2. Add the water, cover, and let sit for 8 minutes.
3. Drain off excess water.
4. Add the rice and stir well. Set aside.
5. Pour the Kool-Aid into a large microwavable bowl and add a tablespoon or two of hot water. Stir until it has a syrupy consistency.
6. Toss a handful of pork skins into the syrup and stir. Repeat until all pork skins are coated.
7. Cover and microwave the pork skins for about 5 minutes, until they puff.
8. Serve the pork skins on top of the Ramen and rice.
Lock It Up
When an inmate has a disagreement with another inmate of the same race, often on the basketball or handball court, insults and vicious words get exchanged. Instead of fighting in the yard and risking getting shot, it’s common for any of the older homies to yell out “Lock it up!” Once rec yard is over, the two guys, not wanting to attract any attention, will nonchalantly walk into either one’s cell, close the door, and fight it out until one guy quits or can’t get up. During this dispute, there’s always a homie right outside the cell door keeping watch. In most cases, the officers are already aware of the rumble. All they ask is for us to clean up the mess and not use weapons. Sometimes the officer doing his rounds and checking the cells is the one who locks you in and supervises the fight.
These fights between homies allow us to settle our differences without getting shot or causing lockdowns. The officers prefer it to dealing with something bigger and out of control like a riot.
Onion Tortilla Ramen Soup
Ingredients
1 pack chili flavor Ramen
1 cup boiling water
½ onion, chopped
½ cup tortilla chips
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 jalapeño chile, chopped
1. Crush the Ramen in the wrapper and empty into a microwavable bowl. Add the seasoning.
2. Add the water and stir.
3. Add the onion, tortilla chips, onion powder, garlic powder, and jalapeño. Mix well.
4. Cover and microwave for about 2 minutes, until hot.
Regulated Duel
Just about the stupidest and most unnecessary thing you can do in prison is to get into an argument with a correctional officer, and yet it happens all the time. It’s especially stupid if the commanding officer is a strict rule follower and a known inmate hater. I knew someone who ended up with an assault charge by spitting on the CO accidentally when they were yelling at each other. Spitting on an officer in or out of prison is considered a form of assault because of the possibility of infecting him with some type of germ. This is obviously bullshit, but according to the rules and regulations of the prison, it’s an assault charge and can get years added to your sentence.
First you go to the Hole. Then you have the equivalent of a court hearing with the captain to determine if this “spitting” was an actual assault. You’ll be checked by the medical staff to see if you have TB or any other infectious disease. If you’re cleared by medical, the captain will usually drop the charge and just keep you in the Hole for thirty to sixty days.
Spam’En Soup
Ingredients
1 pack chili flavor Ramen
1 cup boiling water
½ can (12-ounce can) Spam (any flavor), chopped
½ red onion, chopped
1 jalapeño chile, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1. Crush the Ramen in the wrapper and empty into a microwavable bowl. Add the seasoning.
2. Add the water, stir, cover, and let sit for 8 minutes.
3. Add the Spam, onion, jalapeño, and garlic and stir.
4. Cover and microwave for 1 minute, until hot.
Hard Rock, Hard Time
by Slash
It was the really early days of the band. One minute, Duff, our bassist, was driving the band down Melrose Avenue in broad daylight, and the next minute police were pulling us over and taking us in, and I didn’t even know why. I ended up in a holding cell, handcuffed to some other guy. Then I was packed into a big black-and-white county bus with a bunch of guys and given no explanation for where we were going. We drove around the entire day, late into the night, and continued until the early morning. We were dropping off all these guys at their city courthouses. We finally got back to L.A. County, and it took all day for me to get processed. By the time I got into my cell—a big community cell—it was nighttime again.
I had on fingernail polish and used my teeth to take all that shit off. I had to. You don’t wear nail polish in county jail! I was so miserable, jonesin’ really hard, and with all kinds of fools from the weekend’s arrests. They kept us in these smelly holding cells until they had enough guys to pack the hot, stinky bus again. I started sweating that nasty, kicking, hungover smell. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, and had the shivers. The worst feeling ever! This feeling had nothing to do with jail. It’s about kicking (withdrawal) and you can’t do anything about it. I had no lawyer to call, and I felt like my life could be in danger if I stayed there any longer. L.A. County jail is no joke. Finally, I was called up by a deputy.
Someone—Axl—had put up the bail money to get me out. We had just signed a record deal, but had no record yet and not much money. I was finally told that I had been detained for a jaywalking ticket from high school. For walking across Fairfax and Beverly! Man, that was a long time ago and I had totally forgotten about that.
Apparently they don’t. To those of you who don’t bother with those minor infractions and choose to ignore tickets, beware. There might be a stinky holding cell waiting for you. Word to the wise: Pay your jaywalking tickets.
Slash is a rock guitarist, songwriter, and film producer whose albums have sold more than 100 million copies. He won a Grammy Award and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Guns N’ Roses. His autobiography, SLASH, was a New York Times bestseller.
