Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - Bonus Episode: Jack Monroe and Nureen Glaves

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

A double helping this week! We recorded a very special episode of Table Manners with two amazing women; campaigner and author Jack Monroe & Nureen Glaves, the founder and CEO of National Lottery-supported Feed Me Good.In this Good Causes special, made possible by National Lottery players, we didn’t need to cook! Jack brought her delicious ‘chicken porridge’ & Nureen brought her famous rum cake – what a treat! We ate & we chatted all about affordable eating, food sustainability, making the most of the tins in your cupboard & different ways of making mac and cheese! Nureen even filled us in on what she will be making for her upcoming Big Jubilee Lunch, as communities all over the UK come together to celebrate the Jubilee weekend.This one is a super foodie episode, so hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed recording it. Thank you to The National Lottery for setting us up! Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to a Good Causes special of Table Manners and a possible by National Lottery players. So thank you. This is a really important episode for us. We have two incredible campaigners coming over to actually cook us food and bring food round to ours, which is a turn up for the books, isn't it, Mum? It's a big treat. Thank you to the National Lottery for introducing us to somebody i have admired for a very long time um jack monroe she's a campaigner author and then we also have noreen glaives who is the founder and ceo of feed me good it's an organization dedicated to improving the health of marginalized communities through

nutrition and well-being. Now the episode is made possible by national lottery players because for every ticket sold a hefty slice of the money received goes to a huge variety of life-changing projects just like Noreen's charity. Darling food is such a critical issue at the moment with the cost of living crisis that we all need to know how to use our money in the best way possible and how essentially people are going to feed their families. Jack Monroe has written countless books about cooking on a budget she has a blog called cooking on a bootstrap I follow her on Instagram she was putting up the price of a meal and New Orleans charity Feed Me Good is dedicated to improving the health of marginalised communities

through nutrition and well-being. This is a really special episode. I'm looking forward to hearing how they can make great affordable food that doesn't cost the earth, literally. And they're bringing the food, that's why we're so relaxed and I think Noreen's bringing a pud and Jack's bringing a mane. It's 9.30 in the morning. The birds are tweeting.

So looking forward to having Jack Monroe and Noreen Glaives on Table Manners. We are so thrilled to have the most vibrant ball of energy just come through the the room and uh bring with her thermos a thermos um what do you call this a thermos um three lovely bowls that mum wants to nick off you and um and lots of knowledge jack momo thank you for being on table manners oh thank you very much for having me this has been one of my secret bucket list things for my career that my little secret list in my notebook a couple of years ago where i was like if i'm ever asked to

do these things move heaven and earth and it was i gotta i gotta take another one off today thank you it's our pleasure and also yeah so you've brought some food but now tell me you woke up a bit later today so you've got a whole i feel like i'm gonna learn a lot of hacks from you so what have we got here that we're gonna be eating so we've got and it's i've i've done it deliberately because it's something that people are quite like their initial reaction to it is a bit visceral but it's um it's chicken porridge oh like a congee from good food for bad days it's like a savory porridge and yeah and so i got up this morning i barely slept last night because i get really nervous before i do any of the bucket list things so then i crashed through my alarm this morning and i woke up and I was like I've got nine minutes

to leave the house right what can I do what can I do in nine minutes and I this wasn't I was gonna do a risotto can't do a risotto in nine minutes you can't be staring for 45 minutes I just literally grabbed my flip through I was like chicken porridge excellent I'll bring it up to heat I'll stick it in a thermos and it can continue to cook all the way here for two and a half hours on the train so um that's an experiment so I mean we're massive fans of you mum already wants to gossip with you about lots of things but let's start from the beginning what was growing up for you like um with food I mean you your family how were you eating and who were you eating with so um my parents were foster carers so we would always have like an assortment of different people

around the dinner table sometimes there'd be four of us sometimes there'd be 10 of us um so food was very much a sort of a pinnacle point of my childhood because it's the first thing that they always made sure they did. You know, you get some kids come to stay with us for a bit and it's like, OK, we'll have a meal, we'll sit down, we'll have a very gentle chat. So food was always basically things that could be stretched with five minutes notice.

So it was like big pasta bakes and um you know big sort of like my mom would do what she what she called a risotto but it was in this big electric pan and it was like beef stock and canned tomatoes and chopped mushrooms with like a big pile of sausages so it's always things that could be if you had suddenly put another plate at the table it could be divvied up and yeah no sort of individually portioned restaurant type meals just like big family grub and that's um that's pretty much how i cook as well because i have for some reason my friends appear to turn up around my house around dinner time oh yeah quite frequently i'm a good cook. Was your mum a good cook? Yeah, my mum's a good cook. So it's always tasty.

