PicoBlog

Hello and welcome to another week! I truly can’t thank you all enough for subscribing to my newsletter, I’m so honored to share this story with all of you. With that, let’s jump right in!

There are few things I love more on this earth than Chili Cheese Fritos. I have always loved Fritos, but have only recently gotten in to the Chili Cheese variety. Growing up, my favorite cafeteria meal was Walking Tacos. You cut the top off a snack size bag of Fritos, plop in an ice cream scoop of ground beef, and top it off with a little cheese. Absolutely decadent. My elementary school would post the cafeteria menu for the month online and my brother and I would print it out and circle the days we knew for sure we wanted to buy lunch. Walking Taco day always got circled.

Fast forward about 15 years. I’m sitting across a plastic table from my little brother. He’s wearing a tan jumpsuit with a six-digit number embroidered across the chest—It’s visitation day at the prison. I haven’t seen my brother in person in nearly two years. Prison visitation is pretty much exactly like what you see on TV. No touching!

One thing these shows don’t show you is the wall of vending machines that families line up at before their loved one walks through the door. There are multiple machines with candy, some with soda, a couple with chips, and even one with just energy drinks. There is one machine that is everyone’s favorite though: the machine with actual meals. It’s a refrigerated vending machine that is stocked daily with fresh food. I’m talking fruit, salads, veggie trays, the works. This is by far the most popular. If you don’t get to the prison bright and early, you don’t get any of the fresh food.

My parents live about three hours from my brother’s facility, which means that for me to get to visitation by 9am, I had to leave their house at six in the morning. Needless to say, I was late. So, I missed all the fresh food. And that is where my obsession with Chili Cheese Fritos began. I shelled out $25 to get a couple bags of chips and some Gatorades. Matt and I ate until our fingers were bright red and our stomachs hurt from processed cheese junk.

While we were eating, we played Uno. Any time either of us played a draw-4 card we got to ask a personal question to each other. He asked me if I was allergic to anything, and when I said that I am lactose intolerant he laughed in my face. “That’s some millennial shit right there.” I started with innocuous questions, you can’t just jump right into the hard stuff when you haven’t seen someone in two years. I asked if he folded his toilet paper or if he wadded it up; he’s a folder, I’m a wadder. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him; silly things like if his life is really like an episode of Orange is the New Black. I chickened out and instead, I asked him if he had any friends inside. He lowered his voice and told me about the guys he runs with and the power dynamics that they abide by.

Nothing in prison is private. Guards listen to your phone calls, they read your letters, they even watch your video visits. So, the in-person visitation days are the only time you can hear a tiny bit of the true reality. My brother has a group of guys that he is “friends” with who look out for one another. That’s his family now. My brother told me that he is the designated artist in the group, so any time someone has a birthday, he spends a few days drawing a really nice card for them, and then they pass it around for everyone to sign. We talked on the phone a few nights ago and he told me about his latest card. He’s drawing a skull with the Colorado Rockies logo dripping down behind it, with baseball stitching around the eyes for a guy who loves baseball.

So, for my first recipe, I thought I would make something that incorporated my love for these corn chips. Enter: the classic, Prison Burrito. This is from the Classic Prison Dishes section of Prodigy’s book and is a meal that I know my brother eats often. Prodigy calls this “P’s Fire Wrap” while others refer to it as a burrito. Both descriptors make sense, but I assure you it is neither wrap nor burrito. I’ll get into more about why this is called a burrito after I make it.

The ingredients are as follows:

1 bag of spicy or cheesy chips (I chose Chili Cheese Fritos, because duh)

Canned sausages (I’m using Vienna sausages)

Ramen Noodles

Hot Sauce (I’m using Valentina’s because it is the best. Also, my grocery store was out of the brand that they are able to get from commissary, Frank’s Red Hot)

To assemble:

• Overcook the noodles to the point that they are mushy. In prison, this would be done in the communal microwave. I do not have a microwave, so I cooked mine on the stove. For a more authentic taste and feel, please use a microwave.

