Prison Cooking
By Jesse Friedman
Inmate cooking in prison is a fascinating subject. People seem to be continually interested to learn about how inmates cook in prison – seeing as how they don't have food, or supermarkets, or stoves, or kitchens, or anything else that people associate with cooking like knives.
The first thing I ever cooked in a prison cell was a Lipton Cup-o-Soup.
I was in Elmira, waiting in reception, and mom brought me some food stuff when she visited - M&M's, potato chips, cookies, cheese, and Cup-o-Soup. Mom did not fully understand how I could make the soup, or refrigerate the cheese, but she brought what I asked.
The reception cell block (A-Block) is one of the oldest in the state. The tiers are open facing each other four stories high. The cells are very dark, cold, stone cells with radiator heating pipes exposed in each cell and a window on the back wall. It was the window in the cell which allowed me to keep my cheese from spoiling.
Mom had no idea how I was going to make the soup, but I had learned how from other inmates. I learned a lot of tricks about how to prison-cook. All prison cooking secrets are passed down from generation to generation.
When an inmate received food-stuff either in the mail or dropped off by a visitor, the package room would open everything to inspect for possible contraband. They would dump all the cookies or potato chips into plastic bags and withhold the original packaging from the inmates. What you have to do is save those plastic bags.
Put water in a plastic bag, twisting a tie, then wrap the bag around again, twisting another tie, and then wrap around again. Now you have a little water inside a bad with three layers of plastic. Gently place the bag on the scalding hot radiator in the cell, and wait.
I assure you in the deep of winter, when the heat is pumping, the water in that plastic bag will boil in only a few short minutes.
Commissary
Once every two weeks inmates are permitted to buy groceries, and many other things, from the prison commissary. Many of the items for sale are the same everywhere, but each prison sells different items in their commissary.
The procedure is the same mostly everywhere. Each inmate receives a printed "commissary sheet" listing all the items for sale, along with price. On the sheet is a printed label with your name, and how much you can spend – namely, how much money you have in your account. The prison does not let you spend more than you have in your "Inmate Funds Account" obviously. Most inmates don't have very much money in their account. Some people have a great deal.
Everyone gets their sheets at night, and you have to write on the sheet, mark next to each item that you want how many of that item you want, and then turn in the sheets the next morning.
Then, at your assigned time, depending on your job or school program, at some point you will go to the commissary location, and wait. Previously your items would have been collected from the storage shelves by inmate workers. You will be called to a "window" where your purchases will be run up, and you get to pack them into bags, and then carry them back to your cell.
Once every two weeks, and it is the highlight of everyone's life getting a commissary buy.
What do the commissaries sell? Generally:
Very few places sell much of any fresh food. Every place sells onions and garlic, but only a few places sell anything like fresh vegetables or fresh fruit. Some places sell vitamins, but not all.
The maximum amount of money an inmate can spend each buy is $55.00. The price of everything sold in prison commissaries is supposed to be "at cost" to the inmates. There is no sales tax (except on cigarettes) and the commissary is not supposed to make any profit on the transactions. I think they do tack on something like a 5% increase over their cost to cover spoilage and such, but I know that the commissaries do not make a profit on the business.
The items sold are mostly generic products, the cheapest on the market. Most inmates are very, very poor, and so this is to everyone's benefit. Most commissaries do carry some "premium" products mixed in with the cheaper varieties. For instance all commissaries sell Little Debbie snack cakes, but most also carry an Entenmanns's pastry at a much higher cost. With ice cream, commissaries always sell like a 10¢ sandwich and a 60¢ generic brand half-pint of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry.
Years down the road, when I found myself working in the prison commissary at Southport, I got them to carry Ben and Jerry's pints. I noticed one day when the delivery truck was dropping off the ice cream that the distributor they were buying from also carried Ben and Jerry's. So I asked my boss there about whether or not she would order some of them one time. She had reservations because of their cost (close to $3.00, which is a lot for a prison commissary item.) I assured her that I would buy them all if she had any trouble selling them. Well, she ordered some. I was in heaven, and now most prisons also carry Ben and Jerry's now.
