A pretty good year: Reflections on 2013.

I started this year living – existing – on a £10 a week food budget topped up with five items of food from the Storehouse food bank once a week. I ended it with a recipe book deal, baking biscuits on Woman’s Hour, with a Guardian column, a debate in the House of Commons and … Read more

Banana pancakes

What do you make for breakfast when you have bananas, eggs, milk and flour? Banana pancakes of course! Ingredients (made 6 good sized pancakes. 100g flour 100ml milk 1 egg 1 banana, or 2 if you want to go wild 2 tbsp oil Handful of sultanas – I’d normally add these but I don’t have … Read more

Mackerel and spinach chowder

Ingredients (serves two generous portions): 1 tbsp oil 1 onion 1 tbsp flour 200ml milk 200ml water 50g frozen spinach 100g mackerel 200g sweetcorn 200g tinned potatoes First, heat the oil in a pan. Dice or slice the onion, add with the flour, stir well and cook on a medium heat for a few minutes … Read more

Bramley apple soda bread, 20p

Bramley apple soda bread (makes four generous portions at 20p each): 200g flour (any will do – plain, self raising, rye, whole meal…), 35p 1 rounded tsp bicarbonate of soda, 3p 2 tsp lemon juice, 2p 200ml milk, 5p*** 1 large Bramley apple (or other variety, but they do work incredibly well here!), 35p First, … Read more

Jack’s Porridge Pancakes

If, like me, you never get the porridge quantities quite right in the mornings, these are a great solution to the problem of what to do with the leftovers. Credit where it’s due: the idea was Allegra’s initially – one day, looking at all the porridge still in the pot, she mused out loud, “I … Read more

I can’t even open my own front door.

This is an article that I wrote for the Guardian in December that I didn’t post on my blog, because I hadn’t done anything ‘political’ on here for so long that I didn’t want to scare people away. But I am who I am, and this is a very big part of who I am, … Read more