Jail Time #8: Food ¤Frankenstein¤

People are always complaining about the food in hospitals, on airplanes and in school. I've had them all and they aren't so bad. You'll know what bad is if you ever end up in jail for any reason.

Here's something that I think sums it up pretty well and I'll be referring back to it from time to time.

***In 2022, New York City is populated with 40 million people, half of whom are unemployed. The air is smoggy and sooty, and the sun bakes everything, everyday, at 90 degrees. Overpopulation and the destruction of the environment may have rendered human life cheap, but food--that is, real food--is quite expensive. A jar of real strawberry jam costs $150, if it's available--supermarkets don't exist anymore. The government now dispenses rations of food substances made by the Soylent corporation: Soylent Yellow, Soylent Red, and the newest product, Soylent Green.

But even these Soylent products are in short supply. Riot police are always dispatched when Soylent is distributed, because violence kicks in when the food runs out. Thorn (Heston) is a member of this modern, beleaguered police force, which pilfers every crime scene for the necessities of life. When Thorn is called in to investigate the death of a Soylent Corporation executive, his take is a treasure trove: a towel, a bar of soap, paper, and some real food--celery, a couple of apples, and half a pound of beef.

But what at first seems to Thorn a clumsy robbery soon seems a highly-managed assassination. But ironically, it is the death of Thorn's aging friend, Sol (Robinson), one of the few who still remembered what food was, what plenty meant, that cracks the case and unmasks a conspiracy. It is only through Sol's death that Thorn understands what the world has lost and what it has become...***

Yeah, that tells you something about what jail food is like. There is no meat. You might think it is at first but when you see the peculiar red color and taste it, you'll know for a fact that it isn't meat. It isn't even edible and I ended up giving most of it away. It was vile and I would even go so far as to call it obscene. You don't ever want to ever see it, let alone be expected to eat it. I'm not picky at all about food but a person has to draw a line somewhere. I'd rather starve. It's much more pleasant. Of course, I'll leave a running commentary throughout it all. You surely couldn't expect any less from me. You should know that they don't believe in salt in there at all. There is none. Some things are okay, I guess, but others have the most foul taste I can imagine. I'm convinced that they have something that they put in there to make stuff taste horrible. The green beans and mashed potatos are good examples of that. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a pleasant experience and they see to it that it isn't. There is no caffeine, either. You get coffee in the morning with breakfast that's so strong, you could take the paint off of a car with it. At lunch, you get ice water. For supper, you get iced tea which is sweetened with Nutrasweet and what tastes like prune juice. It's disgusting.

Here is the full week's menu. I'm sure that you'll enjoy reading this much more than I enjoyed trying to eat it.

Saturday: Breakfast- scrambled eggs (powdered), bacon (two inch-long strips so little that they would make a pig blush), blueberry bagel, orange juice

Lunch- Two corn dogs but they were so sweet, I couldn't eat them. Imagine trying to eat a piece of German chocolate cake with a weenie in it. It was sickening. There was one, little pack of mustard but it did very little to disguise how vile that meal was.

Dinner- Mixed greens, macaroni and cheese, pinto beans and cornbread. The green weren't bad but there was no salt. The macaroni and cheese had been violated with that horrible poisen that I'm convinced they introduce into some things. If they didn't, nothing could ever possibly taste that bad. The cornbread was as sweet as cheesecake and it had that foul taste, too. I surely couldn't eat it. I ate some of the beans and they were okay but they had no flavor. There was fruit cocktail and it was okay but not the best I've ever had. Needless to say, most of those things stayed in my tray.

Sunday: Breakfast- Biscuits and gravy, chocolate milk (Wow! FOUR huge ounces! I don't see how they can afford to be so generous on their budget.) . I had one of the biscuits and saved the other one for later. You learn really fast to do that in jail. You eat what you want and save what you can for later. Supper comes at around five or six in the afternoon and it's a very long time until breakfast. You can save toast, biscuits, potato chips or whatever and they're there whenever you want them.

