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Tteok: A chewy, versatile delight

Aaron Hutcherson

THE WASHINGTON POST – Korean rice cakes, frequently romanised as tteok (though you might find variations in spelling), are a staple ingredient in the country’s cuisine.

Typically made by steaming and then pounding a simple dough of rice flour, salt and water before rolling into cylinders, rice cakes have a delightfully bouncy, chewy texture. Here’s what you need to know about tteok and how to use them.

Growing up in Korea, cookbook author Emily Kim, better known as Maangchi, would take rice soaked at home to her local mill to be turned into rice cakes.

Now based in New York City, “sometimes you can find it in a Korean grocery store freshly made”, Maangchi said, but you’re more likely to find prepared rice cakes that have been refrigerated or frozen. (Or if you’re looking for a project, you can even make them at home).

“Flavour-wise, it is very much like rice,” chef and cookbook author Hooni Kim said, calling it a blank canvas. However, “the good ones have a touch of nutty, popcorn-y, very, very savoury flavour”, which might be a result of other ingredients used in addition to the base recipe, such as toasted sesame oil used to keep the tteok from sticking while they’re being rolled or a coating of toasted soybean powder.

But instead of rice cakes’ flavour, texture is their prized feature. “When cooked correctly, it’s soft, pillowy, chewy, starchy,” Kim said. “Very fun to chew.”

ABOVE & BELOW: One of the most common shapes for Korean rice cakes is called tteokguk-tteok, which is made by thinly slicing garaetteok to get oval-shaped coins; and tteok with spicy sausage and kimchi. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST

This recipe is a quick, comforting meal that tantalises the taste buds

Tteok come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be composed of different ingredients.

The first thing to note is that while most rice cakes that I’ve encountered are just made from rice flour, they can contain other grains, including wheat flour, so it’s important to check for gluten-free labelling if you have a dietary restriction.

“The way you make these rice cakes are pretty much the same formula, except the size and the shape is going to be different based on what you want to use it for,” Kim said.

Kim said he believes the original form was garaetteok, which are about an inch in diameter and can be up to 12 inches long. This shape seems to be less commonly available, perhaps sold only at Korean grocery stores. If you are able to find them, Maangchi suggests placing them under the broiler until slightly scorched, then dipping them in rice syrup or honey.

One of the most common shapes is called tteokguk-tteok, which roughly translates to “rice cake soup rice cake” according to Kim. This shape is made by thinly slicing garaetteok, usually on the bias, to get oval-shaped coins. These sliced rice cakes, as you can probably infer from the name, are typically used for soup – tteokguk is “the traditional Korean dish for Lunar New Year”, Kim said – but you can also use them in sautes and stir-fries.

The other common shape are thinner cylinders roughly two inches long and about a half-inch thick. These rice cakes are most popularly used in tteokbokki – the Korean street food of rice cakes cooked in a spicy gochujang-based sauce – and sometimes called tteokbokki-tteok.

Rice cakes can be found fresh, refrigerated or frozen from Korean, international and other specialty grocery stores – and even online. (Rice cakes will last for three to four months in the freezer). When shopping for rice cakes, Maangchi suggests avoiding packages with powder on the surface of the cakes. “Don’t buy those because it means they are a little old and dried out, and will crack when you cook them,” she wrote on her website.

When it comes time to cook tteok, the biggest point of consideration is whether they need to be soaked and for how long.

Maangchi and Kim agree that fresh rice cakes do not need to be soaked before using in recipes. For refrigerated or frozen rice cakes, Maangchi suggests a “very short” soaking time because “I don’t know how long the rice cakes were in the freezer or refrigerator”. For her, a quick soak as short as 10 minutes helps speed up the cook time. “Otherwise the rice cakes are dried very hard and you have to cook them a long time to make them smooth,” she said. In addition, soaking removes any excess starch on the surface of the rice cakes, which Maangchi likes to do so that it doesn’t thicken her dish too much.

