Jack Monroe #89 Did you know she once ran out of jam?

[Bugger13]

If I was Jack I would definitely troll us all and call my next book The Mystery Of The Missing Livers.

Worthy of another Enid Blyton stylee story. In my defence I’m quite pissed.

Thorpe Bay was perfectly quiet and peaceful when the local Asda manager stepped out for a fag break. He needed it, that bloody woman who was always chewing on a child’s necklace had been hanging around the yellow stickered area again, threatening to kick the shins of other customers if they approached the markdowns. He exhaled deeply and gazed into the night sky before gasping in shock. An alarming illumination of weird beige mist filled the horizon.
‘I say’, he exclaimed. ‘That looks rather toxic’.

Down in the posh part of town, Jack was furiously pummelling away at her water rower. The sentient mirror was getting right on her (double D) tits.

‘I did tell you that refreezing bollock sausages was a bad idea, you ignored my smashing idea about bangers and mash’, drawled the pompous mirror, angering Jack as it reflected her angry goblin face at her.

‘Get to fuck’, she screamed. ‘Get out of my niche’.

The mirror smirked as Jack stomped downstairs (the bungalow was actually a house, truth be told). Cooper was sniffing around the kitchen, accompanied by an officious looking mouse wearing a waistcoat upon which hung a shiny pocket watch.

‘Good evening madam’, said the mouse, his quick eyes darting back and forth suspiciously as he surveyed the overflowing bin and dodgy electrical arrangements in the crammed kitchen. ‘We are investigating a toxic incident in the area and my team who inhabit your blackberry bush believe you may be responsible’. The mouse lunged at cooper’s nose as he spoke, before quickly regaining his composure.

‘Are you environmental health, you Tory wanker?’ spat Jack. ‘I’m a bestselling author’.

A piercing scream shattered the tense atmosphere. The trio raced upstairs to see the mirror sobbing as it melted into a puddle. The reflection of the toxic haze that had now covered Thorpe bay & was responsible for the demise of the mirror could still be seen in its sad face. Jack reached out.

‘Get back young lady’, barked the mouse. There are no scarves or designer goods within. The mirror has been poisoned by the toxic waste emanating from your kitchen and now covering the town’.

Jack gnashed her teeth. ‘That fucking pistachio milk, I knew it was a mistake’.

‘No, Ms Monroe’, barked the all-knowing mouse. ‘It was in fact those livers. You have caused an environmental disaster from all that cheap Asda shit you’ve been clogging the drains with. Our suspicions were first aroused when we noted the ocado deliveries & smelt the drains overflowing with curry powdered slop. But this time you have gone too far. Even Dennis Nielsen didn’t clog the drains this badly. My team of woodland creatures have been monitoring your activities and the police will be here any moment to arrest you for crimes against food, the environment and outraging public decency’.

Jack fixed the impudent creature with a sharky glare. ‘I’m entitled to a phone call’, she declared, whipping out three phones from her denim shirt.

‘Hello, mom?...’

 

[Pocahontas]

Well rinse my beans, another group frauen effort in the thread title! Congratulations to @byropaw for the words, and @bignose28 for nominating them. Working together, we can make a change ...

Recap of thread #88

1. She indulged in one of her ‘twice-yearly’ designated rest and relaxation slots and had a nap after the school run. She also wants to embrace anything hygge.
2. She produced some food - more maverick sandwiches and yet more bowls of what looked like various iterations of Shrek’s dirty bathwater.
3. She’s particularly furious at being sent a PR email that offered her Caviar vodka. I mean, how dare they, it’s not vegan.
4. She was still going on about multiple radios and one of the Mrs Js.
5. First time I’ve ever heard of a butter sausage. Surprise, surprise, she put it in a curry.
6. She wants to be explicitly clear that she eats mostly vegan. Anchoïade, Tesco’s finest mackerel, and devilled eggs, oh my!
7. She has half a million eyes (across various social media platforms) on her and just wants to cook sausages without writing an essay and feeling the ouches. What kind of sausages do you use, Jack? ANY, now get to fuck.
8. She knows how to colour inside the lines.
9. Don’t be suggesting omega supplements to her so that she doesn’t have to eat the fishies. They’re. Not. In. Her. Budget.
10. She’s been trying to moderate social media (code: she hasn’t been on Twitter for a few hours).
11. Does bombproof cupboard cardboard cheese count as vegan? Don’t be saying that she should buy nutritional yeast, it’s too Expensive.
12. Jack, those chicken thighs are DEAD. Please stop resurrecting them.
13. She has made 17 ready meals from an indeterminate amount of shops.
14. Jack Monroe Food Safety 101: Don’t muck about with all that defrosting properly in the fridge lark. Just chuck it in the microwave and nuke it to kingdom come.
15. She’s in a ‘good bit’ at the moment, which means a ‘disaster is probably imminent.’ Pie Jesu.
16. 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.
    [*]

 

[MancBee]

Jack, you read here. A simple message for you.

