Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars (5 page)

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.

W
hen 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.

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.

J
ust 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.

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.

by Slash

I
t 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.

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.

by Roger Avary

I
t 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 did, 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.

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.