Incarcerated people have a special cynicism and perverse sense of humor when it comes to prison food.
For years, we have been given these absolutely disgusting sack breakfasts (like a sack lunch but different) which is commonly called a “boat.” This refers to the cardboard thing-a-ma-jig used to hold it together. These items have also all been given nicknames to reflect the collective opinion of them.
To give you an idea of this, I submit the following:
- +Grape jelly is called purple snot and strawberry jelly is radioactive goo.
- We get an oat and raisin paste breakfast bar which everyone calls a ‘bran bar’. However, when we get a bran muffin it’s referred to simply as colon cleaner.
- The peanut butter and bread are reduced to their places on the food guide pyramid, fat and starch.
- When we get oatmeal it’s called instant cardboard.
Thus, when I say the breakfast boats are universality despised, this is no exaggeration. The bran bars are notorious for being fed to seagulls out at yard, mostly because the finches and sparrows refuse to eat them and giving them to another person is a form of mild insult.
Remember when I said something about the nicknames for our food being perverse? Recently the menu was changed so that twice a week we get a granola and sunflower seed trail mix instead of a bran bar. It’s actually pretty good. There are very few people that don’t like it, and even they say it’s better than the bran bar because at least they can get someone to trade it for instant cardboard. So that stuff most people are willing to eat and thus does not get fed to the birds of course get nicknamed “bird seed.” It’s just how these things work in prison.
Amber Fayefox Kim 