Quotes from Jack Monroe

My politics are food-related - food banks, the living wage, zero hour contracts - and my food is political.

Benefit sanctions have been applied in cases where a person has failed to turn up to the jobcentre because they are in hospital following a heart attack. A woman was sanctioned for attending cancer treatment. A man was sanctioned for attending a funeral.

Because I'm in the media quite a lot now, everyone assumes that everything is fine. People forget I sleep on a mattress on the floor with my son in a house I share with five other people.

Tinned food can be cheaper than buying fresh stuff. Things like tinned carrots, tinned potatoes, mushy peas make a good base for a soup.

I tend to tell my readers to go for the cheapest ingredients every time, unless they're unbearable. If so, you only need to have them once and the next week switch up.

The last time I celebrated a special occasion, I hashed together a paella with some chicken, some frozen veg, long-grain rice, chilli and a shake of turmeric for colour - and it didn't disappoint.

Regular readers will know that curries are my favourite thing, and I wanted to go back to the start and really research the history and philosophy of Indian cuisine, rather than just toasting spices, slow-cooking onions. I was hungry to understand this food that I love so much.

I was a bit of an accident really - I certainly didn't set out to write a cookbook or three. I didn't have a plan. I was unemployed, writing a blog about local politics and a few recipes, and it was more successful than I could ever have imagined it to be.

I'm not the spring chicken everyone wants. I've got a debilitating illness. The brave face is 'I'm busy with work' but I've sort of chucked myself on the scrapheap. That's why I'm single. I've resigned myself to being a difficult woman.

I never learned to cook, so I've got no rules. I'll put things together just because I think they belong together.

Many families teeter on the edges, not qualifying for the little support on offer, unwilling to seek it for fear of drawing attention to a household barely holding the pieces together, or hit by unexpected bills.

Even in my genre, cookery, just look who gets on the television. Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigel Slater. All very nice men. All white middleflclass men.

There's all kinds of research that shows children operate best if they start the day with some proper food inside them - it's a no-brainer.

It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.

I suffer panic attacks, anxiety attacks, seemingly random triggers that immobilise me, render me useless but simultaneously unable to explain myself.

A startling confession for a food writer: all through high school, I struggled with a severe eating disorder.

I'm not organised, and I don't cope well with deadlines, structure and routine. I'm chaotic. Always have been.

Sweetcorn, mushy peas, beans, lentils, are all basic staples that can be thrown together into a variety of surprising meals.

I'm doing my bit to encourage people to try vegan by making vegan food affordable and accessible and absolutely delicious.

I have been cooking vegan recipes for a long time, long before the release of my first cookbook, because in the rubbish old days of scraping by on mismanaged, delayed and suspended benefits, meat and dairy products were often just too expensive, in contrast to their kinder counterparts.

Until people realise benefits doesn't mean scrounger, and austerity isn't a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there's still a lot of work to do.

I write cheap recipes for struggling families and single people, and have donated 800 copies of my newest cookery book to food banks and other good causes.

If the thought of cold tomato soup makes you shudder, take it from a veteran, it's like a creamy gazpacho, but in a decent society, nobody should have to find out.

Austerity is, devastatingly, not a party political issue.