Oh, here's Noreen, I think. Oh, excellent. Hello. Hi. Hi, Noreen. I'm Jessie Ware. Hello, nice to meet you. Hi. And this is Jack.

Hi, Noreen. Hi, Anne. This is my mum, Lenny. Hi, Noreen. Hi. Would you like a cup of tea or a coffee? Tea would be great, please. With just normal tea?

No, just any tea. Okay. Come sit. That's my mum. Hi. Hi. I'm Jessie. Nice to meet you.

That's my mum. Can we get you a cup of tea, coffee? What do you like? Tea? Coffee? Yeah, coffee. I should have brought my bar. Oh, yeah, you should have.

It feels like a family gathering has just occurred. Noreen's come in with her mum, Marlene. And Marlene's asking for oat milk, which actually mum has today, which is unusual for you to have oat milk. Why have you got oat milk today? Because my brother bought it Noreen's come in with some actually you know what yeah tell me what you've got you'll explain it much better than me okay good morning everyone thank you so much for having me I'm so grateful

I literally brought my mum with me which was like oh my god thank you and you know what's so funny before I start because I've been like binge watching your episode listening to episodes right I feel like you are the English version of me and my mom my mom's jamaican so it's kind of like i thought let me just let her come along so she can enjoy it i love that i'll try and not swear today though no it's okay she's always saying to me stop snoring yeah all the time yeah i think it's the chef's side though oh that must be it yeah we just have to just lay it out sometimes jack what about you you are you allowed to swear in front of your mother um i wasn't until i left home so whilst i'm chatting to noreen at the at the kitchen table jack is making yourself comfortable which is i love it we love it you're exactly where Raymond Blanc was making the fish.

So mum is chatting with Jack. Jack's sorting out the chicken porridge. Yeah. Noreen, tell us what you've got. Okay, so I would like you to taste it. Okay. I'm a feed dumps. Yeah. So this is like my famous rum cake, yeah?

Okay. So I started doing this rum cake because my mum had this big jar of like soaked fruits for seven or eight years right it's a tradition thing in jamaica like once you get a child you make this big jar it's like a cauldron of like soaked fruits and then you make rum cakes what fruits are we talking about so we're talking about like like um raisins sometimes sultanas but the alcohol is important but you can make an alcohol-free version with super malt yeah i've tried it so it's in my cookery book okay so this one has a lot so you cook out the alcohol so you've got in this jar that i've been like soaking since january um i have um baileys i have white rum dark rum

and that's a cocktail and a cake and white and red wine. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a big thing. I'm going to be drunk at my dance rehearsals later. Fine, great. And this one, it's actually gluten-free. It would be dairy-free only because of the Baileys, but otherwise it would be gluten and dairy-free because I'm lactose intolerant and I'm also gluten intolerant. So my life could be very stressful.

But because I'm a chef it makes one also nutritionist it makes it easy that i can kind of be like let's just fix it before it becomes a problem you know yeah so this is my famous okay i'm gonna have a little taste of it now yeah um so i'm having my my pud before the older that i put the wrong milk in your no no it's fine it's fine i put normal it's okay i'll just take i'll just take a tiny bit it's no, no, it's fine, it's fine. I put normal milk in yours. No, it's okay, I'll just take a tiny bit, it's okay, Mum, no problem. That's really delicious. Oh, thank you. Come on, so that's got red wine in it. Mm-hmm. Bailey's. Jessica, don't keep it to yourself. It's very delicious, thank you. Mum, try some. So don't worry about the milk, I'll call everyone Mum at the moment. So this one, okay, this one's very special.

This one's very pretty. This is very special, very special. So this one, okay, this one's very special. This looks very pretty. This is very special. Pretty in pink. Very special. So this one is cherry blossom with rose syrup and also dry-free strawberries. The usual. Yeah. So, okay, so we've got this and you've schlepped these over from where? Harlesden. Harlesden, yes. So, okay, and Jack, where did you come from today?

I live in Southend, but if you look at a map of the east of england and you locate south end there's a little pinnacle that points right out into the sea yeah and if you put your finger on the end of that pinnacle that's where i am so i basically live in the sea which is why it's a bit of a mission to get anywhere but i like that because it's also a bit of a mission for journalists to get to me. So I get left alone. I really appreciate you coming so early. I love this. Mum, doesn't this feel good?

