Austerity guru
Speaking of Jack Monroe, Kathleen Stock is very funny on the subject:
…austerity guru Jack Monroe has a new book, Thrifty Kitchen, to cheer us all up.
Some of the suggested “home hacks” in this book have attracted particular mirth, seeming as they do to involve great effort and even high personal risk for exceptionally low reward. For instance, should you be desperate to get your hands on an egg ring — that is, a metal ring that helps you form perfectly round fried eggs — but unable to afford the £2.10 that would obtain you one from Amazon, Monroe suggests removing the lid and the bottom from a tuna tin, sanding the rough edges away, and washing afterwards to remove “any tiny dusty bits of metal”.
But why would you be desperate to form perfectly round fried eggs? And in the unlikely event that you were thus desperate, why wouldn’t you just trim fried eggs into circles (of course eating the cut away scraps so as not to waste them)?
Should you be poor enough to lack a tin opener, meanwhile — currently on sale in Tesco for 60p — she suggests using a “small sharp knife that you are not particularly attached to, a hammer or mallet, a bit of vigour, some patience and a VERY steady hand”.
So…you lack a 60p tin opener but you do have a hammer or mallet and a small sharp knife you’re happy to ruin opening a tin. Pardon me while I think you don’t exist.
Is Monroe really poor or does she just identify as poor?
In the last year or so, an army of determined internet sleuths has arisen to challenge the official back story of poverty, obsessively documenting internal discrepancies within Monroe’s voluminous Twitter output, cross-referenced with her many heartfelt Guardian op-eds, interviews, and blog posts…
Personally, although I find Monroe’s online persona more grating than — as she might have it — a metal sheet into which you’ve just punched several large holes with a sharp knife, I don’t think she’s a deliberate scammer. She strikes me as more of a disorganised, constitutionally inconsistent type who can’t remember what she last said from one moment to the next. Either way, I’m not too bothered. I’m just grateful for the lolz provided by some of the recipes — and specifically, the juxtaposition of Monroe’s middle-class culinary sensibilities with her cheap, ultra-processed ingredient list.
Like “spaghetti hoops” for instance. Spaghetti whats now? Hoops, which aren’t spaghetti at all, they’re some weird brand-nightmare canned pasta in Horrible Sauce. Canned pasta is of its nature revoltingly overcooked and mushy; it can’t be repurposed into something edible.
A much-derided blogpost of Monroe’s from last year suggests buying a tin of spaghetti hoops, washing the tomato sauce from the hoops, then grating some cheese on top to produce “Anellini Con Cacio e Pepe”. (Readers are also told that the washed-off tomato sauce can be reduced down “in a vigorous boil to concentrate it” to make something approximating tomato purée.) In the latest book, Monroe waxes lyrical about such culinary temptations as “moonshine mash” (Instant Mash mixed with pureed tinned sweetcorn), chicken cooked in Fanta, and cornflake ice-cream.
That’s the point where I had to stop reading to laugh for a long time.
Kathleen goes on to make a case that Monroe is presenting herself as a kind of Ma Ingalls from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, “ingeniously building a succession of bright, glowing homes for herself and her child out of nothing, in the midst of a punishing economic wilderness.” It doesn’t work but it’s a comforting fantasy.
I used to use egg rings – when I worked at McDonald’s. They wanted perfectly round fried eggs for their Egg McMuffins. Since that time, I have not found it necessary for my fried eggs to be perfect round.
Canned spaghetti isn’t the only thing mushy and overcooked; so are canned vegetables. If I had the stomach for it, I might read her twitter feed and find out if she uses canned vegetables.
As for instant mashed potatoes? OMG, like eating glue.
When I was too poor to afford silly frippery, I just went without silly frippery. And ate a lot of dried beans and rice, which can be done in many tasty ways with a few spices (I’m afraid to see what she recommends if you can’t afford spices!).
Tin openers, or as we’d call them in America can openers — Over the past 22 months I have bought at least three, I think four, and all of them failed, some even within a few days. Most are garbage. At this point I’ve given up. So a life hack for that would make sense.
I didn’t even know what an egg ring was, and now I want one. The spaghetti thing completely mystifies me–pasta, itself, is about the cheapest food you can buy; why buy cans of it? (I can actually think of one potentially justifiable explanation for the spaghetti hoops thing–food banks tend to give out canned and processed food, which is cheap, easy to store, often given away, lasts a long time, and can be used by people in challenging cooking situations, rather than (or in addition to) basic staples like pasta.)