The message you are sending by insisting that you can easily feed two people on £20 is harming the very people you are claiming to be campaigning for. Please stop this crusade you have of trying to find the bare minimum that a person can exist on. It is harmful to the very people you wish to help. You are playing into the hands of the very government you profess to hate. Please change your tactic, it isn't working for the benefit of people living in poverty, and it is no longer working for you.

Thankyou.

 

[Dustye]

I was mulling this over in the shower this morning and am probably not going to articulate it particularly well, but she really reminds me of myself in my early twenties. I was a total hot mess and proud of it, always creating chaoses, switching identities and interests more often than I changed my knickers. I could be very charming in a quirky, manic way, so would have a rotating door of usually older girlfriends, who quite rightly got tired of my shit pretty quickly, I'd create more drama to lure them back but then swiftly find myself a new target.

I was terrible with money, always overspending and reaching the furthest reaches of my overdraft within days of payday. I was incredibly lucky with career opportunities but would change jobs every year or so, probably linked to my ever-shifting identity.

I had residual eating issues from adolescence so would live off slop with no texture, flavour or nutritional value - rice in a bowl of vegetable stock being a favourite meal.

But you know what? That was ten years ago. By the time I was 25/26, I realised it wasn't cute anymore and that I needed to grow the fuck up. I moved out of London because I was kidding myself that I could afford to live there, settled down with a fantastic, stable, kind partner who was quite clear that they wouldn't put up with the chaoses, sorted my career out and have recently started a family.

I'm still not great with money, and like Jackie get tempted by high end things (embarrassed to admit that I do indeed have a Dyson hairdryer), but I save up for things or tend to get second hand/refurbished. Sadly yet to find any hideous designer scarves in puddles though.

The idea of still behaving the way I did, and as Jack does now, makes me cringe so much I'm basically doing kegels. Especially when you become a parent, you have a responsibility to get your act together and be an adult. I've been partial to the odd selfie myself in the past, but I wouldn't dream of a thot shot or animal bra pic. I'd be mortified for any of my closest friends to see something like that, let alone colleagues, potential employers and the whole public.

I used to think she was great, probably because I'm a Guardian-reading, avocado-munching, middle class millennial twat who has been so damn lucky in my life that I took her poverty tale as gospel. But since dealing with her indirectly for work, then the begging at the beginning of lockdown (I have a real issue with Patreon types but that's another rant for another day) and the sideboard thot shots earlier in the year, the scales really fell from my eyes.

I look at how she behaves and can't believe that I'm a year younger than her - it's like watching a teenager desperate for attention.

Rant over. Sorry about that, she really grates my mushrooms, especially at the moment.

 

[kachoochoo]

had a quiet moment, so I counted the bread

20 slices visible in the haul pic

she has pictured 22. presumably the bacon and egg sandwich used 2, that's 24.

these are my workings (I'm sorry, we can't all have nice writing like jack)

 

[Veronicaaa]

I'm a full-time freezer truther now - how come this one's levitating if it's full of slop (with more frozen slop on top)?

 

[Pocahontas]

View attachment 278219

Brexit is ... something that you definitely should have placed your vote in, especially if you had a strong voiced opinion and a preferred outcome. Brexit is not something that you should have spoiled your ballot paper for like an angry toddler in a doctor’s waiting room and then harked on about it forevermore like you were Southend’s answer to Nostradamus.

My predictive text is salty!

 

[colouredlines]

I know she's a really shit person (pile-ons, cat, compulsive lies, scamming people etc) but I can't get over her cooking.

There are lots of bad cooks out there - people who were never taught properly, people who are lazy, people who lack confidence etc. An ex of mine tried to make me eat pasta that he had put in a pot of cold water then brought to the boil. But he was both lazy and a bit thick, so...

But Jack is soooo bad at cooking. And she seems to be getting WORSE. Some of it is her pride, I think. She has to be the maverick, and can never admit failure or ignorance. For example, in her Guardian days she always used to tell people to fast-boil beans and pulses for 10 minutes to remove toxins. This is only true in the case of dried kidney beans, which can be deadly - but she would say it for canned butterbeans etc. When people pointed it out, she doubled down: "There's some debate about this, but I like to err on the side of caution." There's no debate, you just won't admit you didn't know something.

We know that she didn't use salt in her recipes until Allegra taught her to. But beyond that...the flavours clash. The ingredients are nasty. The methods are just plain wrong (cold onions, simmering pasta, rinsing cooked lentils, wanking horses etc). The names of the dishes bear no relation to reality. The texture...just no.

And she fucking gushes over everything she makes like someone's just touched her wrist. Everything is amazing first time, ideal for greedy goblins to guzzle down.

After seven years writing cookbooks for a living, after cohabiting with a professional chef, after being immersed in the foodie world for the better part of a decade, doing NOTHING all day so with plenty of time to cook...like, she has to be actively trying to be this shit, surely? Is it elaborate performance art?!

 

[Nottonightbabe]

I said the other day how a few years back the Tories used her budget cooking tales as evidence that people could eat just fine on the measly amount of money they had. At the time she acted all outraged that they had twisted it as such. Yet she's doing the exact same thing again here by boasting at how far she can make money stretch, and excitedly reveling in the attention and praise it's bringing her. It's potentially very damaging for those people who genuinely have very little money for food.
Selfish, selfish bitch.