Yeah, this is how our popcorn should be. And these are feeders. I know. I love it. So, okay, whilst Jack just sorts out the savoury, Noreen, tell me, I'm getting an inclination about how this... What was food? What was the role of food in your in your family and growing up okay so before I even start my mum would kill me if I don't talk about my great-grandma who used to literally have a stall in Carnation Market in

Jamaica and I feel like it's like descended like the magic hands you know I'm talking about the magic hands that everyone kind of has um to my my grandma and then my mom so i started cooking when i was about four because my auntie sandra used to bake so i used to watch her in the kitchen and then start to do that and i don't know but i kind of felt like i was home with it you know yeah so when i was in like high school i would be doing more baking and cooking and i remember there was this little damn young boy at my class who was like i would marry you just for you to make me a cake and I said you know what this might be a profession here you know because if he wants

to get that reaction out of me then Noreen did you? Yeah just literally. Marlene saying something in the conservatory. What are you saying Marlene? Who is the better cook out of you and Noreen? Oh no no they can't do that. I can I just did. Oh my god We'll for Jamaican, I'm the better cook. Okay, fair enough. But Noreen now, she's

international cook. Oh, do you like the international cuisine? What's your favourite dish of Noreen's? Macaroni and cheese. Oh, really? Yes. Do yours change? Like, how you do it? Is it different? Do you do a dry macaroni cheese with a crispy top? I do, yes. Yeah. I do both. So I do like the wet one and then I'll do the dry and then I'll put like the breadcrumbs and stuff.

But I do different flavours. So I'll do like a garlic or a thyme one or I'll just do like a really like five cheese kind of one. It depends really. Five cheese. I've got to do like a vegan one as well. Macaroni cheese. Oh yeah, come on, jump. Five cheese. And then I do, like, I've got to do, like, a vegan one as well. What do you want? I think we can jump into macaroni cheese. Oh, yeah, come on, jump in.

Yeah, Jack, Jack, tell it. You need to get on the mic. Jack, tell us what your macaroni cheese consists of. Do you like a three cheese situation or five cheese? What's your macaroni? I just like whatever cheese is in. But I've got a real thing about macaroni cheese at the moment. And in my next book, there's a recipe that I first cooked six years ago.

And I don't know how I've managed to not put it in anything yet. And it's called blackened cheese. And it's macaroni cheese with crumbled black pudding folded through it. Oh, that's nice. With like a black pudding crumble on top. So it's like black pudding and bread smashed up together in a food processor and then cr crumbled on top and it's that quite an affordable dish yeah of course how much how much are we looking price point about 50p a head last time i costed it up but obviously food prices are all over the place at the moment so it's a bit sort of it's a bit hairy to keep track of but

yeah it's about 50p a head and my son would never touch black pudding because kids these days have got the internet. They can look up everything. You can't tell them that it's good. You can't sort of pull the wool over their eyes anymore. So he Googled it and he was like, I'm not eating that. And then I made it in the mac and cheese and he's obsessed with it now. And I'm like, that's black pudding. And he's like, I'm just not thinking about it.

Because it's not in a slice on the side of a fry up he's getting sort of yeah it's genius but I find that with the kids though so like I've in my recipe book I've got a recipe for tofu mochi donuts actually made out of tofu the four ingredients they're super affordable and I get my kids to make it in like my primary schools and so forth and they're like oh my god tofu and then they have like oh miss chef Nunu it's the best donut I've ever had what do they call you chef Nunu yeah yeah so it's like really really fun and yeah I love it you know so let me go back to even saying but well how it starts so literally food's always been a part of my life yeah um cooking from a young age but i found that it's

really for me i see people as food so it's like when i go travel different places around the world or i have my communities that i teach and so forth i'm literally like oh my god where are you from and they're like oh you know maybe from the philippines i'm like you've got a wicked ube or i'm like oh my god you're from pakistan you've got a wicked bela or you know i kind of do it that way yeah and you know i really kind of do it that way. And, you know, I really consider a lot of different, like, things from backgrounds, religious beliefs, language barriers as well. All these different things. And I find that because food is such a universal language, you don't need to speak the same language to eat or to listen to music, for example, to enjoy it.

So, for me, Feed Me Good is that. It's literally like feeding. Noreen how did it start? Oh my god so my background is all catering so catering, public health, dietetics and food manufacturing and food sales. No but where did you start at the beginning? So we know you can cook, we know you can cook, did you do cookery at college? Yes so I did catering, catering hospitality in college for two years. And then I finished and then I worked in like some hotels.

Which college? Uxbridge College. Uxbridge College. Yeah, Uxbridge College. And were they good cooks? Oh yeah. I had like, I used to call him Uncle Kevin. So Kevin, Uncle Kevin.