Slash’s Jaywalking Ramen
Ingredients
1 pack chicken flavor Ramen
1 cup boiling water
3 scallions, chopped
½ cup cooked minced pork
1 tablespoon sriracha sauce, or to taste
Note: This recipe is still a favorite snack on the tour bus.
1. Crush the Ramen in the wrapper and empty into a bowl. Add the seasoning.
2. Add the water, stir, cover and let sit for 8 minutes.
3. Mix in the scallions and pork.
4. Add the sriracha to taste.
Killing Food
by Roger Avary
It was my hundredth day in prison. The meal that night in the commissary was shit-on-a-shingle—aka beef tips with gravy—which I couldn’t stand to smell, let alone eat. I had saved some rice from my lunch. I never went to chow without my trusty plastic bag. It fit just about a cup’s worth of food or condiments so it can be easily smuggled back to the cell. It helped deal with those late-night hunger pangs.
The Jailhouse Hole Burrito is a monster, my monster. And let me tell you something, eating this monster was work. To “celebrate” my hundred days, I’d made it so big that I had to attack it like an athlete. Halfway through this particular incarnation, I looked like I was on an episode of Man v. Food, and food was winning. I was sweating, and my vision began to tunnel. Between every bite, I was gasping for oxygen like a dying fish. But I made this monster, so I was going to eat it.
I woke up the next morning sick to my stomach. I hadn’t eaten that much crap food in a long time, and frankly I was relieved to have survived the ordeal. All I remember from the night before is lying on my bunk in the Ventura County jail, crawling under the sheets and slipping into a food coma. I think if someone had shanked me in the belly that night, I would have exploded Cheetos-flavored Ramen onto them.
I invite you to enjoy this as much as I d
id, and to recover quickly.
Roger Avary is the Academy Award–winning screenwriter of Pulp Fiction, Silent Hill, and Beowulf. He directed the crime thriller Killing Zoe and the teen drama The Rules of Attraction. Avary supports projectavary.org, dedicated to improving life outcomes for at-risk children with parents in prison.
Avary’s Jailhouse Hole Burrito
Ingredients
1 pack Ramen (any flavor)
Hot water
1 large bag (about 8 ounces) jalapeño popcorn (or any bag big enough to hold your ingredients)
½ cup hot sauce
About ½ cup squeezable cheese (jalapeño flavor is popular, but any squeezable cheese is fine)
Handful of cheese crackers
Handful of Takis, Doritos Dinamita, or other spicy rolled chips
1 small bag (about 1 ounce) Cheddar Jalapeño Cheetos, or any spicy flavor
1 large flour tortilla
1. Bust up the Ramen in the bag. There’s a jailhouse trick for this, to avoid damaging the bag: Hold the bag of Ramen flat in your palm and with firm but gentle force, throw it flat onto the ground. Repeat this on the other side.
2. Carefully open the bag by one of the top sealed edges, so it forms a pouch.
3. Remove the seasoning packet. Gently and neatly tear off the top of the foil pack and twist it to create a twist tie for the Ramen bag. Set aside both the open seasoning packet and the twist tie.
4. Pour about a cup of hot water from your sink (which is probably lukewarm) into the Ramen bag. Don’t fill it all the way.
5. Twist the bag closed and tie it with the twist tie you created from the seasoning packet.
6. To create a vessel to mix your other ingredients, empty out three-quarters of the popcorn from your large bag. Save that popcorn for later.
7. Take the bag with the remaining popcorn and add the hot sauce, Ramen seasoning, ¼ cup of the cheese (about half), the cheese crackers, and the Takis.
8. Crush up your Cheetos in the bag until they resemble the size of hamburger meat. Add to the mixing bag.
9. Squeeze the rest of your cheese onto a tortilla, slathering it like sauce on a pizza.
10. Drain your Ramen, if necessary, and add to the larger bag. Mix.
11. Now place the fluorescent orange concoction on your prepped tortilla and roll it up, folding the bottom first like a burrito.
Don’t Forget the Birdbath
You might think that inmates are a bunch of angry, smelly men. And sometimes we are. But I will say this, we do attempt to keep clean—for our own benefit as well as those around us. When we’re in a lockdown, cellmates might have to spend weeks, even months, in the cell together. We don’t go out or get any air at all and we get only one shower per week. But there is a convict rule that is strictly enforced—by the convicts. Everyone takes a daily birdbath.
While your cellmate stays out of your way on his bed, you fill the sink with water. You can even use the toilet water if you must, but that can be kind of depressing because most of the plumbing is interconnected and you can get some unwanted surprises as a result. Some of the guys will put up a makeshift curtain of bed sheets. Once the sink is filled, use a bowl or cup to pour water on your body. Soap up the major spots, rinse off, and clean up all your mess as a courtesy to your cellmate.
On a very hot summer day, this is done throughout the day. You do what you can to stay cool and clean. There’s no telling how long you’ll be locked down.