Kim, on the other hand, soaks vacuum-packed rice cakes overnight and does the same with ones he gets from a rice cake shop if they’ve been sitting around for a while. “When they get really old, it takes a lot longer to hydrate to make soft,” he said. “The drier, not-so-fresh rice cakes, you’re going to have to boil it for a good maybe five, 10 minutes before they soften up.”

However, some of the recipes I found online and in cookbooks made no mention of soaking rice cakes before using them. In my (admittedly very limited) experience, I didn’t find any noticeable difference when I did a quick soak versus using them straight from the package.

But this may come down to specifics with different manufacturers and producers.

“We have two different places where we get it. We definitely know one place is better than the other, and the rice cakes hold in the soup better and become softer faster,” Kim said.

“When they’re out, we have to use somebody else’s rice cakes. And those we don’t even imagine cooking without soaking overnight in water.”

Kim noted how there can be a huge difference in the texture, flavour and ease of cooking of tteok from brand to brand or store to store.

“The not-so-well-made rice cakes, they disintegrate really fast after they soften. The really good ones keep their shape and stay soft.” So once you find rice cakes that you like, it’s a good idea to stick with them if you can. (I found that the ones by Ourhome, with the large red stripe down the middle of the package, disintegrated once softened).

When it comes to cooking with rice cakes, they’re “very versatile’, Kim said. His favourite way to enjoy them is tteokguk – “It’s good any time of the year,” he said – but he also eats them with any sort of leftover stew or chili. “It could replace rice in most dishes, whether it be Asian or not. Noodle dishes, as well.” As such, Maangchi likes to use tteok as the starch to round out her meals. One point of caution is that “you don’t want to put it in anything very mild in flavour, because that would just dilute that flavour even more”, Kim said.

As an easy introduction, you could just boil them until they float and toss with your favourite pasta sauce. Another simple idea is to add them to your favourite soup or instant ramen. If using them in a saute or stir fry, “even without any kind of liquid, if you cook it in really (hot) oil, it will get soft and crispy”, Kim said. If you’ve never tried rice cakes, this is your sign to add them to your pantry inventory to discover the wonder that they are. And soon, you won’t be able to live without them. For Kim, “I feel safe always having some in my freezer”.

KOREAN RICE CAKES (TTEOK) WITH SPICY SAUSAGE AND KIMCHI

I was introduced to Korean rice cakes, aka tteok, at Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York around 2013. I worked in the restaurant group’s corporate office at the time, and the best perk of the job was getting to eat a lot of great food. Of all the dishes I enjoyed during my tenure there, the one that I think about most often was Ssam Bar’s spicy sausage and rice cakes. I fell in love with the bouncy chew of tteok, a texture I hadn’t really encountered before, and loved the layers of spice in the dish and how it was packed with flavour. This recipe is an homage to that.

The restaurant’s recipe is included in the Momofuku cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan. “Ma po tofu was their point of departure,” Chang and Meehan wrote of the restaurant’s employees who created the dish, Tien Ho and Tim Maslow. “They melded it with a dish from the first late-night menu – rice cakes with a kinda-sorta-but-not-really Asian Bolognese sauce. The result isn’t Sichuan or Korean or Bolognese or anything, but it is very Momofuku. And banging.”

If you know anything about restaurant cooking, you know that the dishes can be pretty involved. (Letting restaurants prepare complex dishes that I don’t want to make at home is one of the main reasons I love dining out). In keeping with my cooking ethos of simplicity being paramount, I stripped the original recipe down to its essence and added my own interpretation to create the one that I’m sharing with you here.

My version starts with cooking hot Italian sausage until it has surrendered its flavourful fat. Onion and garlic are then sauteed in the rendered fat.

Next, kimchi, gochujang, toasted sesame oil and a little granulated sugar are added to form a quick, deeply flavourful sauce. Lastly, rice cakes are simmered directly in the sauce until tender and chewy, for a one-pot meal.

Serve with packaged fried shallots – which aren’t exactly easy to find but worth hunting down – and sliced scallions to sprinkle on top for an extra jolt of flavour. The result is a quick, comforting meal that tantalises the taste buds.

INGREDIENTS

– Generous one pound refrigerated cylindrical Korean rice cakes (tteok)
– One pound fresh hot Italian sausage, loose or casings removed if necessary
– One medium yellow onion (seven ounces), diced
– Quarter teaspoon fine salt
– Two cloves garlic, minced
– One cup (seven ounces) Napa cabbage kimchi
– One cup water
– Two tablespoons gochujang
– Two tablespoons toasted sesame oil
– Two teaspoons granulated sugar
– Packaged fried shallots, for serving (optional)
– Sliced scallions, for serving (optional)

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl, add the rice cakes and enough water to cover by one inch and soak for 10 to 15 minutes, then drain (This step is optional).

In a large non-stick saute pan or skillet over medium-high heat, add the sausage and cook, breaking the meat apart with a wooden spoon, until no longer pink, five to seven minutes.

Transfer to a bowl or plate, leaving the fat in the skillet.

Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring regularly, until the onions start to soften and brown, five to seven minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring regularly, until fragrant, 30 to 60 seconds.

Add the kimchi, water, gochujang, sesame oil and sugar, stir to combine, and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, for five minutes. Add the rice cakes, stir to combine and cook until the sauce thickens and the rice cakes are tender and heated through but still chewy, three to six minutes. Remove from the heat, spoon into bowls, sprinkle with fried shallots and/or scallions, if using, and serve hot.

Unity and harmony

NEW YORK (XINHUA) – The annual celebrations of the Lunar New Year in Chinatown of Lower Manhattan, New York City, attracted a big crowd from the Chinese community and other ethnic groups recently.

As the 25th annual festival in celebration of the Lunar New Year, the two-hour-long event was staged in Sara D Roosevelt Park at Grand Street and hosted by Better Chinatown USA, a volunteer-based organisation dedicated to the improvement of New York City’s Chinatown.

Basketball courts and playgrounds in the park, as well as sidewalks around it, were packed with people.

Loudspeakers and two giant lanterns at the entrance of the park made the celebrations heard and visible from afar.

Attractions of the free festival included dragon dances, lion dances, Chinese calligraphy and paintings, firecrackers, rabbit toys, party poppers and traditional Chinese costumes.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, other officials and leaders of Chinatown attended the celebrations.

ABOVE & BELOW: A woman selects kumquats for Lunar New Year in Chinatown, San Francisco, in the United States; and a woman selects ornaments for Lunar New Year at a store. PHOTOS: XINHUA

Adams, who was in traditional Chinese costumes at the event, also delivered a video message on his social media account to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit.

Emily, an African American who wears traditional Chinese costumes for the occasion, said she travelled for one-and-a-half hours from New Jersey to participate in the festival for the first time.

In her last year of high school, Emily said, she is learning Chinese by herself and trying to write Chinese characters every day. She extended wishes for the Lunar New Year in Chinese.

Assistant Dean of Graduate and International programmes at Temple University John Smagula, co-hosted the festival in Chinese.

Smagula, who has been studying Chinese since 1988 and had lived in China for about 10 years, said the festival demonstrated a spirit of unity and harmony, allowing people from various ethnic groups to celebrate the Lunar New Year together.

“It’s a good sign that many people linger on after the scheduled celebrations concluded. I hope today will be a turning point enabling more sharing among people,” said Smagula.

He also expressed hope that his role as a co-host in the celebrations could encourage the youth to learn Chinese and take a dip into Chinese culture.

Some young people from other ethnic groups joined the dragon dance performers in a spirit of integration and solidarity.

Chinatown in Lower Manhattan has a history dating back to the 19th Century and is home to around 100,000 residents. It’s seen as an attraction among tourists.

A number of stores in Chinatown remained open on Sunday, which marks the start of the Year of the Rabbit, and many visitors purchased decorations or gifts for the Lunar New Year there.

Meanwhile, scores of artists and volunteers in New York City handed out thousands of calligraphy works of the Chinese character ‘Fu’, meaning fortune and luck in English.