Everyone's uncle and auntie. Yeah. But it's nice. You know, it's a respect thing, you know, like, you know, we always we always say auntie or mom you say uncle it's kind of like respect thing so he taught me how to do catering and then I worked in the actual in the field working to like different hotels and restaurants and spas but because I had my son at 21 I couldn't really work like chef hours I could still do it but it was just like I've got to look after little kids so um that kind of started the journey of me teaching so that kind of helped me to get into public health and dietetics and then I worked that for two years and then afterwards I went to university which was amazing to do what food

and nutrition oh wow which one um London South Bank fantastic I'm actually going back there to do my master's in September I'm super excited you not busy then? I'm doing it part-time. But I'm really excited about it because we're going to do gut health with mental health and human performance. One thing I will be releasing is my Black and Ethnic Eat Well plate. We need to be more inclusive

when it comes to the messaging of food and health and everything like that, you know? I think even the programmes that we do at Feed Me Good, we've got a course called How to Be a Smart Food Shopper so where do your courses where are you teaching people yeah so I teach all over London and out of London so I normally get um funded by the national lottery which I'm so grateful for so you say to a community yes um guess what um Noreen's coming with Feed Me Good yes and she's going to show you how to make fantastic food. On a budget.

On a budget. Food isn't taught in schools anymore, which is the big sad. Oh, wow. Oh, Jack, come on. This is like restaurant. Guys. Restaurant-sized portion. That's right.

We're the biggest service. We are. This is amazing. No, we are silent. Thank you so much. So it is hard to know how to cook. This is amazing. No, we are silent. Thank you so much. So it is hard to know how to cook. If you've never been taught, and lots of kids in care,

they've not always been taught. I mean, I think it's different now. Because Jack's mum was a foster carer. So I bet, was she teaching the children? What to cook? Yeah. Everyone helped. We were all, well, because it was such a busy household,

we all mucked in, like with everything. This is delicious. You don't, you know, a house that's constantly got, like, people coming and going in it all the time, it shouldn't fall to one person to just do all the stuff. Oh, this is delicious. What is it? It's delicious. So this is chicken porridge, and it's from Good Food for Bad Days. And I was listening with interest, Nuri, when you were saying about food and mental health,

because that's what my last book was on, because I really wanted to sort of explore the relationship between not only how we eat sort of in varying periods of our sort of emotional life but also the foods that we can eat that will help to support sort of good brain function and stuff like that and so this is um it takes literally minutes to throw together six minutes this morning from start to finish because i was like i'm gonna be late i need to cook something i could i could just not cook something no i said i would so i'll just jack this has such like depth of flavor and it feels so it's it's delicious so what's in it would be that two and a half hours sitting in a thermos slow cooking

on the tube on the way here i'm so think of that like you know as like a working parent anybody who has things to do to be able to do that and think and be able to it's it's it's brilliant well i'm working on um some low cost like low cost to cook meals at the moment like low energy meals so i have been experimenting i do need a bigger thermos because that one's ridiculously small i think i've got one i'll give you. I'll swap it for some bowls. Yeah, about doing things like seeing if you put something like red lentils because they're quite quick to cook, but they're still 20, 25 minutes on the hob if you want them nice and soft.

If you could put those in a thermos with boiling water and leave them overnight, then there's no energy to cook apart from to boil the kettle so i've done it successfully with pasta and rice brown rice is a bit of a bugger yeah that's the word i was gonna use yeah um so this is uh i'm pleased with this that's another it's really it's really good so okay so it's porridge oats chicken it's a fancier version of the one in my book because I was suddenly like, you know, cooking for human beings, not just me. Like, I eat like a badger most of the time.

Scavenging whatever there is in the fridge. Basically, it's onion, garlic, carrot. There's a little bit of fennel in there because I've got a little fennel bulb kicking around in my fridge. And celery. I minced that all up, all like really, really small. Fried it off in the saucepan, frying pan for like two minutes. Added the oats, put oat milk on top of it, chicken stock cube, and then some chicken.

Like just shredded chicken from the fridge that was left over. Stirred it all together. Put it, you know, stuck it in the thermos and let it carry on. It's got like salt and pepper in the thermos and let it carry on it's got like salt and pepper in it as well and fresh thyme you're yeah i mean we've watched you for for years do this kind of thing you've inspired so many people um i mean i saw on your instagram the other day you've done one for vegetable peelings like a gratin and it just there's so much on my part like absent-minded thoughtlessness probably like i should think like that and so i i thank you for those those ideas you've both got children

yeah and you both have them quite young yeah same age i think i was 21 when i had my son yeah yeah it's fun you know because we're talking about about recipes. My son had all his friends over yesterday. Yeah. And I showed him my cookery book. So I made oxtail, rice and peas in a vegetable curry. Because we had to kind of mix it up. I actually brought my book with me, so I'll show you. When you're showing about your porridge, it's very similar to a lot of Asian places.

