JM: How many meals did you get per day? Stan: 3 Rich: Each inmate receives exactly three separate meals
(in the form of trays) per day. Claudia: you get 3 meals per day. Unless you were pregnant
which i was you could get an extra tray with
breakfast and dinner and then at night when the
nurse came around with medication they would give
you a small snack bag with your prenatal viatmins
again only if your pregnant otherwise you only get
the normal 3 meals perday. in the special
pregnancy snack bag there was normally a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich a piece of fruit and a
milk box.
JM: How would you rate the food? Please give details of why. Stan: Not good but not as bad as people think, what do
you expext, you are in jail! Rich: The food is usually absolutely horrible, even by
what a layperson might imagine prison or jail food
to be like. It is rarely cooked to proper
temperature, and relies heavily upon pork and
turkey products with filler (mystery meats), white
bread, and canned sides of vegetables or cheaply
prepaid JELLO or puddings. The drinks provided
are a 0% fruit juice based 'fruit drink cocktail'
called 'Cool Shots'; sometimes these are served
well past their date of expiration. For
breakfast, if cold cereal is being served, you
might receive a 2% milk. The trays, even special
dietary trays for those with medical issues or
diabetes or heart issues, are absolutely loaded
with low-quality refined carbohydrates. Sometimes
the trays are sloppily put together by the food
kitchen 'trustees', with things like cracked
hardboiled eggs (or hardboiled eggs with signs of
entry from someone's fingertip!), bread slices
soggy and doused in the part of the tray that
contains canned syrup/fruit juice-covered fruit,
occur, and sometimes the meat is almost
refrigerator cold. It is better not to think
about it, for sake of not starving yourself. Some
inmates eat almost exclusively the items available
for purchase from the commissary sheet. For the
most part, the jail-provided meals range from very
poor to awful, but perhaps with time and because
you may have few or no other options you can learn
to 'desensitize' yourself to just how bad they
really are. Claudia: Ugh on a scale of 1-10 i'd give the food maybe a
4. actually thought they recently switched to a
new food provider and i have to admit the new food
is actually much better then the old food. but all
in all the food is pretty nasty its all starch and
carbs so that you get full while your eating but
about an hour after your finished because of all
the starch and carbs your body burns it all off so
fast even though your totaly lazy your body still
burns it up so quick that your starving again in
an hour. You loiterally wake up every night in the
middle of the night with the most intense hunger
pains and end up staying awake until breakfast
because you cant sleep with the pains in your stomach.
JM: Did you have any favorite/least favorite meals? Stan: Everything was okay;however, ther was a slaw
made out of red cabbage I could not eat. Rich: Lunches or dinners with chicken patties,
breakfasts with cold cereal are the better things
offered on the trays. The worst are the 'cat
food' like tuna, or mystery meat casseroles, or
the slimy hamburger meat that smells like a wet dog. Claudia: Umm my favorite meal was breakfast because it was
normaly corn flakes a piece of some kind of coffee
cake such as chocolate chip coffee cake, also came
with scrambled eggs made from powdered egg mix.
and of course the gave you a boxed milk that was
normaly warm yuck
JM: Were there any other snacks offered outside of meals? What was commissary like and how expensive was it? Stan: Yes, if you are fortunate enough to have someone
deposit money into your personal account. Rich: There are no snacks offered outside of meals,
except for perhaps some food or kitchen
'trustees'. The chaplaincy on a major holiday
will sometimes gift the entire jail inmate
population a bag containing candies and baked
goods usually found only on the commissary list
Commissary is decent, but most of what is offered
is approximately 3 or more times what you would
pay for an equivalent item out on the street, so
they are definitely making a tidy profit from
running the commissary. Most of the food items
are 'junk food', what you might find in a gas
station, or the check-out lane of a small
convenience store. You can receive up to $80 in
purchases from commissary per week. Claudia: no snacks unless your pregnant or diabetic. and
the commissary had a great selection surprisingly.
i loved the different food on there and you could
make anything you wanted instead of eating the
yucky trays which is what i did Id order a million
ramen noodels and tons of other items to make
differnt kinds of meals. most of the commissary
was a little over priced but not bad enough that i
wouldnt buy it.