To be fair that actually is why Monroe talks about the pasta hoops – it’s “if you have a lot of food bank canned pasta you can do this” advice. Fair enough, but at the same time, I’m thinking people can figure out for themselves that they can add stuff to a can of pasta hoops to make it a little less disgusting.
It is true that you don’t give pasta to food banks, or anything that requires more than just heating up. So pot noodles are okay, dry pasta and a jar of pasta sauce is not.
Though I’m finding this very entertaining. for all I know for every duff piece of advice Jack Monroe gives, she offers 10 reasonable tips.
Really? That’s not true here as far as I know. There are food bank drop boxes in a lot of grocery stores and they say no perishables, but that’s all. Besides, a jar of pasta sauce is edible as is and is a decent source of veggies.
There may be some food banks that request no dried pasta for simplicity of preparation, but that’s not the case at all of them. Pasta has a long shelf-life as does rice, so it’s usually well-received by those who rely on food banks.
I use egg rings when making basted eggs not because I care about perfectly circular eggs but because otherwise the eggs merge into a mess in my frying pan and make serving them individually difficult. So I am happy to have the things but were I too poor to afford them I would just live with the annoyance.
As for can openers, the only one reliable in my hands is the can-opener blade of my old pocket knife.
The food bank I volunteered at during lockdown gave out both canned food/pot noodles etc. and bags of rice or pasta (and jars of pasta sauce)–but we didn’t give the latter to people in shelters or temporary accommodation or who didn’t have storage space or anything besides a microwave and kettle.
My job was to receive and sort the donations, and to pack up parcels for people based on location/number/age/ethnicity/etc.; I was too lazy to deliver them so I got the other (younger) volunteers to do that part. One woman brought us a big bag full of essentially contents of a Fortnum and Mason hamper–hm, who’s going to get the jar of quail eggs and tins of pate?
Our school has a food pantry and they usually request pasta. You can bring canned or dry pasta. The students are in charge of selecting what they need, so if they have no place to cook the dried pasta, they can select canned (or if they don’t know how to cook it, which I once thought was impossible, but it turns out there are people who don’t know how to cook pasta or boil an egg…”
Sounds like some of you are buying the wrong can openers. My husband had one when we got married 20 years ago; I had one. We still have both of them, they are both still functional. The ones we have gotten more recently have also done quite well (I keep one at work in case I bring canned food, which I almost never do). If my husband isn’t breaking them, they have to be sturdy, because I think he could break solid steel objects. He has a knack especially for destroying anything with moving parts. Vacuum cleaners have been his specialty at destroying, but things similar to can openers last no longer in his hands than vacuum cleaners…I won’t let him near my mixer…but the can openers can stand up even to him.
The amount of water required to wash the sauce from pasta; and the amount of electricity required to reduce the watery mess back to something resembling purée…
Not something that makes any economic, let alone time sense. Lots of washing up generated as well. Plus if you don’t have a can opener, you probably don’t have a sieve, a second pot, or any number f other necessities for these dumbass suggestions.
#10 What brand/kind do you recommend, iknklast?
We had the best luck with one resembling what I recall from childhood. Squeeze the two handles to grip the rim and puncture the lid. Then turn the handle to sprocket your way around the can. Alas, something about the way I grip the handles causes the thing to loosen and stop working. So I deliberately grip it with a twist, which works temporarily but just worsens the problem. Eventually my sweetheart can no longer use it and then later it comes apart. The pocket knife is much sturdier and with only one handle survives my using it.
For can openers, you’ve got to get one of the ones with thick plastic-encased handles and a large crank. The thin metal ones are too flimsy. If you’ll forgive an Amazon link, something like this one. I don’t think that’s the exact brand I have at home, but it’s that kind of thing, and Oxo usually makes good stuff.
Huh. I use the turn the handle to sprocket your way around the can kind and it works fine. I think it’s only a few years old though, and that I got it because its predecessor was annoying me in some way, but I can’t remember what way. Something about the sprocketing I think? Everything had loosened up a little over time so it was too much effort to keep sprocketing?
