Jack Monroe - Good Food for Bad Days

Food is emotional.

What we eat can impact our state of mind in all kinds of ways, and can conjure up pretty much every feeling known to human beings. We talk of food in emotional terms comfort food being the most obvious. Food doesnt just sustain our bodies, it is essential for our minds too. It can influence our health. When I had a full-blown breakdown, food became massively important, but also a massive challenge. I was well aware that if I wasnt eating properly, or enough, then I would feel even more rubbish, and yet cooking itself often seemed like a mountain to climb. When you are in a bad mental state, almost anything can seem a challenge. I can remember sitting on the end of my bed and taking about half an hour trying to decide which pair of socks to put on that day. Even when ninety per cent of the socks in the sock drawer were the same colour, it still seemed to take a Herculean effort.

The trouble is that when we most need to be eating well, we are often the least motivated to do so. When you are depressed you often have no energy and motivation. You even can feel you dont deserve to be looked after, even by yourself. When you are anxious you might have energy but it is not necessarily the energy that you need in the kitchen. It can often be the kind of energy that makes you pace around in circles and forget that you put the kettle on over an hour ago.

The thing is, good food doesnt have to be complicated food. Or inaccessible food. Good food is often the simplest food. When I was ill there was no simpler comfort than some toast with a thin spread of Marmite, followed by a more generous spread of peanut butter.

But the idea of cooking actual meals can seem like running a marathon. Anything that demands more than a toaster or a peel-off lid can seem like it is made for other people. And so, inadvertently, even the concept of fancy-pants recipes full of fancy-pants food can be another thing in the long list of Things That Make Us Feel Even More Useless.

Which is why having something like this book right here is such a blessing. No-nonsense, affordable, healthy and do-able recipes are precisely what you need when you are at your lowest. To stare at a long, overly fussy recipe can feel like trying to read a Russian novel at the best of times, so having a ready supply of simple, satisfying meals that are nourishing for the mind as well as the body with easy-to-access foods can be a real life raft through the choppier waters of life we sometimes find ourselves in.

This book will be a friend to you when life is hard. It offers no magic wand, but it will take some of the pain and stress out of feeding yourself. This book is a way to be kind to yourself, when it is not always easy to be kind to yourself. It is, in short, a blessing.

Thank goodness for Jack Monroe!

Matt Haig

September, 2019. Im having a severe panic attack. Yes, another one. Im partway through writing this book and suddenly I fear that none of it is good enough. The gremlin of perpetual negativity hisses that in fact none of it ever has been. Youre an impossssssster, it snarls, sounding not unlike Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Im curled up on my enormous and seductively comfortable, if impractically pale blue, sofa, knees hunched into my chest, arms clenched around them, rocking gently, realizing with a soft bitterness that some of the tired old tropes about madness may have some truth in them after all.

Its 9.42 a.m. Im still watching Cooper, my large ginger and white cat, glower through the voile curtains at my friend Ross who is tidying the front garden. I watch through glazed eyes, I despise myself, and I tear apart my half-written book in my head as I succumb to a maelstrom of self-destruction, self-loathing, sleepless nights and forgotten medication. Despite being sober for months, I desperately want a drink. My partner is at the hairdressers. Its a Friday. Id have five and a half hours to sober up before having to face the school gates in the afternoon. I close my eyes and try to ride it out, rocking, rocking, as long as I dont move from this spot, I cant come to any harm.

Its 10:49 a.m. I open my eyes and gently, as though from outside of myself, unravel my limbs and unfurl myself until my feet are standing on the floor, noting with annoyance that I still have my shoes on in the house, and then realizing it doesnt matter. It doesnt matter. None of these arbitrary rules I set myself really mean anything at all. Shoes help me feel grounded. They add a gravitas, a certainty, a barrier between my tender soles and the Lego I will invariably encounter skittered across the floor by a child whose concept of tidiness is worlds away from my own.

I realize that doesnt matter either. Sorry about the mess, we were making memories instead flits behind my eyes. A picture on someone elses wall. I note that I am sober and that I am calm. I dont know where I went for that hour; somewhere inside of myself, not awake and not asleep, not in chaos nor in peace, but elsewhere. And I am ready, I think to myself.

I pull my computer from my work bag and set it on my desk. I open it, take a deep breath, and know that it is time. I am four weeks and two days from the delivery of my first draft of this book. I make myself two double espressos from the fancy coffee machine I bought with the advance and set them beside my laptop. I line up my notebooks, three very specific pens and a bowl of boiled sweets beside me, and I breathe deeply, listening to the clock ticking in the silence until I can bear the suspense no longer. I have to do what I have to do, now, before I lose my nerve.

With just a moments trepidation, I delete the entire manuscript and I start the whole damn thing again.

Im Jack Monroe. You possibly know that, because my name is on the front of this book and if youre reading this, you probably clocked it. But I feel I should properly introduce myself, without all the fluff and PR that comes with a book cover of me smiling nicely in a clean shirt with my please buy me eyes in.

Im a cookbook author, writer, mother, inventor, creator, recovering alcoholic and I have chronic pain in my joints, especially in cold and damp weather. Its limiting, but its also a fantastic excuse to carry an umbrella with a parrots head for a handle and pretend to be Mary Poppins. Except my carpet bag is filled with three kinds of restricted drugs, as well as an EpiPen and a medical ID that instructs strangers on what to do and who to call if they find me. I also have depression, anxiety, severe adult ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder and that old friend to women who achieve anything at all: imposter syndrome. I talk about some of this some of the time, but Ive long learned that its important to direct my own narrative and tell my own story, rather than have to worry about being outed by the tabloid press. So here we are. Im officially absolutely batshit bonkers, and what started off as a slight chemical imbalance in childhood was watered by the poisoned can of poverty and has since grown into quite the gnarly jungle.

I have survived violence, poverty, traumas I wont describe in great detail for fear of triggering anyone who has experienced similar. I have moved house twenty-four times, mostly in terrible circumstances but more recently in happier ones, and long may that be the case. Im also a public speaker, giving talks on alleviating poverty and resolving individual difficulties with dignity, and the impact that one person can have on another persons life. I cook on television sometimes, have half a million followers across varying social media platforms, and have recently ventured into YouTube mostly reading recipes aloud as bedtime stories, but occasionally daring myself to sing. Im a loyal if disorganized friend, generous to the point of troublesome, and despite a decade of difficult experiences, I still gasp in wonder at the crash of a wave on a rock, an unexpected butterfly, or a supermarket markdown on the fancy cheeses.