about... |
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...the skint foodie
charmed life • cool job • platinum amex • business class • turbo-charged coupé •
prada/agnès b/nicole farhi • nobu/racine/club gasgon • life-changing shit-storm •
alcoholism • depression • breakdown • pills/vodka/stanley knife •
closed curtains/bailiffs • home repossession • bankruptcy • homeless hostel •
community mental health team • temporary council flat • housing association flat •
voluntary work • hope • relapse • try again
'Don't you know there ain't no Devil, there's just God when he's drunk' - Tom Waits
prada/agnès b/nicole farhi • nobu/racine/club gasgon • life-changing shit-storm •
alcoholism • depression • breakdown • pills/vodka/stanley knife •
closed curtains/bailiffs • home repossession • bankruptcy • homeless hostel •
community mental health team • temporary council flat • housing association flat •
voluntary work • hope • relapse • try again
'Don't you know there ain't no Devil, there's just God when he's drunk' - Tom Waits
...this site
If you have a passion for good food, but very little money, what do you eat? How do you organise your kitchen? Where do you shop? Well that's the situation I'm in, and that's what this site is about.
A few years ago I went from being an affluent and avid restaurant-goer and home cook who spent a fortune on food to living as a homeless, hostel-dwelling member of the underclass: alcoholic, on benefits and in the care of my local mental health service. It was a bit of a shock, actually.
Still, I found I could live without many of the trappings of my former life – career, friends, car, clothes and travel etc. - but not good food. And that, when you’re hovering around the poverty line, can be an issue.
As what might fancifully be called an urban peasant, it pisses me off that there isn’t a greater love of rustic cookery ingrained into the British cultural DNA. It's true that peasant food, particularly that of Spain and Italy, has never been more popular here than it is today, but its consumption seems, with bitter irony, to be very much the preserve of the middle class. And even there, 'consumption' seems to mean watching people cook it on TV rather than eating it at home on a daily basis. TV cookery is very like internet porn - the overwhelming majority of its audience will never ever get to act out what's happening on screen.
Also, most of the advice regarding cooking on a budget seems to fall into two camps. Firstly, there’s the patronising and slapdash, knocked out by celebrity chefs for the Sunday colour supplements whenever there’s a financial crisis. Secondly, there is the '100 Things To Do With Leftover Rice And A Tin Of Sweetcorn’ school of cookery writing.
I was looking for some other way - one that was more about economising in other areas of my life in order to keep on enjoying, as much as was feasible, delicious meals. I began to see that eating well on a budget wasn't so much about individual recipes but more to do with developing a new approach to how I planned and sourced my meals.
Being a skint foodie, therefore, is about following a few simple guidelines. It's about prioritising your budget - aside from utilities, I've cut out almost all other expenditure apart from food shopping. It's about how you plan your weekly menu. It's about investing time and effort into shopping. You can read more about this in the how, shopping and spending pages.
Above all, it's about eating as well as you can on the budget you can afford. This isn't at all, let's be clear, the same as feeding yourself on as little money as possible - which is sadly the only option available for many of the most poorly paid or unemployed. If you're on Job Seeker's Allowance then, to quote from a recently leaked government email, 'you're pretty much fucked, son'.
I'm in complete accord with the Minimum Income Standard research project which 'aims to set a benchmark for minimum living standards that we should be aiming for as a society, based on what members of the public think is acceptable'. Their weekly food allowance for a single person in their 2011 report is £46.31. I try and budget for around £40 per week for all food, drink and store cupboard items, out of a total household allowance of £60. But though I often spend less, I'll sometimes spend more, so the MIS figure strikes me as being just about spot on.
Some of you probably spunk that much on lunch. Yet others will think it an exorbitant amount - although I suspect many of who do may perhaps delude themselves as to what they actually spend. I most emphatically do not refer here to those under extreme hardship who quite simply have no more than £15-£20 to play with. What I mean is that the weekly cost of your food isn't just the supermarket bill. It has to include: the butcher/fishmonger/greengrocer (obviously); all non-alcoholic drinks; anything you eat or drink while at or travelling to/from work; any restaurant meals or takeaways; school lunches and pocket money that goes on snacks; anything.
I hope you might find time to look at the rest of the site - there's 200 plus recipes here that I think you might enjoy. I certainly do - after all, it's what I eat all the time. This is simple everyday fare, but no less scrumptious for that.