Moreover, a number of celebration activities are scheduled in the coming days at museums, music halls, parks and other venues in New York City.

Sons of Panama ex-president released from US jail

NEW YORK (AFP) -Two of former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli’s sons were released from United States (US) prison on Wednesday after serving sentences for corruption and flew back to their country, with Washington banning the family from re-entering the United US, authorities said.

Luis Enrique and Ricardo Martinelli were released slightly ahead of completing their three-year terms because of good behaviour, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons told AFP.

The brothers admitted receiving USD28 million in bribes linked to disgraced Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, of which USD19 million had passed through US accounts.

They pleaded guilty in December 2021 after being extradited from Guatemala to the US.

In May last year, they were sentenced to three years behind bars. They served two and a half years in total, including time already spent in detention in Guatemala and US before their conviction.

Following their release, the brothers flew to Panama City on a commercial flight, their lawyer Carlos Carrillo told AFP.

Luis Enrique Martinelli and Ricardo Martinelli Jr, sons of former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli. PHOTO: AFP

Escorted by US agents, they arrived at the Tocumen airport in the Panamanian capital, where they were notified by justice officials of the charges they face and then released. The brothers have been charged with money laundering and graft, but they had paid USD14 million in bond to the Panamanian judiciary to remain free while their cases work their way through the courts. In Washington US, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that ex-president Martinelli and his immediate family members were being barred from entry into the US.

“Accepting bribes for government contracts undermines the integrity of Panama’s democratic institutions and fuels perceptions of corruption and impunity,” Blinken said in a statement late on Wednesday.

“These designations reaffirm the commitment of the US to combat corruption, which harms the public interest, hampers countries’ economic prosperity, and curtails the ability of governments to respond effectively to the needs of their people,” he added.

Odebrecht admitted in 2016 that it and affiliated entities had paid USD788 million in bribes in efforts between 2001 and 2016 to win contracts for some 100 projects in Panama and 11 other countries. It agreed to pay US authorities USD3.5 billion in penalties.

Martinelli, 70, who governed Panama from 2009 to 2014, seeks to run for his nation’s presidency again in 2024 even though he has been summoned to stand trial on money laundering charges.

Flood-hit Johor sees over 5,500 evacuees; almost 6,500 in Sabah

CNA – More than 5,500 and close to 6,500 flood evacuees have had to flee their homes in Johor and Sabah respectively amid the northeast monsoon which has brought continuous heavy rain to several Malaysian states.

As of noon yesterday, Malaysia’s National Disaster Management Agency (NADMA) recorded 5,528 flood victims in Johor and 6,331 flood victims in Sabah.

This is an increase from the 3,937 flood victims in Johor recorded by the agency 24 hours prior.

Bernama reported that 55 relief centres have been opened in Johor as of 8am yesterday to house the flood evacuees. Segamat was the most affected district in Johor, followed by Kluang and Mersing, according to the state disaster management committee on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Sabah has seen more than 6,000 new flood evacuees in just a day.

Fire and rescue personnel helps an elderly woman evacuate flooded Kampung Rancangan Cocos in Sabah, Malaysia. PHOTO: BERNAMA

According to Bernama, 26 flood relief centres were opened as of 8am yesterday. The districts which recorded a sudden increase of evacuees on Wednesday include Kota Marudu, Kudat and Paitan.

The Malaysian Meteorological Department (MetMalaysia) warned on Wednesday that rainfall is expected to last in several parts of the country, including the Borneo states, until next Monday.

Last month, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is the Central Disaster Management Committee chairman, called for immediate long-term measures to resolve the country’s flood problem, including holistic flood mitigation projects.

Ahmad Zahid said that such flood management efforts, when completed, could ensure good long-term flood management until 2100.

Floods are an annual phenomenon in Malaysia due to the northeast monsoon that brings heavy rain from November to March.

 

Asian shares mixed on hopes for avoiding recession

BEIJING (AP) – Asian stock markets were mixed yesterday amid hopes Western economies can avoid a recession despite higher interest rates to cool inflation.

