Last week, four of our volunteers received tickets to attend Jack Monroe’s Tin Can Pop Up Supper Club as a Thank You from the foodbank for their time and dedication as volunteers – what a great way to start UK Volunteers Week 2019!
The evening was hosted by the Real Junk Food Project in Brighton and the menu comprised recipes from Jack’s latest book, Tin Can Cook, based on tinned ingredients and designed to be accessible for foodbank users or anyone wanting to cook tasty food on a budget. It encourages you to “grab a tin opener and an open mind”.
Jack herself was a foodbank user and has written and campaigned on poverty and particularly food poverty issues for years. She is a huge supporter of foodbanks and hundreds of copies of Tin Can Cook has been supplied to foodbanks across the country thanks to a crowd funder she ran alongside the book’s publication.
It was great to meet Jack and hear a little of her own story, how at one very low point she had seriously considered eating a Big Mac from a bin and became withdrawn and depressed. She used writing as a way of expressing herself and wrote her low cost cookery blog which began to gain momentum online. This led to a book deal…she is now planning book number seven.
There was a brief Q&A session before Jack had to grab her train home to Southend.
I asked, on behalf of the foodbank, what tip she might have for us to improve or to help people further, given her own experience of using foodbanks:
“I would say just keep on doing what you’re doing.
Taking the time to sit and listen to what people have to say; that is so important to people and means so much.
Also trying to determine the underlying reason for them being at the foodbank, working that through, helping people to get help.
But mostly, I would say thank you.”
