 days, you are harbouring an actual biological weapon and it should be destroyed on sight.
7. She’s discovered Hansard as a research resource and can’t stop going on about how amazing Hansard is, and if you don’t know what Hansard is then you are an idiot who is not as intelligent as her wot is writing a Big Important Book on Poverty, innit.
8. The state of her cutlery drawers is twisting my melon, man.
9. Lucky, lucky Jack Monroe was sent a smorgasbord of skin cream for her sawdusty-dry face. All that cream for one sad little face?
10. What are your 3 top hacks/tips for focus and productivity? Jack puts her phone in another room. Mostly. (And unplugs her other one in the phone relay race of her life.)
11. She has a £130-pair of Nike Trainers y’all. Don’t be saying she shouldn’t be spending that amount on shoes. It’s been raining a lot recently and she does really well with puddles, ok?
12. She really, really has completed the Spring/Summer 2020 Cotswold Co. catalogue. Jackie, love - you’ve got a lot of bloody Cotswold. You’ll be causing a seismic shift in Southend soon.
13. She had to get up early to do something today. No, no, not This Morning ... perhaps it’s The Photoshoot.
14. Yikes, mcyikes, she’s had two hours sleep, she forgot to take her medication and she’s off to ‘quite possibly one of the biggest and best jobs of [her] very colourful and adventurous career so far. [She] has to be at her absolute maddest for it.’
15. The drama! The intrigue! The passion! What could the job beeeeeeee???? Welcome to the Ongoing Saga of Jack Monroe and This Thursday Morning.

Spoiler: Jack for Dummies

For new joiners to the thread, here is @Passive_Aggressive_Lemon ‘s ‘Jack for Dummies’ post (edited to include updated info):

Thought it might be useful for new followers to have a post at the start of each thread with some info.
Limegoss article about Jack versus Jamie Oliver : https://limegoss.com/jack-monroe-jamie-oliver/

Thread #31 is the infamous one in which Jack turns up to talk to us directly. She makes her appearance on p. 17.

For anyone wanting to relive the glory days of her two-week stint on Daily Kitchen Live (DKL), have a grunk a through threads 2-9.

*** JACKISMS ***

Jack’s most oft-used reply to questions on recipe substitutions:

Yes, absolutely x

Some other favourite Jack quotes:

‘Babe, same’

‘I did a chaos’

‘My maverick brain’

‘My sad little face’

‘I’m BUSY’

‘I HOOTED / I am FIZZING’

‘I laughed up a lung’

One of Jack’s followers once referred to Tattlers as sad hausfraus and Jack herself has likened us to a cabal. Therefore we have become the Cabal of Hausfraus™️. She also recently referred to us as ‘gossip mavens’ (so, we are gossip trusted experts). ** Recent additions to her terms of endearment for Tattle: conspiracy wankers, obsessive groups of completely unhinged bullies, bullying ninnies, and malign, vicious bullies **

To ‘GrunkaLunka’ your way through a thread means to catch up on posts. Named after a member who rather epically caught up on many threads in a short period of time (and is also a fearless pioneer of the space-time continuum. She really was here both Now and Then).

Jack once threatened to use her Liam Neeson skills to TRIANGULATE our whereabouts in order to intimidate us, so that’s what we mean by that. * She may also threaten to take us to court - do not be afraid, this is not the first time and it won’t be the last. *

Jack once sideboard modelled a Vivienne Westwood dress, seeming to infer that it’s what Viv would have wanted (as if she were dead), and then got snippy when corrected otherwise. There may be some ‘RIP Viv’ jokes (she is, of course, NOT dead)

We sometimes joke about being on Vladimir Putin’s bitcoin payroll list for being evil trolls.

During her stint on Daily Kitchen Live, Jack produced a godawful looking lasagne, with a thin white sauce that never thickened up, just disappeared. It was widely likened to ‘horse spunk’ - there may be some horse ‘spirit’ lasagne jokes.

Her last-uttered line to Matt Tebutt on DKL was: ‘Thank you so Matt much, Matt’, which made us all HOOT.

Jack ended a tweet that listed her (not unimpressive) four-and-a-half GCSE results (A*, A, B, B, C) with: ‘Now fuck off’. We sometimes like to use this in our own posts for comedic effect. We are NOT telling other fraus to fuck off, simply paying homage to Jack’s own genteel humour.

*Back in the mists of time, one funny frau used a Jimmy Nail ‘She’s Lying’ picture to illustrate their thoughts on one of Jack’s latest tales. @Alpha Beta thought it was Novak Djokovic, the cabal hooted and Novak Nail was born. You may see reference to Jimmy Nail, Novak Djokovic, or the combination of both: Novak Nail. All demonstrate that she’s lying.*

Also:

• She grew up in a 5-bed (mortgaged/owned) house
• She got a £4.5k Omega watch for her 21st birthday
• Her dad's a fucking LANDLORD (an oldy, but a goody)
• Jack and Louisa are no longer in a relationship - in Jack’s words: ‘She [Louisa] left’.
• Her record for staying off Twitter since the start of these threads is 114 hours and 47 minutes.
• She is 90% vegan. The other 10% likes to nom nom on Five Guys burger and discounted chicken slices.
• During her appearance on DKL, she was asked why some mince has a higher fat content. ‘It just does.’
• The information held on her by Companies House has her year of birth WRONG. She was born in 1988, not 1978.

Here is a link to Jack’s Tattle Wiki page, which also includes clips of Matt Tebutt muttering ‘Terrible!’ on Daily Kitchen Live, courtesy of @Yel) and @Bookweevil ‘s hilarious Glossary of Jack.

We are terrible for going off on tangents and using too many gifs, so there is another thread where we don’t discuss JM but instead talk about biscuits and stuff. For good light relief when JM is doing too much chaos, come to the Food & Drink threads in Off Topic.

 

[Alansbigplate]

I don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore

 

[Silver Linings]

Vlad you naughty boy.

 

[Alansbigplate]

Oppenheimer? ' Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds'!
Not sure that this should be in thread about a woman passing off shortbread biscuits as her own creation but what do I know?

Well it is almost Halloween

 

[chocolate choux]

sweet holy facetune!
.View attachment 262076

“I’ve bounced back before and I’ll do it again”

 

[Silver Linings]

Too early I know but i’m cackling like a huge bitch after a shit day. JM #82 Cooking on a boot.

There is zero chance of her keeping this secret until December.

 

[Pocahontas]

Maybe it's the new series of The Masked Singer?

 

[spirals]

I may be a bit overcautious but I am absolutely NOT eating biscuits that a bunch of children have played dominoes with
Isn't there some sort of pandemic going on?

 

[HarderFaster]

Went to download facetune to see how she’d gone from reality to that, guys it’s £3.99?! So it’s not something you’d download just for lolz as she made out.

Who has a sausage budget of 90p but a dysmorphia inducing app budget of £4?

View attachment 262329

Holy shit this has to be the next thread title, pleeeeease!

Jack Monroe #82: sausage budget - 90p; dysmorphia app budget - £4

 

[Malacandra]

Hey.. I know 'tone' doesn't get heard in writing, but don't do this.
If you've had a couple of wines, as you said, come away.
Come back tomorrow.

I shouldn’t feel so sad and wronged but I do. Thank you x

These two images are not the same person.

The teeth are different - magically aligned and resized
The nose is different - smaller and with a soft curve.
The eyebrows have been seriously groomed?!
The eyes aren't the same - almond shaped.
Even the shape of her face is different - softer and less angular.

I don't understand who she is trying to fool, because anyone with a pair of eyes can see how blatantly and how heavily this has been edited to look like a significantly improved* version of herself.

(Also, she was never smiling with her eyes, because two months ago she was also having a meltdown, and she probably edited in the smile creases too... )

I'm wondering what she would do to herself if she had Kardashian amounts of money?

Dear everyone
I was an arse yesterday. Just goes to show how obnoxious I can be in drink. The aim was different but the outcome was understandably vilified.
I'm sorry.

 

[GrunkaLunka]

I'm just disembarking from the Grunka Ferry (it moves slower than the train) and I'm vomiting into a bag. No, I'm not travel sick. It's the defiled Maverick gif. Wtf @Alansbigplate, why would you do such a thing? Cursed image.

I'm 10 years too late to comment on the updated Cotswold catalogue but....

It's only when you start to look at the unbelievable amount of high end shit she's crammed into that shitty bungalow that you realise just how disgusting her early lockdown tip jar rattle really was. She claimed to have lost 6 months (I think) earnings and shook the tip jar. That fucker wasn't exactly living hand to mouth was she? She wanted to be able to continue living the high life, spunking money all over the place and she got her followers (who are surely more likely to be poor because NICHE) to fund it. Those sweet people, thinking they're helping to put food in a child's belly and really they've paid for her next sideboard. Fucking hell.

 

[Alansbigplate]

Haha but I hope that you are not mocking me here. I make no apologies for never having financial worries. My children, on the other hand ... Without our assistance our son would be in dire straits. I am well aware that our fortunes may change at any moment. Our daughter's PhD guarantees nothing.