#13 That one lasted a little longer but eventually yielded to the legacy of all those lonesome-bachelor-grip-strengthening exercises.
I will stop now lest this become a litany of vanquished can-openers.
Aha, I still have the old one. The wheel and the piece of metal that bites into the can are both heavily rusted. I’d had it for years before I got the new one though – I’d say they’re a pretty reliable sturdy form of opener. Also they have the cap remover bit at the other end.
We’re going to rescue GW from the hell of can opener not-having if it takes us all year.
Screechy, that is the kind I use…not all the same brand, but they seem to be similar in function and durability as long as you don’t get the cheapest one (same thing with corkscrews – I went through seven of them before finding one that would last my usual ineffectual attempts to get a cork out of a bottle of wine).
NinetyEight @12 A pocket knife opener is all I use, I have one in the kitchen drawer as well as my pocket. Simple and effective. Most people that I know don’t have the patience to use one, they want what’s in that can right now!
I think everyone would benefit from having a P38 military opener on standby, just in case your fancy contraptions fail.
I tend to buy cans with pull tabs to open, but I also purchased an opener ($8 at Amazon) that opens the can at the lip below the lid, leaving no sharp edges.
https://amzn.to/3WKhhhT
I enthusiastically agree, twiliter @ 20 . I am a great believer in having such backups. It is why my car carries not just the plug-into-cigarette-lighter style of tire pump but an old-fashioned manual variety. If there were anything mechanically simpler I would carry one of those.
Now, did someone mention garlic presses? I destroy those also and now use a fine microplane grater.
The sprocket kind is not fancy! I have no idea what a P38 is.
“A much-derided blogpost of Monroe’s from last year suggests buying a tin of spaghetti hoops, washing the tomato sauce from the hoops, then grating some cheese on top to produce “Anellini Con Cacio e Pepe”. (Readers are also told that the washed-off tomato sauce can be reduced down “in a vigorous boil to concentrate it” to make something approximating tomato purée.)”
Let me see if I have understood this sequence.
1. Buy cheap canned spaghetti.
2. Wash the sauce off because it sucks.
3. Actually, keep the sauce! But oops, you’ve diluted it. So…
4. Reduce the watery sauce by boiling it a lot.
5. Viola! You have the original sauce back! Yes, the sauce you were throwing away because it sucks.
6. And you did this vigorous boiling bullshit with electricity or gas during a cost of living crisis in which household gas/electricity costs have doubled since the same time last year.
Jesus christ, what thrift does that sequence contain?
There was an occasional sketch in the show Laugh-In in which rich people would try to do something fancy (I think it was usually food) in an extremely frugal way, but that way was always obviously dangerous or poisonous or otherwise a stupid idea. I think the sketch was called “Poor Rich People”. The only example I can recall is using lighter fluid for a flambe. The rich people were always smug about how obvious these techniques were, and how silly those genuinely poor people were for not thinking of them.
It came to mind while reading KS’s piece earlier today.
Ophelia @ 23
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-38_can_opener
The P38 is like the can-opener blade of a pocket knife without the rest of the knife. \
Not fancy.
Now that I think of it, I wonder how sturdy the hinge on the P38 is? The pocket knife seems solider.
Ophelia @ 27
Fancy is in the grip of the holder.
Heh.
Re can openers
I use the kind Mike mentioned in #21 because it doesn’t require prolonged application of grip strength. And because of the safe edges. Although my sister-in-law doesn’t like them because she thinks they leave sharp edges on a different part of the can (I don’t agree, but what can I say). Most of the cans I buy have pull tabs anyway.
Re that one weird trick with Spaghetti-Os
I can kinda sorta see the point of trying to get a bit of variety out of a steady diet of Spaghetti-Os, trying to turn the contents into a weird simulation of cacio e pepe and some tomato paste for use later, instead of having Spaghetti-Os 93 days in a row. But it’s still a very weird idea.
A steady diet of spaghetti-os is like a vision of hell.
OB @27 That’s fairly complex compared to my opener, it has no hinge, no sprockets, no bearings, no key, and no cutting wheels. It’s a single piece of cleverly designed metal attached to a pocket knife for leverage, with nothing to wear out. It will outlast a lifetime of cans and then some. Most folding camping knives and multitools are equipped with one, and some better than others (the better ones are Swiss made). Also, I wouldn’t put the fancy contraption that’s pictured in my pocket on a dare. :D
NinetyEight @28 I have used P-38’s, and you’re right, the two piece design isn’t ideal as the hinge is a weak point, but it’s much more compact than a pocket knife and easily fits on a keychain. They open cans amazingly well, and also get through airport security, while pocket knives generally won’t.
