Working behind the cocktail bar was a different kind of escapism, a creative outlet with a newfound respect for alcohol. I didn't drink as I was also working day shifts in a coffee shop and, later, the fire service, and needed my wits about me to pull off my 60-hour working weeks.

My pregnancy changed my relationship with my body because I went from despising it to marvelling at what it can do.

I was working with the fire service in a job that should have been a job for life, with career progression, with a pension and promotion, and within a year I was sleeping on a sofa under a section 21 notice being evicted from my home and not eating or four days.

It's definitely not the case that every child living in poverty is eligible for free school lunches.

Working 90 hours a week is easily racked up when you're self-employed and rely on portable tech to do your work; your train journeys, toilet breaks, leisurely walks, bedtime, can all become 'working hours'. Reclaim them.

There's all kinds of research that shows children operate best if they start the day with some proper food inside them - it's a no-brainer.

But it's a disgrace that food banks are needed in the first place, patching up the holes left by an inefficient and downright barbaric attack on the meagre safety net of what remains of a notion of 'social security'.

In my experience, yelling at people that they are wrong and disgusting rarely wins the argument, nor changes point of view.

People nag me about my weight, my cooking, my tattoos, my hair, my sexuality, everything. I can deal with all that because I'm still doing my job and I kind of like myself.

I'm not the spring chicken everyone wants. I've got a debilitating illness. The brave face is 'I'm busy with work' but I've sort of chucked myself on the scrapheap. That's why I'm single. I've resigned myself to being a difficult woman.

It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.

The thing with my recipes is, I don't have hours to faff about in the kitchen. My recipes are all 15, 20 minute, chop it up and stick it in the oven.

Until people realise benefits doesn't mean scrounger, and austerity isn't a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there's still a lot of work to do.

A startling confession for a food writer: all through high school, I struggled with a severe eating disorder.

Those of us referred to food banks are the lucky ones with a good doctor or health visitor who knows us well enough to recognise that something has gone seriously wrong.

I spent 18 months with the furniture parked in front of the radiators, cooking as quickly as I possibly could to use the least amount of gas and electricity. I unscrewed the lightbulbs in the hallway, unplugged everything at the wall so not even the LCD display was blinking away on the oven.

We need to aim to get rid of food banks altogether, and replace charitable intervention with a fairer, more equal society.

Poverty took me from being the girl who was always the lead in the school play, to a woman who can't open her own front door.

I'm not organised, and I don't cope well with deadlines, structure and routine. I'm chaotic. Always have been.

Cheese is one of the world's great foodstuffs and I speak as someone who would once happily snarf a packet of American-style cheese singles in front of the telly on my own.

But I know that trying to black out my past with oblivion will just damage my future. I made the decision to stop running from my fears, and to walk slowly and deliberately towards self-nurture, self-respect, and better mental and physical health.

Even in my genre, cookery, just look who gets on the television. Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigel Slater. All very nice men. All white middleflclass men.

I was a young mother with a dependent. I went from nice flat and fire service job to cold and hungry with a child. I lived rough for two years, with six months relying on the food bank.

I wear Doc Martens leather boots, so I'm not a vegan. I am a vague-one.