It was a joke about an extending table? Congratulations on your standard of living tho

 

[chocolate choux]

Please answer the question, Jack!

View attachment 263728

Method: grab packet of Walker’s shortbread off supermarket shelf, place in basket. Toss in a handful of ready-made decorations. Spread contents evenly on conveyor belt at checkout. Place in carrier bag and leave to rest for 10 minutes or until you have walked home. Remove packaging, bung decorations on top of shortbread. Post photos on Twitter with ambiguous, emotive language and a generous helping of a child’s personal information. Lap up praise. Repeat as desired

 

[Harrybosch]

I’ll blog the recipe later hun....

The way squiggle and Jackie talk about life and linking everything to a condition is, in my opinion, both dangerous and damaging.

It's fair to say that between all the Frauen und Herren here we cover a plethora of mental and physical illnesses. It often is life-changing to get a diagnosis for something that has made life difficult. However, it seems both lazy and unhelpful to then attach anything you think, do or say to that diagnosis or condition.

First of all, people change. You may have ADHD or suffer from depression, but you can learn to manage it. I don't mean that in a 'pull yourself up by the bootstrap'-way. I mean you can get medication, therapy, learn strategies. Yes, you'll fuck up, because that's part of the human condition, but it's really important to take ownership of who you are. And everyone is so much more than autistic, depressed, bipolar - whatever it may be.

Saying things like 'what are your executive dysfunction meals' suggests that a) there is absolutely nothing you can do about any issues you may be experiencing with your executive function and b) that anyone else, who may not have been given a snazzy diagnosis can't possibly relate to days when it's hard to get a meal on the table. I think often people use this language to find community, but discussions quickly turn into 'You haven't got this diagnosis, you haven't got lived experience, you aren't in the club - now fuck off'.

If I've learned anything from my mental health issues and my diagnosis of c-PTSD, depression and anxiety it's that help is available, change is possible and while it can be an explanation for some of my behaviour it doesn't serve me to use it as an excuse. A personal example was learning to drive. The c-PTSD had affected how I react and deal with stress and driving a car was just awful. I shelved it for a few years (when I first took lessons I didn't really need a car anyway). But once I had kids I thought driving might actually be quite useful. It wasn't easy for me to learn and I took more lessons than the average person, but it's something I wanted to do, I knew I could learn it and I eventually got my license. This is not to say that everyone should just get over stuff, or that everyone should learn how to drive. It's simply suggesting that it may not be a great idea to use a condition to define who you are. Jackie of course is positively revelling in all her labels.

I am aghast at her fluffernutter recipe. This is from Good Food for Bad Days?! See, I know how to eat shit on a bad day. Everyone does. If I buy a book like that, it's because I want recipes that are easy, quick, but also healthy. I want an alternative to reaching for the snickers - not something that's even worse.

So many of us self-soothe with shitty junk food, which is a huge problem. Her book should have tried to provide alternatives, not celebrated unhealthy attitudes.

So true. A person struggling to make food because of MH problems doesn't need instructions on how to eat a ton of fat and sugar - plus that def won't make them feel any better. There's a clear link between good nutrition, physical and mental health. Given her love of a nutribullet, why not have smoothie packs ready to go in the freezer?

 

[Marmalade Atkins]

 

[cheapwetham]

I can't quote but thank you @Pocahontas for catching me

Long time lurker, first time signer-upper-er, but this wonderful cabal of fraus has had me fizzing and hooting like an effervescent owl as well as giving me the warm and fuzzies by being a really genuine and supportive lot.

Hopefully my controversial name (channeling my inner #maverick) is slightly tempered by my pic being the happiest ham of all. That and the unruly ham flaps pic is already taken.

Now get the absolute fuck off (or something)

 

[Montrachet]

Would LYING about my circumstances make me more acceptable to you?

Would you prefer me to pretend?

Err, it was a Matrix / Black Cat / Déjà vu kind of thing. Anyway, I am off for a haircut - sorry your son didn't get into dire straits .... good band in their day.

 

[MrsOgre]

Checking in again as the worst photoshopper of the group, with Jack's teeth back where they belong....

 

[Pocahontas]

Been thinking about the shortbread (as you do) and as she uses the words: ‘WE made’, I am inclined to think that she means that her and SB made them together. As in she bought the biccies and the icing and the decorations and it was a fun activity for her and SB. If so, fair dos, right?

Why doesn’t she just say so, then? Instead of implying that she made them all by hand, it’s far more endearing and honest to say that her and SB did this as a little shortcut and it’s a nice thing to do with your kid.

Can’t believe I’ve just written two paragraphs on this.