So they do like congee, which is basically you can do rice. You can do coriander, a bit of chicken, a bit can do coriander a bit of chicken a bit of garlic a bit of ginger you boil that with and then you probably may add a bit of fish stock no fish um fish um sauce and also sesame seed oil seven ingredients but you've got a nice chicken soup that's going to be good for your stomach you know so these type of things are good for when you have a cold and so forth and even to go back to what you're talking about with them what we're saying about mental health um in my modules on how to be a smart food shopper we have one module called habits so we go really deep into actually the brain chemistry what are the neurotransmitters we got dopamine serotonin

acyl chlorine gaba you know they got i told them like my inner workers and then i explain what they are but i also go say what do you what are you craving and the emotional attachments to food like positive and negative associations that's the thing when you're feeling blue or emotional you reach for certain foods yeah usually crap usually crap right yeah so like what okay so jack what were you usually reaching for before you made this book? Well, do you know what? It's quite funny, actually, because I do struggle with depression and anxiety. And sometimes it just absolutely floors me. About a month ago, I was in bed and I was just like duvet diving.

And I was just eating salt and vinegar crisps, bag after bag after bag. And boiled sweets. And I was just like, I don't. And then continuing to feel rubbish because I wasn't getting any nutrition and my other half went like downstairs and

I heard them rooting around and I was like what are you doing, what are you doing and they came back and they literally went you literally wrote the book on this like why, just open it at any page and you're like what are you doing, you literally wrote the book on this like just open it at any page and you're like what what are you doing you literally wrote the book on how to cook yourself out of a depressive slump and i was like hi and i've sat there and i started flicking through and i made myself chicken porridge

and it is it's really really comforting and it's like a cuddle in a bowl. Yeah, it is. And putting the oat milk, it gives it the creaminess without it kind of feeling clogged. It's absolutely gorgeous and I think my kids would probably eat it too and it's quicker than your two-hour chicken soup, the matzo balls, isn't it? Four hours, sorry. Bless you, Molly. Well, I mean, technically it was six minutes of prep and frying time

and two and a half hours slowly cooked in a thermos on a moving tray. Do you think there's well we all come from different kind of backgrounds in a way but i think for we're jewish and i think for us you've got lovely food yeah we we have food but i can promise you if you go to a wedding or a bar mitzvah they have the same food or not for the big meal but after the synagogue service we always have the same thing and no one gets tired of it it's always chopped fish balls and we have bits and bobs and if I I would I could make chicken soup twice a week and everyone would still love it they would never tire of it because it's comforting the familiarity and I think there's

familiarity gives you comfort and warmth as well don't you think it's like the positive focus positive associations with food so like example you make a lot of chicken soup i do most everywhere around the world make chicken soup like when i was young when i came to the uk my mom would always make me chicken soup because my favorite thing so when you get sick you start to associate actually what makes me feel good oh my mum's chicken soup or I make some supper soup could be vegetable soup as well we always have positive and negative associations to different foods when we are children we start to have a lot of influences about what how we eat for the future so that's why parents or grandparents whoever's

your caregiver is really important because they decide what is actually accessible but what is actually available as well this is why for me with feed me good i'm always trying to learn about my communities like you know what is your stories what what traditions do you have how can we include that how can we teach that to each other and what i do i find that it just breaks down those barriers yeah you know especially when it comes to community cohesion and actually bringing people together. Are you both doing stuff for the Jubilee? Yes, I am. I've had a few approaches from various people, but my work has been so insane over the last few months

that I haven't got to that bit yet. I'm like, I don't even know when it is. I think it's next week. Well, I've got loads of time then. That's basically how I approach it. So when is your big Jubilee lunch? Yeah, I'm having two giant Jubilee lunches. So I'm having it on Friday the 3rd,

which will be in Chalk Hill Estate, which is going to be in Wembley. So between 11 till 4. We're cooking a lot of things yeah and I've got another one in the Ellesbury estate in South London just behind which I'm very excited about because they literally just gave me some fun so I'm like thank you Jesus prison lads um but what is so cool is so my primary school Chalk Hill primary like Miss Maureen Anthony she's like an amazing like parent liaison officer she's gonna help me get more parents we're gonna have a mixture so we're gonna have the jamaican side which is the

traditional you know um rice and peas and chicken we're gonna have um curry goat macaroni piece jerk chicken and then burgers chips and like a mixture of stuff and then we'll have some asian food i'll probably be baking for the whole week because i've got different desserts to make as well no sweets i refuse because i'm not trying to get no children high of sugar so we're going to literally do everything lots of fruit and vegetables because i'm about that life and um also we are going to have a mixture so the thing is i understand the cost of living has gone up quite high so what we said is we're going to give everyone who wants to cook a voucher maybe 10 15 pounds and they can go buy