Hong Kong and Seoul advanced. Tokyo declined. Markets in China, India and Australia were closed for holidays.

Wall Street ended on Wednesday little changed after recovering from a slump early in the day.

Investors are optimistic the United States (US) and European economies can avoid a recession despite warnings by Federal Reserve (Fed) and other central bank officials that rate hikes to cool economic growth and inflation will stay in place for an extended period.

“There’s increasing confidence the economy may not require a recession to tame the inflation beast,” said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management in a report.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 1.9 per cent to 22,464.77 while the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo shed 0.1 per cent to 27,362.75.

The Kospi in Seoul gained 1.5 per cent to 2,465.64.

New Zealand, Singapore and Jakarta advanced while Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur declined.

Pedestrians at a securities firm in Tokyo. PHOTO: AP

On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 index lost less than 0.1 per cent to 4,016.22 after rebounding from a morning loss of 1.7 per cent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered from a similar drop to end up less than 0.1 per cent, to 33,743.48. The Nasdaq composite fell 20.91 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 11,313.36.

Analysts are forecasting S&P 500 companies over the next couple weeks will report their first drop in quarterly earnings per share since 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Microsoft helped to lead the way lower after forecasting lower earnings than expected. It fell 4.6 per cent early in the day but recovered to end down 0.6 per cent.

Texas Instruments lost 1.1 per cent after the company said it expects weaker demand across all its market outside of automotive. It was down as much as 3.1 per cent at one point. Traders expect the Fed to raise its benchmark lending rate by another 0.25 percentage points at its next update on February 1.

That would be another reduction in the margin of increase from 0.5 percentage points last month and four hikes of 0.75 points earlier.

Many investors expect the Fed to ease off rate hike plans as economic activity cools and start to cut rates before the end of this year. The Fed has said it expects to keep rates high at least through the end of the year to extinguish inflation.

In energy markets, benchmark US crude rose 25 cents to USD80.40 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained two cents on Wednesday to USD80.15. Brent crude, the price basis for international oil trading, added nine cents to USD86.28 per barrel in London. It retreated one cent the previous session to USD86.12.

The dollar fell to JPY129.34 from Wednesday’s JPY129.55. The euro rose to USD1.0921 from USD1.0913.

Helping students with the next step

Adib Noor

Jerudong International School (JIS) hosted its annual Year 12 Higher Education Evening at the JIS Arts Centre on Wednesday night.

The event began with an address by JIS Principal Nicholas Sheehan and an overview of the school system by Dean of Higher Education Dan Roberts to guide the students in their university applications.

Students and parents attended the seminar sessions on a range of popular tertiary destinations, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as visiting information booths set up by foreign missions and Bruneian tertiary institutions represented by Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Universiti Teknologi Brunei, Laksamana College of Business and Kolej International Graduate Studies.

The annual event is a key part in every student’s journey to researching and selecting the appropriate university for their future careers, and attaining places at a university with the right fit for them, said JIS.

Attendees at the Higher Education Evening. PHOTO: ADIB NOOR

Reyna again rescues Dortmund with late winner

BERLIN (AP) – Gio Reyna again came off the bench to score a late winner for Borussia Dortmund, securing a 2-1 victory at Mainz in the Bundesliga on Wednesday.

Reyna also scored Dortmund’s late winner in a 4-3 win against Augsburg on Sunday, and repeated the feat in Mainz after coming on with just under half an hour remaining.

Fellow substitute Sébastien Haller headed on a free kick for Reyna to sweep home in the third minute of injury time. The American ran toward the corner flag pointing to the sky with his right index finger.

After celebrating with teammates, he faced fans with his fists to his ears, as if showing he’s blocking out the fallout from his family’s dispute with former United States (US) coach Gregg Berhalter that has led to turmoil at the US Football Federation.

Reyna’s goal, his fourth of the season, keeps Dortmund’s winning start to 2023 intact and moves the team five points behind league leader Bayern Munich, which has two draws since returning from the winter break.

Dortmund’s Julian Ryerson with teammates during the Bundesliga match. PHOTO: AP

“We’re happy to come out of the starting blocks like that into the new year,” Dortmund coach Edin Terzić said. “We know we have a lot of work in front of us.”

It wasn’t pretty or convincing, and Dortmund had to rely on luck at times.

“We have to believe we can win a game in the 90th minute,” said Julian Brandt, who delivered the free kick before the goal. “It’s something to build on, that at some point we’ll play the beautiful football that’s dormant within us.”

Emre Can started in place of the suspended Jude Bellingham, while Niklas Süle came in for Mats Hummels, who dropped to the bench.

Julian Ryerson started at right back again for the second game since his transfer from Union Berlin.

Lee Jae-sung got Mainz off to a great start in the second minute with a header to a corner.

Ryerson had allowed the South Korea midfielder too much space, but he atoned two minutes later with the equaliser after seeing his shot from distance take a deflection.

Dortmund had a couple of good chances early on but that was it as each team cancelled out the other in midfield.

Terzić reacted in the 62nd by bringing on three forwards – Haller, Reyna and Jamie Bynoe-Gittens – at once. Haller was making his second appearance after treatment for testicular cancer. “People always talk about his tumour and not the fact he makes us better,” Brandt said of the Ivory Coast striker’s first assist for Dortmund.

32-year-old mother to face homicide, assault charges

DUXBURY, MASSACHUSETTS (AP) – A 32-year-old mother in Massachusetts, United States is expected to be charged in the killing of her two children and the injuring of her infant son, Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz said on Wednesday.

Authorities arrived at a house in Duxbury on Tuesday night after receiving reports that a woman jumped out of a window. They found her and the children unconscious with obvious signs of trauma. The mother, Lindsay Clancy, remains hospitalised and will be arraigned on homicide charges after she is released, Cruz said. It appears the children were strangled, he added.

Late Wednesday, Cruz said on Twitter that an arrest warrant had been issued for Clancy for two counts of homicide and three each for strangulation and assault and battery with a deadly weapon for the deaths of her two children. Clancy is under policy custody.

“This is an unimaginable, senseless tragedy, and it is an ongoing investigation,” Cruz said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Duxbury Police work at the scene where two children were found dead and an infant injured. PHOTO: AP

Growing pain

LONDON/COVENTRY (AFP) – At an east London church on a bitterly cold winter’s day, Beautine Wester-Okiya picks her way through boxes of donated baby clothes, toys and other assorted items destined for local people battered by the United Kingdom’s (UK) cost-of-living crisis.

It’s the frontline of something the special needs nurse could never have imagined before – dire poverty in a developed Western nation.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life here in the UK,” Wester-Okiya, who came to Britain 40 years ago from Malaysia, told AFP.

It’s a similar story of economic hardship 140 kilometres north in the central English city of Coventry.

In a huge warehouse, employees of the charity Feed the Hungry pack emergency food supplies not just for children in Nicaragua, Ukraine and Africa but also families just a few miles down the road. Britain is in the midst of the biggest surge in prices in decades, from fuel and heating to food and housing costs.

The crisis has put food banks that have already become a feature of modern British life under even greater pressure, prompting a drive to branch out into offering other services from baby clothes to help applying for welfare payments.

ABOVE & BELOW: A worker at the Coventry Foodbank centre in Queens Road Baptist Church passes a foodbank customer a bag containing donated clothing items, in Coventry, central England; and a worker at The Halo Centre collates food items into parcels that will be provided to people with a foodbank voucher. PHOTOS: AFP

A customer of the Coventry Foodbank centre is registered as he arrives with his foodbank voucher
ABOVE & BELOW: A customer of the Coventry Foodbank centre sits with her son before collecting her food parcel; and a volunteer works at the Hackney Children & Baby Bank storage centre

“We have suicidal mums… we have kids who just managed to come through the pandemic only to find this terrible cost-of-living crisis,” said Wester-Okiya. “Broken mums, broken homes, broken families. The mums are depressed, the kids are crying all the time.”

For the past two-and-a-half years the Hackney Children & Baby Bank has been flat out coordinating help for the needy.

Set up during the pandemic, it has repeatedly swung into action to deal with crisis after crisis, from migrants who have arrived in small boats with nothing to homeless Afghans and Ukrainians.

But many of those in need of help now are people from the UK who’ve never before faced such economic pain.

“We’re no longer talking of just migrants, we are talking of middle-class people having to sell their house, people like teachers,” said Wester-Okiya.

Faced with a constantly growing crisis – the UK now has more than 2,500 food banks – the baby bank has expanded its operations to include older children too.

Toiletries are in particularly high demand. “One teen, 14 years old, wrote a terrible poem about how she’s bullied because she’s not able to wash,” said Wester-Okiya, adding how the girl described her mother cutting a bar of soap into four and giving each family member a small piece.

In Coventry, a city once home to a thriving car manufacturing industry, the “crazy” cost of everything has led single mother-of-four Hannah Simpson to visit a food bank for the first time.

Simpson, 29, whose youngest is just 12 months old, has been skipping meals to make sure her children can eat.

But that has inevitably taken its toll, leaving her feeling “tired and drained”.

“I try and hide my struggles from them… but my daughter did say to school the other day, ‘I’m worried because mummy hasn’t been eating dinner with us and there’s not enough food to go round’,” she said.

“It’s a lot of stress. I’ve got four children, I’ve got to manage, keep on top of and I’ve got to worry where I’m going to get our next meal from.”

A 50-year-old woman who gave her name as Tracy said the food bank has been a “lifesaver” since she began coming in November. “My cupboards were completely bare, I’ve been having one meal a day, just waiting until my tea every day,” she said.

Faced with a crisis that is only getting worse, Feed the Hungry, which runs Coventry’s 14 food banks as well as its international operation, has launched a range of projects aimed at helping people to cope long term.

A project to teach people to cook and make the best of what they have available is under development.

A “Pathfinder” project offers people the chance to buy food worth GBP25 (USD30) for a small fee, giving them back some choice and “dignity” while at the same time offering them help to access grants and unclaimed welfare payments.

“It’s working, the only issue that we have is that demand far outstrips what we can actually deliver,” said project manager Hugh McNeill.

People who come through the charity’s doors have “no financial resilience whatsoever, they’ve borrowed and they’ve sold everything they’ve got”, he added.

“You can go right round the country and it’s exactly the same in every city and every town.”

For Wester-Okiya, hopes of building resilience are a long way off.

“My phone never stops,” she said, waving a smartphone buzzing constantly with messages and pleas for help.

“I’ve lived here for 40 years and as a nurse I interact a lot with families but last year was terrible and I fear for the next three months.”

Truck-maker Volvo’s profits fall despite higher sales

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Swedish truck-maker Volvo Group reported yesterday a slightly lower profit for 2022 despite rising sales and warned of more supply chain woes and energy costs this year.

The auto industry has been plagued by a shortage of key parts, including semiconductors, since the global economy emerged from COVID lockdowns in 2020.

“The situation in the global supply chain for components is still unstable, characterised by disruptions and unpredictability,” Chief Executive Martin Lundstedt said in the company’s annual report.

“We will therefore continue to have disturbances, stoppages and extra costs,” he added.

For the full year, Volvo reported net sales of SEK473.5 billion, a 27-per-cent jump from 2021 and higher than forecast by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Net profit fell from SEK32.8 billion in 2021 to SEK32.7 billion in 2022, below a Bloomberg forecast.

The company also reported a significant drop in net orders, falling to SEK217.8 billion in 2022 from SEK262.9 billion in 2021.

“In order to manage order book quality and the cost inflation, we have continued to be restrictive in slotting orders for production too far into the future,” Lundstedt said.

People look at a Volvo electric truck during a Truck World show in Mississauga, Canada. PHOTO: XINHUA
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