• Remove the sausages from the can and drain juices. Slice them up.

• Open the bag of chips and crush them until they are dust.

• Put the overcooked noodles in the bag of chips and add the sausages. Add water from the noodles to the bag, just until the food is covered.

• Roll the bag of food into the shape of a burrito and then wrap it in a t-shirt. Let sit for 25 minutes.

• Carefully unwrap and top with hot sauce.

Before I get in to my burrito review, I want to talk a little bit about the appliances that prisoners have to make food with. There is a communal microwave that is used to make most commissary meals. In my brother’s facility, they have two microwaves shared between about 50 people. They are located in the common areas which means that if someone is on lockdown or in solitary, they have no access to this tool. There are no shared utensils, bowls, or the like in the facilities. You have to purchase your own to be able to use the microwaves. A bowl for the microwave costs $2.74. A 12 oz. mug costs $1.08. A coffee maker, that you have to be approved to purchase, costs $21.76. A hot pot, again that you have to be approved to purchase, costs $19.03. A spork costs two cents. There are no spatulas, no knives, no mixing bowls.

To make this exact meal, with no prior tools or ingredients, my brother would have to spend $25.96. There is a weekly limit of $25 that he is allowed to spend on commissary goods. Purchasing the tools and ingredients to make meals for yourself requires a multi-week plan that will allow you to spread out your goods over the week so that you don’t go hungry between meals. My brother says that this is the hardest part. He doesn’t know what the schedule for each day will look like and that poses challenges when he has to be out of his cell to make food if he’s hungry.

Okay, let’s get into this burrito.

This was, truly, the worst thing I’ve had in a long time. There is nothing quite like the texture of chips that have soaked in water for 25 minutes. The first bite was all mush. There is no textural difference between the overcooked noodles and the soaked chips whatsoever, making the two indistinguishable to the tongue. As promised, let’s talk about why this dish can be called a burrito. It’s all about the shape! Once that bag is folded over and cooling for 25 minutes, it takes on that familiar burrito shape. But the texture makes it impossible to eat it as you would a regular burrito. It falls apart the second it leaves the bag. The ramen noodles, still long and whole, offer no flavor as they slide down your throat. This was my first time ever trying a Vienna Sausage, and I must say that I would be happy to never eat one again (spoiler alert, I will). When you think burrito, you don’t think, “Mmmm, boiled hotdog is exactly the kind of meat I want in this bad boy.” The only redeeming quality was the Valentina’s on top. And that’s not even available at commissary.

            The Nitty Gritty:

Presentation: 6/10. I was surprised how well this burrito took and maintained its shape. As long as you didn’t pick it up or flip it over. The underside if a mess of sausage chunks and ramen noodles. Please, whatever you do, don’t look on the other side.

Taste: 2/10. It gets a point for my boys, the Chili Cheese Fritos. Other than that, it was horribly bland and wholly unenjoyable.

Texture: -10/10. A hot mess. I will say, there were about two seconds between the first bite, hot out of the bag, and the subsequent bites where it was the perfect temperature and was actually edible. But any other temperature and it was straight up horrible.

Would I eat this again? Absolutely not.

I told my brother that I started with this recipe and he offered me some helpful tips. His secret is to add cheese powder to the noodles while they cook in the microwave, and then when it’s all cooked, add a little pizza sauce to the mix. I asked him when the last time he had real cheese was. He said he got a small block of pepper jack in his Christmas canteen order, cut it into slices using a dental floss pick (genius), and that it totally leveled up his burrito experience.

Thanks so much for reading along this week! Tune in next week when I tackle prison pot stickers! Today I will leave you with this tweet from @RailroadUnderg1, “Why do we need to phase out ALL prisons? Because incarcerating someone helps very little & harms very much. That is not an acceptable metric.”

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