Well I’m not in the military and I don’t go camping, and I don’t even eat food from cans except an occasional tuna one. I don’t want to carry a can opener in my pocket. For ordinary kitchen use for ordinary people who aren’t soldiers the ordinary opener is fine and it’s cheap.
Sorry, I’m kind of a tool nerd. As long as the can get’s opened it’s all good. Well, maybe not if it’s Spaghetti-O’s.
Ah well I like tool nerdery!
I’m sort of a nerd about pens…
Most food banks really want cash donations, fwiw. They negotiate deals with stores to buy the food and supplies that they need at any given time of the year–better deals than we as individuals are getting. Which is to say, the same money that you spend on food, and then give that food to the food bank, can go further if you just give the money to them. That being said, people tend to donate less if they’re asked for money, rather than food and hygiene products, so the banks always ask for food.
We’ve had a can opener like the one Screechy linked to for over a quarter of a century, and it’s never given us problems. I use it a lot, mostly to open canned tomatoes for pasta sauces (good San Marzano tomatoes are usually better for sauces than fresh tomatoes).
As for garlic, all you really need is a good sharp knife. Crush it a bit to remove the papery skin, and then chop away. Garlic presses are too much of a pain to clean.
Re: food banks
The company I work for sometimes arranges for employees (those who want to) to do volunteer work. One year, we volunteered at Second Harvest Food Bank. The food bank had some bulk donations that needed dividing up and packaging for distribution. The group I was with had the job of cutting blocks of cheese into two pound portions and bagging it. They had a whole pallet of cheeses – 6, 10, 20, 40 pound blocks of cheese. Good cheeses, too – including parmesan, aged cheddar, blue. Donated by the World Dairy Expo, if I recall correctly. To give you an idea of how much cheese, there were 12 or so of us, and it took us several hours.
James Garnett, it sort of depends on the food pantry. One church in Oklahoma City (all the churches, but this was the only one I knew about because my husband once attended there and was treasurer) wanted food donations, not cash. I don’t know how all places are set up, but the city would provide food to hand out; in order for the charity to receive the food, they required gifts in kind. The members had to cough up a certain number of cans or whatever in order to receive the assistance.
Karen, that’s interesting. I’ve never known a food bank to give cheese, at least not the ones I got food from. All they handed out was canned goods, plus a turkey once a year. The canned goods in my box were almost all green beans. I loathe green beans; it’s one of the only vegetables i won’t eat.
It sounds like your husband has a superpower! He’ll need a Superhero name to make it official. Or, if he uses his Superpower for E-vil, he’ll need a Supervillain name. Alas, my superpower is the ability to make simple taskslook difficult and complicated. Fortunately this only happens occasionally, but always with an audience.
I’m afraid I had a childhood flashback of this P-38…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-38_Lightning
I initially thought “That’s a bit overkill for opening a can,” but who am I to judge? It might also be very satisfying if the can has really pissed you off, and catharsis is more important than Spaghetti-Os.
I’m rather late to reply about the dry pasta – my last foodbank donation was to one at my work, where they did want instant meals. So that was probably implanted on my memory.
Re the tin opener discussion – my flatmate and I had to move out of my flat, which had been flooded from above by bursting pipes. At one point we moved into a furnished tenement flat a couple of storeys up. It was nice enough, and directly opposite an off-licence. After moving stuff with the non-assistance of a nasty taxi driver, I went down to the off-licence to buy much-needed bottles of beer. Then having gone up the flights of stairs, got out glasses and then looked for a bottle-opener….. couldn’t find one. I could have cried – probably did. I was too tired to go back down the stairs again.
When I was a teenager I knew guys who could open bottles with their teeth, but I never learned that skill.
Re: opening bottles of beer
There’s using the edge of a counter or table. That I’ve done (back in college).
I saw this cartoon, about can openers and Spaghetti-Os, and was reminded of this discussion. Enjoy.
https://www.gocomics.com/monty/2023/01/13