The Mess Hall
I have always been leery of the prison mess hall food's quality (and sanitariness) avoiding eating it whenever I could arrange an alternative. In general, some of the meals were okay.
At most prisons breakfast and lunch during the week are mandatory meals. Dinner and meals on weekends were optional. I rarely ever went to an optional meal. I often chose not to eat any mess hall food if I didn't have to. Mostly this was a product of how much I disliked the routine of going to the mess hall, not the quality of the food itself.
First we would be marched off the gallery and out of the cell block into the hallway where we would be marched, "No talking!" to the mess hall. Once in the mess hall we were allowed to talk, and the mess hall was a constant cacophony ruckus of people yelling back and forth to each other. For a lot of guys the only chance you had to see you "man" was in the mess hall. There was also a whole vocabulary of sign language to communicate across a large, noisy hall – kind of like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Then we would have to file through the line single file, picking up a try and our ration of meal, standard cafeteria style. Then everyone was seated, in the order in which we were in line, at rows of tables. No getting to choose where you want to sit. Sheet steal tables, with steal stools.
The most important thing about the mess hall is that you must pick up the spoon as you come through the line – one spoon per person – even if you are not eating. On the way out of the mess hall everyone is counted as they drop off their spoon as they are leaving. Even on days when we were given plastic sporks (which was sometimes frequently) instead of metal spoons, everyone must pick on up going through the line, and drop one off on the way out the door.
We were supposed to be given ten minutes to eat, but there was never and meaningful measurement of this time. As the last tables in the mess hall are getting filled up the cops begin clearing the tables at the front which have been sitting down the longest. As you are eating a constant stream of inmates keep pouring into the mess hall. When the cop tells your table to get up, that is it. No more time to eat. You get up with your tray, file out single file, dumping your trash and sorting your dirty dishes on the way out the door.
There were a few things which were to be avoided at all costs: the kool-ade, hot cereal, and soup (especially the soup) were always completely avoided. The reason for this is because there is no way to know what might have been put in the soup, or the kool-ade which was in the line.
* * *
My buddy Charles and I came to cook all the time. It was a ritual, and rituals fill the time, especially on Sunday afternoons when we were pretty much stuck in our cells most of the evening. Sunday night was shower night. There was no yard or other rec.
Most people took this as an opportunity to cook. The big trick was to have the meal ready to be passed to your buddies with the "shower run", but we never know exactly when they are going to run showers.
Two galleries at a time were taken out of the block (if you put down on the list, requesting a shower), and marched through the hall way with the shower gear in a knit mesh bag, to the bath house. Most people call it "the car wash" because it is a giant tiled room, fifty feet by one-hundred feet, with nothing but shower heads, drains in the floor, and benches around the outside. The room can hold about fifty people showering at once.
Everyone rushed in, claimed a shower head by smacking down a soap dish or shampoo bottle at a spot. Most people wanted to shower near their buddies, and away from other people who they don't want to be near. Then you stripped quickly because the cops are going to turn the water on. The cops controlled the water pressure and temperature through a central valve. All the water came on at once and the place quickly steamed up.
Soap and rinse quickly, because we only got like six minutes to shower before the cops announced, "One minute! Wash off!" And then they turned the water off.
Drying off was impossible in the steamed up room. The best you could do was towel off enough to put on pants and shirt, and become presentable enough for "proper attire" through the hallway.
Returning back to the block the guy who cooked had to rush down the gallery first and get to his cell in time to grab the bowls of food which he hopefully had ready to go when everyone left for showers, and passes them off to the proper friends as they passed his cell to lock in. Of course, if the chef lived near the back of the gallery, then the eaters needed to run, and I mean run down the gallery to grab their bowl, and then run, and I mean run back to their cell to lock in before any cops noticed that they ran past their cell before locking in for the night.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Jesse Friedman
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