 

[TriviaNewtonJohn]

Jack Monroe #90: freezer of lies, house of extravagant buys

 

[Raker]

Greetings from the past — we’re now on a thread a day and even with Jackie levels of manic grunkaing I can’t keep up. However. Of the many ridiculously annoying things she lies about this one has riled me to the point of commenting into the future (not gnashing and howling style obvs): the charity shop magimix for £12

Since at least 2007 most charity shops have not accepted or resold electrical goods. The few that do have to have a special licence to do so, and I presume a team of trained testers etc behind the scenes to ensure the items meet safety regulations before they can be resold. I’ve had to contact 2 charities 15 and 18 miles away to collect donated electrical items in the past.

So, is Southend full of magical puddles licenced shops with all these goodies on offer? What charity shop licenced for electricals would not recognise the value of such a donation and only charge £12? Why does she insist on lying about the most inconsequential disprovable shit? If she said she’d got it off FB Marketplace or the like no one would have batted an eyelid. If she’d bought a much cheaper one at Lidl — relatable. If she’d bought the bloody thing as a legitimate business expense again, again no one would have noticed. But <insert Kandi THE LIES gif> mean that everything skeevy or over detailed (the precise amount it costunk hat theory) is noticed...

This insistence on poverty cos play is just ludicrous — the fake shitty bungalow, the fake £20 shops, the fake security worries, the fake ailments — the “pretending I’m poor just like you, and you wouldn’t be able to afford a magimix so I’ll pretend I got mine in a charity shop” idiocy — it’s all transparent and so unattainable for someone in a similar situation. The Burberry in a puddle, the gifted bespoke curtains, the shit ton of Cotswold furniture. Can she not see how this comes across? (And that’s just the past 2 weeks!!!!)

So wise the bap Jack. You absolute lying arse.

 

[Veronicaaa]

OK so I've done a very quick list of the things she's used so far this week which were not on the food shop:

Tonight’s dinner
- anchioade
- squash
- chard
- pasta
- gross ‘cheese’
lunch (soup)
- red lentils
- coconut milk
breakfast
- porridge
- salted peanuts
- syrup
THAT'S JUST TODAY but I can't help but notice it's her son's meals she's making with the ingredients she bought, whilst she lords it up with all the added extras.
Over the past few days she's also used
- rice
- ribollita (fuck knows what she put in that to be perfectly honest but the one ingredient she felt she should highlight was sage and onion stuffing, which is not on this week's food shop)
- Kale
- butter (for the ‘butter sausage’)
- sausage (for the ‘butter sausage’)
- peas
- mustard
- lemon juice
- mayo
- Puttanseca soup (again, fuck knows what was in that but authentic ingredients are not included on her receipt)
- Cinnamon (for porridge) but also other oils, herbs, spices, which she doesn't mention and it's impossible at the moment to check for because of course she hasn't written a single recipe for anything.
Her son also ate one of last week’s frozen meals for his dinner the other night.

HOPE THAT HELPS. I'm slightly calmer now. Thankyou and fuck off x

 

[Pocahontas]

She’s also so dangerous because - yes, she misses out the general essentials like everyone’s said: cleaning products, cat food, toilet roll, etc. Also - sanitary products. It’s a struggle for women in actual poverty, not just buying shit meat for larks, to be able to afford towels and tampons on top of what they must buy to feed the family.
Being able to survive on £20 a week is such a lie and I think I actually do detest her.

 

[Veronicaaa]

Oh I've just figured out what's so wrong with those freezer pics. It looks like the freezer isn't even on. There's no ice or moisture or anything on the containers, some of which are meant to have been in there since last week.

 

[Geetbo]

Don’t know about you guys but I am JEALOUS of Jacks placenta based breakfast.

 

[Veronicaaa]

Is it even a freezer? Have we the inside of one that looks like that? It might be the glove box of a Ford Fiesta

Fig. 1 - looks like a normal freezer

Fig. 2 looks kind of like the inside of a cheese grater?

Fig. 3 - the inside of a cheese grater

 

[Alansbigplate]

View attachment 277602
‘Plated’. Also I thought she wasn’t eating biscuits at the moment.

I’ve got to make my tea early cos I’ve got to put it on the floor before the sun goes down. Yes, Jack, that’s perfectly normal behaviour.

 

[MancBee]

One of the (many) things I like about this place is that everyone is non judgmental. There's vegans that don't judge meat eaters, meat eaters that don't judge vegans, and vegetarians that judge neither. We all just accept that people make different choices in their lives.

In contrast Jack is so sanctimonious and moralistic about everything. When she talked about her veganism (she never was) it was so preachy and came over judgemental.

I know who I'd prefer to spend time with.

 

[SoulRebel]

The BTL comments on that article are interesting. So many of the same points made on these threads about JM and the damage she does. I'm too lazy to screenshot (sorry) but there are really well made points by a commenter called "gherkingirl"

She had Jackie sussed way back.

 

[Eurgh]

‘Brexit is something I voted against. Because I actually voted.’ There you go.