Quotes from Jack Monroe

The thing with my recipes is, I don't have hours to faff about in the kitchen. My recipes are all 15, 20 minute, chop it up and stick it in the oven.

We hear time and again what a prosperous, affluent country Britain is, the sixth richest in the world. But aren't we ashamed that people who need emergency food handouts are eating cold beans and stewed steak from the tin, or handing it back, because they can't even heat it up?

Tins with ringpulls tend to belong to those with slightly more disposable income; look at the Basics and Value ranges next time you are in the supermarket and you will see that they require a tin opener to get into them.

I think as much as people moan at things like award ceremonies, it gives people role models. It provides real positive reinforcement that you can be who you are and still massively achieve.

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.

Politics has become so polarised. We're stuck between the Ukip-lite Tories and Jeremy Corbyn. How is that a choice?

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.

We need to aim to get rid of food banks altogether, and replace charitable intervention with a fairer, more equal society.

I've had success, but I'm still haunted by the fear of being hungry. Once you've lived it it never leaves you.

I had no fake ID and looked 14 until my first grey hairs came in a couple of years ago.

During my time at Essex county fire and rescue service, barely a shift went by without receiving a call from an elderly person who had fallen in their home, or from their concerned neighbour or carer.

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.

Food is such a basic need, a fundamental right, and such a simple pleasure.

As a kid we would eat moussaka with mash. We had a real fusion of two cultures that no-one has dared to fuse since.

A lot of people don't feel heard. I want to take their concerns to MPs. If I have to stand seven times before I'm elected, I will. Call me Jack Farage.

In my experience, yelling at people that they are wrong and disgusting rarely wins the argument, nor changes point of view.

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.

I know that I can cook well on a low budget so I can't really justify spending a fortune on food.

You don't see very many Irish-Cypriot pop-up restaurants kicking about!

I want to empower people who might have lost their way in the kitchen or never known their way around it in the first place. And just go, this is a thing you can do, you can do this, and if you want I can show you how.

I left home at 18, I thought I knew everything. It was fun for a while and then it wasn't fun any more.

But it's a disgrace that food banks are needed in the first place, patching up the holes left by an inefficient and downright barbaric attack on the meagre safety net of what remains of a notion of 'social security'.

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.

For some people, pronouns are a very important part of how they identify. I completely understand that. For me, I have more of a looser interpretation.