Cooking in Prison

Before I went to a super shitty prison with no kitchen, I never realized that you could cook a whole meal like you might with a stove, but using the microwave. It sounds cheap and gross, but after dining out of the micro for two years, I can’t complain too much. When cooked properly (by me), the meals were borderline bangin’.

The main problem for the prison gourmand is that since my joint technically wasn’t a “cooking facility,” there was no cooking oil in the commissary and it wasn’t allowed in the care packages we got from the outside. The only butter we had was from margarine packets stolen from the mess hall and mildly poisonous margarine from the commissary that most people couldn’t afford anyway. The only oil to be found was in canned octopus, which I ended up using a lot—more on that later.

I usually cooked solo. In prison, concepts like sharing become complicated. And even if I get along with someone, that doesn’t mean I wanna eat the same shit as him. Most dudes eat summer sausage or pepperoni with every meal, while other guys go the canned seafood route. But my recipes are bugged the fuck out. For example, I used to get a monster ginger root in my monthly 35-pound packages from home. I would try to put it in every meal. It scared a lotta heads away because of its pungency, and that stroked my boat just fine.

In the warmer months I stayed tight with dudes who worked with horticulture and had access to herbs and vegetables. It wasn’t a bad setup. July through September I would often eat a raw zucchini, cook spaghetti squash, and munch on monster 15-pound cabbages. Heads thought I was nuts, but most prisoners don’t even know what healthy is. I took my health serious while I was in there. But it was damn difficult to get any fresh food in the clink-clink. I still get my knickers in a knot over the fact that nearly everything I ate was packaged, processed, or quick-chilled. That can’t be good for an inmate.

Kara Crabb’s YouTube Corral

If you’re a regular reader of this website, you might know Kara Crabb as that lady who fried up her own vaginal discharge for breakfast that one time. Or maybe you remember her as the girl who gargled her pee for a week. Perhaps the name rings a bell because you saw her dress as a giant vegetable in an attempt to create a feral raccoon suit? Whatever the case, her stuff never fails to trigger our gag reflexes while also making us poop our pants via laughter. So when we noticed she’s been churning out consistently hilarious and psychotic videos on YouTube, we asked her to write a little something about them for a blog post. Here’s what she said.

“One day I woke up and realized that I didn’t know how to do anything aside from trimming my own asshole hair, which is, by the way, surprisingly exhausting and requires great dexterity. Cleaning, gardening, plumbing, paying taxes, walking down the street… all of these adult activities are things that I suck at. (Maybe because I was born in the 90s and that means I’m basically retarded.) To make matters worse, I enjoy publicly broadcasting this dilemma with my good ol’ friend Dana Lavoie.”

Babies are lazy bastards. When they’re not pretending they can’t walk so they can spend all day being pushed around asleep in a stroller, they’re listlessly having their asses wiped because they can’t be bothered to go to the toilet. They’re so lazy, in fact, that they can’t even be bothered to chew, let alone lift their own cutlery. But I’m on to you frauds and your tiny jars of all-in-one meal slush, and I’m coming to take your food away.

I’m an impoverished student of the 99 percent, so I know from experience that baby food is not just for babies. When the shit really hits the fan, we’ll all be forced to stuff this mush into our emaciated maws, as the fatcats lord it over us with their superior banquets of mystery meat gruel and rainwater-that’s-been-allowed-to-collect-in-the-outdoor-ashtray daiquiris.

Babied Ribs

The idea of ribs is exceptionally gross, because, when you stop and think about it, you’re basically gnawing on the remains of a pig’s back fat. So why not just not think about it at all? Why not just throw a load of baby food on top and pretend you’re six months old again?

Ingredients

1 x cup of mango baby food (I used a mango and banana melba dessert)
1 x can of fizzy mango drink
½ x cup of brown sugar
½ x cup of ketchup
4 x tbspns white wine vinegar
1 x clove of crushed garlic
¼ x tsp cayenne pepper
1 x pack spare ribs

Bert Burykill, our anonymous prison correspondent who was recently set free, found this old thing he wrote while locked up. The above photo is from 2007. Bert says he used to send it out to “bitches looking for ass ‘n’ cash.”

Read: “I frequently eat my sperm, because it seems like the healthy thing to do.”

 
CHOCOLATE WAX WORMS WITH CHAMPAGNE STRAWBERRIES

20 thawed wax worms
½ bar of dark cooking chocolate
1 cup of strawberries, chopped
½ glass of champagne
1 teaspoon of mint, chopped

Roast wax worms in a preheated 350° oven for about 10 minutes. Melt chocolate in a bowl wetted with boiling water. Dip the wax worms in melted chocolate and refrigerate for at least half an hour. Soak strawberries and mint in champagne and serve together.

ORTHOPTERAN ORZO

1 cup of orzo
3 cups of vegetable broth
½ cup of grated carrot
½ cup of finely diced red and yellow pepper
1 tablespoon of butter
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup of chopped onion
1 cup of frozen two- or three-week-old cricket nymphs, thawed
2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

Bring broth to a boil, then stir in the orzo and cook for 10 minutes. Drain any extra liquid and mix in carrots and peppers. In a separate skillet, melt butter and add garlic, onions, and crickets. Sauté until the onions are clear. Mix it all together, including any liquid, top with parsley, and serve.

BUG APPETITE