I would also hope that you might find some encouragement here if you are living on a tight budget like me, or are a first-time or hesitant cook or especially if you are living alone (again like me) and feel that it isn't worth cooking just for yourself. It is so worth cooking for yourself. I'm off my tits on Planet Loony Tunes half the time, and I can tell you that getting back into the kitchen, laden with fruit, vegetables, a slab of pork belly, a chunk of good cheese and a bag of espresso beans acts as a wonderfully restorative anti-depressant. Food is, quite simply, the bollocks.
A few years ago I went from being an affluent and avid restaurant-goer and home cook who spent a fortune on food to living as a homeless, hostel-dwelling member of the underclass: alcoholic, on benefits and in the care of my local mental health service. It was a bit of a shock, actually.
Still, I found I could live without many of the trappings of my former life – career, friends, car, clothes and travel etc. - but not good food. And that, when you’re hovering around the poverty line, can be an issue.
As what might fancifully be called an urban peasant, it pisses me off that there isn’t a greater love of rustic cookery ingrained into the British cultural DNA. It's true that peasant food, particularly that of Spain and Italy, has never been more popular here than it is today, but its consumption seems, with bitter irony, to be very much the preserve of the middle class. And even there, 'consumption' seems to mean watching people cook it on TV rather than eating it at home on a daily basis. TV cookery is very like internet porn - the overwhelming majority of its audience will never ever get to act out what's happening on screen.
Also, most of the advice regarding cooking on a budget seems to fall into two camps. Firstly, there’s the patronising and slapdash, knocked out by celebrity chefs for the Sunday colour supplements whenever there’s a financial crisis. Secondly, there is the '100 Things To Do With Leftover Rice And A Tin Of Sweetcorn’ school of cookery writing.
I was looking for some other way - one that was more about economising in other areas of my life in order to keep on enjoying, as much as was feasible, delicious meals. I began to see that eating well on a budget wasn't so much about individual recipes but more to do with developing a new approach to how I planned and sourced my meals.
Being a skint foodie, therefore, is about following a few simple guidelines. It's about prioritising your budget - aside from utilities, I've cut out almost all other expenditure apart from food shopping. It's about how you plan your weekly menu. It's about investing time and effort into shopping. You can read more about this in the how, shopping and spending pages.
Above all, it's about eating as well as you can on the budget you can afford. This isn't at all, let's be clear, the same as feeding yourself on as little money as possible - which is sadly the only option available for many of the most poorly paid or unemployed. If you're on Job Seeker's Allowance then, to quote from a recently leaked government email, 'you're pretty much fucked, son'.
I'm in complete accord with the Minimum Income Standard research project which 'aims to set a benchmark for minimum living standards that we should be aiming for as a society, based on what members of the public think is acceptable'. Their weekly food allowance for a single person in their 2011 report is £46.31. I try and budget for around £40 per week for all food, drink and store cupboard items, out of a total household allowance of £60. But though I often spend less, I'll sometimes spend more, so the MIS figure strikes me as being just about spot on.
Some of you probably spunk that much on lunch. Yet others will think it an exorbitant amount - although I suspect many of who do may perhaps delude themselves as to what they actually spend. I most emphatically do not refer here to those under extreme hardship who quite simply have no more than £15-£20 to play with. What I mean is that the weekly cost of your food isn't just the supermarket bill. It has to include: the butcher/fishmonger/greengrocer (obviously); all non-alcoholic drinks; anything you eat or drink while at or travelling to/from work; any restaurant meals or takeaways; school lunches and pocket money that goes on snacks; anything.
I hope you might find time to look at the rest of the site - there's 200 plus recipes here that I think you might enjoy. I certainly do - after all, it's what I eat all the time. This is simple everyday fare, but no less scrumptious for that.
I would also hope that you might find some encouragement here if you are living on a tight budget like me, or are a first-time or hesitant cook or especially if you are living alone (again like me) and feel that it isn't worth cooking just for yourself. It is so worth cooking for yourself. I'm off my tits on Planet Loony Tunes half the time, and I can tell you that getting back into the kitchen, laden with fruit, vegetables, a slab of pork belly, a chunk of good cheese and a bag of espresso beans acts as a wonderfully restorative anti-depressant. Food is, quite simply, the bollocks.
A video that Mark Green made about me for the Observer Food Monthly Awards:
