Dreaming Of That First Meal After Prison
Inside/Out
In my memoir class, men have written often about food. They describe their moms’ cooking, and their own favorite meals. A few have reputations as “jailhouse cooks,” concocting specialities from food they can buy in the commissary and/or items they can barter for with guys who work in the kitchens.
But what they can make in a cell doesn’t begin to compare with the foods they crave.
Here’s a first-person piece that ran in The Prison Journalism Project’s publication, “Inside Story” about what people dream of eating as soon as they get out.
By Justin Slavinski
I miss my mom’s meatloaf.
You can’t get it here inside my prison in Miami, so it’s the first thing I’m eating once I get out. After years of patty hell, including a slab of meatloaf that doesn’t deserve the name, I’m ready for the real thing, the one that comes with a liberal squirt of Heinz ketchup.
For me and the guys who’ve put too much thought into it, the first meal is sacred. Just like some of the best things in life, it only happens once.
After 12 years of incarceration, Mark Jantz told me he wants “a really good salad, preferably with grilled salmon.
“I don’t really care where it’s from,” said Jantz, who’s originally from Maryland. “If I had my choice, just to make sure I could get a really good salad, I’d go to Sweet Tomatoes,” a buffet-style chain. “Barring that, I’d go to Panera.” But even a salad from the grocery store sounds good to him, he added.
Nickley Shuler, who’s Muslim, is planning on a halal cheeseburger and chicken, plus fries on the side.
Mike, who requested I withhold his last name, told me he’d settle for the first place he comes across, even if it’s “the worst Taco Bell imaginable.” That’s because fast food is better than prison food “by a mile.” But Mike has a more patient side that “wants to get home and eat the kinds of things I couldn’t normally eat in prison.” That includes kiwifruits, strawberries, grapes, seafood, and “anything deep-fried.”
“And bacon,” he said.
For those of us whose families are north of here, the drive from Miami to Tampa passes through Naples. The trip to Orlando passes through Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, where my friend John wants to eat in a café.
When I was inside Hamilton Correctional Institution in Florida’s panhandle, many of the people I talked to were looking forward to chain restaurants, especially Cracker Barrel. A few residents were planning on the fast food joints by the interstate, not willing to wait for the drive to Newberry’s Backyard BBQ outside Gainesville — which my editors tell me, to my disappointment, has closed. Some were set on Shoney’s, the mass-appeal buffet, even though I still remember the unappealing consistency of its whipped cream.
I can’t blame them. Almost anything is exciting when you compare it to the terrible food we’ve been served for years — or decades.
For me, the Buffalo chicken patty at a prison lunch in May was neither buffalo nor chicken. It came with two flour tortillas, rice, and mixed vegetables so overboiled and waterlogged they sank to the bottom of their tray slot.
The meal came with a drink that was described on the menu as “fortified.” Fortified with what? I don’t know.
The beverage was on offer again later that day, when dinner included a fish patty, grits, coleslaw and pinto beans. Cake with icing was light in the darkness.
In my life before this one, I relished choosing a restaurant for brunch, a date night or an anniversary. I remember a flower on a white tablecloth, pan-fried Brussels sprouts with bacon drizzled in maple syrup, and even a sketch of my friends on a restaurant check. The images bring me a sense of hope, and regret.
But picking anything isn’t easy after so much time without the freedom to make any choices. The whole world is out there. When I bite into my mom’s meatloaf, I’ll be choosing joy.
Justin Slavinski is a writer for Endeavor, a publication at Everglades Correctional Institution in Florida.