Lunch- Two hot dogs, chili and a bag of corn chips. Needless to say, the corn chips were the best part of the meal. The hot dogs were okay but they didn't have much taste. I guess the chili was alright but I really didn't want it so I gave it away.

Dinner- Some sort of supposedly chicken something (soylent green..."It's people! Soylent Green is made out of people!" See? I told you that I'd be referring back to that story and this won't be the only time I do so.), two slices of bread, green beans... There were also some apples but they had had the life and flavor cooked right out of them. They were pretty much just mush.

Monday: Breakfast- oatmeal, toast and milk. I'm sorry but I can't and won't eat slimy oatmeal. The toast wasn't really toast. It was more like bread which was stale and had been left in the sun for a day in order to get some color on it. I don't know who they think they're fooling. There are a lot morons there but I don't think any of them are buying that. Limp bread is NOT toast.

Lunch- Bologna and cheese sandwich, potato chips. Believe it or not, it was actual meat and cheese. It was probably the best meal I had in there that week. It was simple but it was honest and I enjoyed it. There was nothing 'soylent' about it. I appreciated that.

Dinner- I would say that it was Hamburger Helper but that would be glorifying it. It was nothing more than bowtie pasta with some mystery meat which looked like it might have been ground beef in it. There was no sauce and no flavorings whatsoever. Remember, they don't even have salt there. There was also corn and it was okay. There were those horrible green beans, some bread and some of those apples which nobody would ever really want.

Tuesday: Breakfast- Rice (It was so sweet, one little bite nearly sent me into a diabetic coma and I'm not even diabetic. I ended up giving it away. I couldn't wait to get rid of it.), whole wheat toast (limp and still not fooling anyone), orange juice
Lunch- Two hot dogs, chili, corn chips. Yeah, we had hot dogs again. I guess they were okay. They sure were better than a lot of the crap that they gave us.

Dinner- Two salisbury steaks, green peas, mashed potatos, Italian bread and pears. The steaks had that peculiar color but they weren't bad. I ended up giving one of them away. One was more than enough for me. The peas were alright but they were pretty tasteless without any salt or butter. The mashed potatos were straight out of Hell. They had been injected with whatever vile chemical it is that they use. It's pure evil and nothing less. The bread was okay but the pears had had the life cooked right out of them just like the apples always did.

Wednesday: Breakfast- Frosted Flakes, toast and milk. I'll have to admit it. That was a decent meal. I couldn't complain that morning.

Lunch- Chicken salad sandwich (soylent green...horrible)

Dinner- White beans (pretty good but no salt or pepper or anything, of course. I ate those, though.), those horrible mashed potatos (I'm not picky but I'm telling you that those things tasted the way a landfill smells. I think I'm flattering them by simply saying that about them. They were rancid.), cole slaw (God! I don't even want to think about that!), two slices of whole wheat bread which had that peculiar, sickening taste, fruit cocktail

Thursday: Breakfast- French toast (not really but we'll act like it was. That's what they tried to pass it off as, anyway.), orange juice. Four ounces was so much that I almost drowned in it. I'm sure you caught the sarcasm there.

Lunch- Chuckwagon sandwich (not bad but that peculiar color. I knew that I was eating human flesh and I didn't really care at the time.), potato chips

Dinner- Soylent 'chicken', white bread, green beans, mashed potatos, pineapple (There was a guy who would eat anything and he loved those horrible potatos for some reason. He said to me, "Hey, man, I'll give you my pineapples for your mashed potatos." I was quick to take him up on that offer. I could eat the pineapples. I ended up giving him my green beans, as well. I'd rather him eat them that have to throw them in the garbage.

Friday: Breakfast- two biscuits and some soylent green sausage. "It's people! Soylent Green is made out of people!" I ate all that I could take of one and gave the other one away. I was about to vomit.

Lunch- A soylent green fish sandwich. The tarter sauce so sickingly sweet, I nearly puked. I ended up giving it to the guy next to me. He didn't care that I'd had a couple of bites of it. He was starving. Most of them are like that. It isn't me, though. There were also some limp French fries. They were nothing to write home about.

By the grace of God, I didn't have to see what was for supper that night.

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