When I arrived at FPC Morgantown two years ago, the almost home-cooked meals impressed me. Food quality, taste, and portions defied my prison expectations. Alas, budgetary restrictions relinquished the exceptional standards for meals. Now, the mess hall lives up to its reputation. Over the past year, the quality of food products has trickled below any standard that could be held. The “taste of Italy” spaghetti sauce could be deemed the “waste of Italy” tomato paste. Literally, cans of tomato paste are dumped over spaghetti noodles. Have you ever tried straight up tomato paste? Yum, it’s super delicious. At risk of seeming like a spoiled foodie with exceptional taste, I am not (typically). I enjoy simple foods: Tyson’s chicken tenders, ramen noodles, frozen pizzas, Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes, kind of junkier foods.
In the last two years, I experienced two best foods ever: potato salad (perfect consistency and cooked potatoes, no weird after taste, a refreshing tarty-sweetness) and salsa (fresh tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, cilantro, lime, etc.). These two dishes were worth obtaining the recipes and replicating for family/friend events. Now, the potatoes are typically spoiled, brown, poorly cooked, and undesirably seasoned. In fact, potatoes are served with nearly every dinner, mostly cubed with half charred black and the other half nearly raw. Since we have tacos three times per week, the salsa is now the watered-down tomato paste (the same used with spaghetti) with some onions and canned jalapenos added to it. Ahh, finally the prison food beckons a repudiation of any prior references to it as delicious and almost like home-cooked meals. Okay, so you may be thinking that tacos three times a week sounds great…keep in mind that salsa is now junk and we don’t have sour cream, guacamole, or quality cheese. In fact, the shredded cheddar cheese usually turns into an elaborate experiment of trying to figure out if its plastic consistency is able to melt at all. BUT, the most disturbing part of these tacos is the meat.
Typically beef tacos use an 80% ground beef for the proper flavor and fattening consistency. Here, the beef is somewhere around 60%-70% (as reported by the prison butchers). The meat is soft and unflavored…taco seasoning is not even used in the meat. If we are lucky, the “taco” meat is cut with some diced onion and/or green pepper. Oh wait, had I mentioned the meat is the most disturbing part since the packages boldly labeled with “not for human consumption”? What the heck does that even mean – for animal feed, I probably don’t want to know.
Last week, a guy jokingly encouraged me to eat more boiled corn, which is just the type of corn that is frozen or found in cans. Why was he pushing me to eat mine? Well, another guy just found a 1-inch-thick grub cooked in his: a grub that nasty thick wormy bug that they eat on Naked & Afraid or Fear Factor. Apparently, I am opening a can of worms (literally) when I say that a lot of the food is infested with bugs, midges, or meal worms. Yuck, but one must eat! What’s a little extra protein! From testimonies of other inmates who have been to other prisons, they share that the food remains on par with other mess halls. I just wanted to share these last few experiences of prison food so that I am not fully over inflating the quality that I once wrote about a few years back. Thank you for taking the time to read this latest blog entry. I hope you have a wonderful week and continue to be mindful of any little miracle in your life this week 🙂