Keep It Fresh Ramen
Ingredients
1 pack chicken flavor Ramen
1 cup of boiling water
2 tablespoons lime juice
½ cup of shredded rotisserie chicken
2 tablespoons salsa
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
Salt and pepper
1. Crush the Ramen in the wrapper and empty into a bowl.
2. Add the water, cover, and let sit for 8 minutes.
3. Drain the water, add the seasoning, mix well, and set aside.
4. In a separate bowl, add the lime juice, chicken, salsa, and cilantro. Mix well.
5. Add to the bowl of Ramen, mix well, and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Supercop
There’s always that one officer who takes his job too seriously. This is the guy who goes that extra inch to make the inmates’ time as difficult as it can be. A supercop will search your cell and “accidentally” knock over your TV, or make obnoxious sexual remarks about your girlfriend while you’re with her in the visiting room. This is the kind of shit that will get a CO stabbed or killed.
Then there are COs who get along fine with the inmates, who just want to finish their eight hours of work and don’t mind what inmates do so long as we’re following their program and not causing chaos on their shifts. One officer in particular, let’s call him Officer Diaz, was like that. He would want us to “clean the yard,” as we’d say. He would give us information on child molesters and snitches, and then turn a blind eye as we rolled ’em up—and out of the prison yard. Some would get badly beaten; some left in body bags. It was a system not many in the free world would understand, but it worked.
Just a few months after my release, some of my homies and I were at a local club when I ran into that very officer. The homies with me were also ex-cons and looked more intimidating than me. He didn’t recognize me at first, then his eyes lit up like he saw a ghost. I simply said, “What’s up, Diaz?” He was looking pretty nervous. Any other inmate would have had a field day with the opportunity to get his hands on a CO outside of the legal system, but I didn’t. I remembered what kind of officer he was. I just kept walking by him, winked my eye, and smiled. He smiled back, nodded his head in a form of respect.
Sloppy Ramen Joe
Ingredients
2 packs beef flavor Ramen
1½ cups boiling water
1 can or pouch (7 to 11 ounces) ready-to-eat Sloppy Joe
1 summer sausage (about 9 ounces), chopped, or 1 can (9 ounces) Vienna sausage, drained and chopped
½ medium-size onion, chopped
1 jalapeño chile, chopped
3 or 4 hamburger buns, split open
1. Crush the Ramen in the wrappers and empty into a bowl. Set aside the seasoning packets.
2. Add the water, cover, and let sit for about 8 minutes.
3. Drain off excess water.
4. Combine the Sloppy Joe, sausage, onion, and jalapeño in a large microwavable bowl.
5. Cover and microwave for about 5 minutes, until hot.
6. Add the Ramen and seasoning. Mix well.
7. Place the open buns on plates. Cover with the Sloppy Joe–Ramen mixture.
Blanket Call
by Taryn Manning
It was 4:00 a.m. in the Valley. I was on my way home from a party, looking forward to fixing up some Ramen, when I saw the lights flashing behind me. That’s when my trip started going south. D.U.I. was quickly assessed. By the time I got booked and sent to County, I had missed blanket call by 5 minutes. I was in a very short dress, freezing, mad, and still kind of drunk. All these other girls were under blankets. All I could see were piles of women with the blankets pulled all the way over their heads. They all looked so comfortable, like they were at a big slumber party. Still, I was freaked out, and I started thinking, Oh my God, who’s under there? Are they going to hurt me? And to top it off, it was freezing. So I politely called out to the cops, “Excuse me? Excuse me!” Then this voice, one of the guards or one of the women, barked out, “SHUT UP! You missed blanket call, so you are going to freeze. Get used to it!” I can still hear that voice yelling at me while I was shivering, my dreams of Ramen so very far away.
Taryn Manning is a fashion designer and actor who was critically acclaimed for her roles in the films Crazy/Beautiful, 8 Mile, Hustle & Flow, and for her role as Pennsatucky in
Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black.
Ramen is the new Ramen
Ingredients
2 packs Ramen (any flavor)
1 cup boiling water
1. Crush one pack of Ramen in the wrapper. Open both packs and empty the crushed Ramen into a bowl. Save the second square of Ramen for another use. Set aside both seasoning packets.
2. Add the water to the crushed Ramen, cover, and let sit for about 8 minutes.
3. Sprinkle both seasonings on top and stir. The seasoned Ramen, like a seasoned prisoner!
Prison Stethoscope
by Frankie Meeink
Once you’ve finished your Soup in the Hole, save the Styrofoam cup and let it dry. Remove the bottom of the cup. Poke a pencil or pen gently through one side of the cup to make a handle. Using the handle, place the larger opening of the cup to your metal door. Put your ear against the smaller hole at the bottom. Form a seal between your head and the cup, and the cup and the door. You now have a stethoscope that you can use to hear the electronic doors being buzzed throughout the segregation building, which allows you to know if the turnkeys (guards) are coming.
We would always have magazines tied with shoestrings that we could pass up and down the whole cellblock, flinging them from under one door to the other. Hidden inside the magazines would be drugs, a single cig, or just a coded message from one gang member to another. If you missed the other guy’s door you could pull it back to try again. You could not let the guards see this—so that’s why we had the Styrofoam stethoscopes. We could hear the guards coming two or three doors ahead of our cellblock, so we had time to pull the magazines back in.
Prison Ramen Page 3