🍽️ Two Inspiring Food Blogs!
Improve Your Reading & Listening Skills
Objective: To improve your reading and listening skills by learning about real people who overcame hardship through cooking. This activity will help prepare you for English exams such as PET and TOEFL.
💭 Think About It
• How often do you cook?
• What are your favourite dishes to prepare? How?
• What’s the most expensive meal you’ve ever had?
• If you had just €10 to prepare a dish, what would you make?
• How would you make it?
🛒 Common Ingredients
📖 Reading I
Read or listen to the article once. In what ways are Tony and Jack similar? In what ways are they different?
📖 Reading II
Read the article again. Then, write Tony or Jack next to each statement.
- …once had a job that paid £130,000 a year.
- …once had just £6 to buy food.
- …has a young child.
- …has a recipe on his/her blog that consists of risotto with sausage.
- …once had a job that paid £27,000 a year.
- …had an alcohol addiction.
🔥 Two Inspiring Food Bloggers
Food bloggers Tony and Jack both experienced drastic changes. They went from living fairly comfortable lives to having practically nothing. Now they’re trying to help other people by showing them how they can eat well with very little money. (See our Recipe section for Jack’s vegetarian burgers recipe.)
Tony – The Skint Foodie
“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,” explains Tony, otherwise known as The Skint Foodie.
Tony’s website and blog (www.theskintfoodie.com) is full of recipes and ideas on how to create delicious, nutritional food with very little money. Some of his recipes include spaghetti with broccoli, courgette and parmesan soup, and risotto with sausage.
So, how does he do it? “Being a skint foodie is about how you plan your weekly menu. It’s about investing time and effort into shopping. Above all, it’s eating as well as you can on the budget you can afford,” he adds.
So, what happened to Tony? He once had a family, a nice home, and a well-paid job that paid £130,000 a year — but lost it all because of an alcohol addiction. Now that he’s back on his feet, he wants to help others.
Jack – A Girl Called Jack
Jack is another food blogger. Like Tony, Jack (a girl) also lost her job and found herself with practically no money and a young child to feed.
After the initial shock, she became determined to cook as well as she could on the money she had. “I started to cook for myself and my three-year-old son on an extremely low budget because the £6 in change I scraped from corners of drawers, coat pockets, and my son’s money box was all I had to work with,” she explains.
Later, she started writing about her experiences and including recipes on her blog: www.agirlcalledjack.com. Since then, the blog has become extremely popular, and her life has turned around.
But has it changed her? “People ask if I will still live on such a tight budget now that I have a cookbook deal and a job. Yes, I will. Because two years ago, I had a £27,000-a-year job and a beautiful home, and I could never have imagined life falling apart as much as it did — and I’ll be damned if I ever go through that again.”
What an inspiration!
🎥 Watch Jack Talk About Budget Cooking
See how Jack Monroe uses cheap ingredients to make delicious meals.
🔍 Search YouTube: “Jack Monroe’s cheap substitutes for fancy pants ingredients”
Note: This is a sample embed. Search the exact phrase above for real videos.
📖 Glossary
- a blogger
- someone who writes regularly on a blog — a website with articles or opinions on special topics
- skint (adj)
- if you’re “skint”, you have no money
- nutritional (adj)
- food that has nutrients to keep you healthy and strong
- a menu
- a weekly “menu” is a list of meals you plan to eat
- a budget
- the amount of money you have to spend
- to afford
- if you can “afford” something, you have enough money for it
- an addiction
- if you have an “addiction” to alcohol, you can’t stop drinking
- back on your feet
- if you’re “back on your feet”, you’ve recovered from hardship
- to feed
- to give someone food
- to scrape
- to find money with difficulty
- a drawer
- a small box in a table for storing things
- a money box
- a container with a hole for saving money (especially for children)
- to turn around
- if your life has “turned around”, it has improved
- a tight budget
- very little money to spend
- a cookbook deal
- an agreement to write a cooking book
- to fall apart
- if life “falls apart”, it becomes very bad (lose job, home, etc.)
- I’ll be damned if I (do that again)
- informal: “I will never do that again!”
✅ Answer Key (Reading II)
- Tony – once had a job that paid £130,000 a year.
- Jack – once had just £6 to buy food.
- Jack – has a young child.
- Tony – has a recipe: risotto with sausage.
- Jack – once had a £27,000-a-year job.
- Tony – had an alcohol addiction.
What an inspiration! Both Tony and Jack show that with determination, anyone can cook well — no matter their budget.