the ingredients and cook it and bring it along because i don't want anyone to be out of pocket i can only imagine what jack could make and junioring with 15 quid i mean it would be so what would you be your jubilee meal if you were making for 15 pounds for 15 pounds well do you know what i was quite tempted to do a budget version of that Jubilee trifle. Because I was, I know, but I feel like whenever anything like that comes up, my instant reaction is, oh, I bet I could do a budget version. I've got ADHD. And so when like my brain works in wild ways and it's just this automatic association, anything like I'm sitting looking at your scones going, I wonder if I could do those on a budget. I'm like looking around every single thing. They are on a budget.

They are. Yeah. Great. Yeah. But you know, it's so funny because you've got ADHD. I've got dyslexia. So I'm half blind and half deaf. So I've got, I tick off that lovely EDI box like triple wise.

But it probably adds into our creativity, right? Because I don't know. I don't know if you get that, Jack, but you know when you start to just get into the zone, like this morning I was like, you know what, I'm just going to pray and just see what I feel like,

you know, and then I just said, right, we're going to make scones. It's quintessentially British. And you know what, we want to add a bit of flavours and different things to it. And let's just try it and see what comes out.

I've got some mascarpone in the fridge. Oh, I also got you some jam, some pomegranate jam do you want me to give you something to put with that yes that'd be amazing mum whilst whilst you do that i wanted to ask um you know people that are listening to this you obviously are such crusaders with trying to help people be able to eat well um affordably so what are some of kind of the key pointers of how people can change the way that they cook to spend less i mean i think that one about using the thermos instead of using the hob is genius jack and i've never really thought about it and i'm feel embarrassed that i didn't but could you both give me a few pointers that you

would just to start set people off in the right direction so for the first one to save money this is literally how i started how to be a smart food shopper right this is my trick yeah it's in the book as well yeah so first one is you want to do family classics you want to get your family around the table and work out what do you lot love to have yeah yeah kids love certain dishes that their mom and dads cook or grandparents and so forth so that's the first thing you do so you basically write the dishes onto a list yeah yeah kids love certain dishes that their mom and dads cook or grandparents and so forth so that's the first thing you do so you basically write the dishes onto a list yeah yeah the second thing you want to do is we tend to go to buy restaurant food on a friday and a saturday so you want to get restaurant inspired meals so you kind of have a takeaway have a takeaway exactly you have that like two to three times in the week. Yeah. The third one's called wild card foods.

That means it's whatever you've got in your fridge or your cupboard and you're like, do you know what? I've got a bit of rice, got a bit of egg, got a bit of veg, egg fried rice. Yeah. You basically look around and you see what you can actually make out of it. But also wild card meals can be when you fancy something. So I literally go to restaurants just to kind of, you know, taste stuff and then come back and create something at home. That's how I do my cooking, really. Hit me. So basically, I do a stock take of everything I have in before I go shopping, before I make my shopping list.

So I get a piece of paper and I fold it into four. I call it the quarter hack. Proteins, carbs, fruit and veg and flavours. I go through fridge, freezer freezer cupboard and i make a note of every single thing i've got in and then i make my shopping list and your shopping list then is just a gap filler because you're like well actually i've got some frozen chicken breast and some sausages and some tinned fish and some beans and so i just need like a couple more protein items i've got and it's about using what you've already got in.

It reduces the food waste in the fridge as well because you're using what you've got in. And it keeps my cooking sort of creative as well because like with your wild card meals, if there is a tin at the back of my cupboard that has been sitting there for months on end, I will force myself to use it and then not buy it again because it's like or discover something

that is like that I love and that is new because I'm also a bit of a magpie and if I if I'm I travel around for work a lot recently I was in Croydon for a conference and so I was just wandering down Croydon High Street going into all the butchers and I picked up half a goat and some pigs trotters I had a massive backpack literally half a goat sticking and I picked up half a goat and some pig's trotters I had a massive backpack half a goat some pig's trotters um I got are they cheap it's go cheap so I wouldn't be able to say what it was but I just stocked up and I was picking like this franken creature in my bag all these different bits and pieces of but i also picked up loads of different cans of beans that i don't pick up in asda but i was like things like gungo peas and things like black chickpeas and stuff like that i was like oh that's cool oh i'll try that oh i'll try that so that means i get to use those things as well but it means that my food

shop stays under 20 pounds a week because I'm using the stuff that is already there. And I'm rotating that stuff. That's for, well, I worked it out because my partner eats with us quite a lot. But my son is at his dad's for part of the week. So it works out at exactly 42 meals a week. So it's like feeding two people. Because my son's 12 and he's quite active. Hungry.

So, yeah. Where does it he go do you live by the seaside yeah do you eat lots of seafood yes yeah we do so what what do you oh you get cockles down yeah where i used to live was right by the old um fishing village so it was all the big old cockle sheds and you see the trawlers going out in the morning to catch the fish it's quite funny because a lot of the fish that's caught in leon sea which i don't live there now um but then goes to billingsgate market oh right oh fab so you get it before isn't fish expensive now can be but um there was if you sort of get to know them you can go in and get the little scrappy off cuts and stuff like that also surely

if you see Jack Monroe coming in you're like better make this affordable come on let's impress surely I just got a lot of cockles I love cockles I remember as a kid no one else in my family liked them except me and my dad so we would go to Lee which which was a seven-mile walk from my house,

and we would walk to Lee and get a pint of Cockles and walk back home again. Dad used to be in the army, so he was very funny about, if you can see it in the distance, you can walk to it. Oh, that's a good one. No, it's not a good one. It's traumatising. It worked for me. So I think we should still give you, although this is an unusual

episode. This is a very special episode. But we still think that we need to have you, the table manners experience and we'd like to know what your last supper would be. Both of your last suppers. You get a starter, a main, pudding, drink of choice. You must have thought about it do you want to go first yeah do you know i'd have my mum's curry goat with rice

that is the main so i just i was just thinking about it right now just got me really hungry marlene you gotta get the uh get the curry go on later. So for a starter, I would probably say congee. I love congee. Congee is literally similar to the oat porridge, but it's made for rice and chicken and a little bit of vegetables. And because you're gluten intolerant, that helps. Exactly. And then the other one with, yeah, so the curry goat,

my mum has it. And I think for dessert dessert what would i do do you know i was going to make it this morning but i was thinking i've done so much of it pandan and coconut cake oh yeah and you know i should have probably done it this morning no you can make it again and send it in the post yes i can yeah so pandan and coconut because um i love traveling but i travel specifically for food so when i went to like Asia I went to Vietnam and Singapore to see one of my friends I bought home 35 kilos see your friends it was ready to eat the food oh yeah 100% she got me some stuff from Malaysia I was like thank you thank you girl you know thank you darling um and it was amazing I had the best food experience in

Singapore I couldn't I need to go back there again I literally will travel and learn how to make things and bring back so I love going will travel and learn how to make things and bring back so I love going to Spain I'm always going to my boyfriend's region which is Extremadura they've got like pig like black pig

and cheese they've got the best cheese in the world so you're going to have that on your desert island yes yes I call it this it's a sheep's cheese it's one of my favourites and I actually got the jam from the same shop

so it's the pomegranate jam because I love to get locally and i think for me that's really important so as a small business i always try to buy as much as i can like you know it's local but also try to promote whoever i'm working with so i always say okay i've got lovely butchers in east street market so i'm like okay tony can you give me'm like, okay, any of my students can go there and get, say, Feed Me Good and get a 10% discount. And for me, that's really bringing a local economy. And I think it's just nice to support businesses. That's a great scone.

Oh, thank you. For the big Jubilee lunch. Yes. Are these scones going to play a role? Yes, I've got different ones. So I'm doing the scones. I'm also doing my Sweet Love Pancakes, a sweet love pancakes yes i made that for the um and you know what i just want to say before i even forget a massive thank you to the national

lottery players and the and the national lottery because they literally kept our doors open during covid like we could have closed down but if it wasn't for them and a couple other organizations you know feed me good like we're so grateful we've been able to help more than 4,000 people in six years and I'm so grateful for all the support so thank you so much to National Lottery players because who would have thought when my dad used to go and get a little lottery ticket used to call on Saturday that that you know i will be doing stuff with the national lottery and having big lunches that are so dear to my heart as well so i'm literally going to be doing sweet love pancakes which is a jamaican sorrel so it's a hibiscus flower we have that traditionally at christmas um with an oat

pancake because it's gluten-free dairy-free and you can make it vegan rather than make it with a little fake egg and then i've also got like hibiscus kind of syrup that goes through it so you've got the recipe that you'll be able to get online as well you can have it on my website which is www.feedmegood.co.uk you know we are here to help everyone um right jack last supper you've had a bit of time to mull it over now. Well, I've got two answers to this and they're both wildly different. So firstly, I think that the answer I should give is when I was a kid, my mum used to do like,

she had a chalkboard in the kitchen and we would all pick a meal for a day of the week so that she didn't have to sit and think of seven dinners, but also so that we all felt included. And every single week without fail, my day was a Thursday. A Thursday was Girls' Brigade night. And it was a jacket potato, coleslaw, but the cheap coleslaw with all the mayo, the good coleslaw, none of this vinaigrette dressing nonsense. Jacket potato, coleslaw and a this vinaigrette dressing nonsense jacket potato coleslaw and a leg of roast chicken and my mum would roast the chicken and i remember very clearly when i graduated from

getting like scrappy bits of breast because my people say oh i can make chicken feed 10 people my mother who's from northern ireland can make a chicken feed 10 people for days um for getting through like from going from little scrappy bits of breast to getting a leg and my dad had the other leg and i was like this is us this is because my brother was a wimp about chicken skin and bones yeah we ended up joining the air force i was like i'm sorry what like he was that we would cry if he walked too close to a cushion as a kid my brother was the biggest wimp in the world ended up in the RAF I was like what are you target so so so that's your main yeah so that would be that's lovely I think that's delicious because

and you know what I've got more into chicken legs recently I've gone completely off chicken breast because the chicken leg's moist yeah and you it's the taste is better so that's your main what about your starter no i would just have not cockles with your father no i would just have a big portion of that and funnily enough i didn't even make the association but last night i got in quite late and i got in about one o'clock in the morning and i realized i had dinner. I hadn't slept. I slept for 15 minutes last night. It's glorious. I'm going to crash hard later. And I was like, I was really hungry.

And I had a roast chicken in the fridge. And I had one of those little microwave bags of potatoes that I found in the reduced chiller in Tesco. It's 33p. I was like, I'm all about this yellow stick of that. And some coleslaw and i was literally like microwave those potatoes microwave some chicken coleslaw on the side took it up to bed how indulgent i always eat at the table yeah 99.9 at the time i was like no i need to go to bed i'm gonna take my chicken with me um and it's only talking about that.

It's gone. That is my go-to cup. What about Pud? Are you a sweet person? I am a sweet person. I go through phases with desserts. I'll have them sort of incessantly. And then I just won't for ages.

I am more of a sav a savory person than a sweet person if i had to have just one pudding probably sticky toffee pudding but proper made with dates like big juicy dates in it and proper sticky toffee sauce like the dulce de leche type sauce and i don't think i do know it's going to be controversial but i think if a sticky toffee pudding is done right it doesn't need anything else with that i like ice cream or cream because i think it's so sweet but they're sweet so you just have cream i mean jesse would have cream on anything i have a friend

who has plain yogurt with all puddings why what's wrong with them and i'm like of all of the i like i like plain yogurt you know i'm a plain yogurt girl but it's got its place and its place is not on a chocolate fudge cake or with the stickiest coffee food pudding? No, I don't. I think if you have like coconut yogurt. Oh, I love that. That's really elevated, you know. Do you make your own? Yes, I do. With desiccated coconut?

Yes, and I will do the coconut milk. And then I also get one little capsule of a probiotic. And then I put it in the oven and leave it on zero, like literally less than 50 degrees overnight, just to light on and it ferments. So you're getting that lovely good bacteria. So it's a very cheap, easy way to do it. Just literally get plain yogurt.

We can even make your yogurt yourself at home as well. You can make your own milks as well. Like my whole thing is, when I think about sustainability, it's just being back to basics. So I learn these stuff and then I teach it. And then I might put it in a book or two well guys thank you so much for being part of this special table manners episode it's been such a

treat to speak to you and to eat your beautiful food have your mother here Marlene um and just best of luck with the jubilee weekend the big lunch best of luck with fighting the good fight, Jack. We're on your side, darling. And we thank you for being on Table Manners. Thank you so much for having us. Mum, what a special episode full of amazing tips inspiring women just absolutely loved it amazing food just delicious well maybe you should do one of these for your street party what some of the yeah absolutely um thank you so much to Noreen and Jack for being on Table Manners today. Noreen's charity is Feed Me Good.

Jack Monroe is, she has a blog called Cooking on a Bootstrap. And communities all over the UK are getting together to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee, just like Noreen, all with a bit of help from the National Lottery players. And we've seen and heard from Noreen how much of a difference it's made for her and her charity. It's really amazing what the National Lottery does for people. And we've just heard it firsthand from Noreen how much of a difference it's made for her and her charity. It's really amazing what the National Lottery does for people. And we've just heard it firsthand from Noreen. Thank you so much to the National Lottery for having these remarkable women on our podcast today. And I'm going to go and get some cherry blossom, I think. I think you should take these.

I'm going to take the rum cake and the scones to rehearsal right now. And it's going to fuel us through our dance rehearsals thank you for listening and we'll see you next week