"CellblockCafe" news and stories

A few months ago, I did a post about pruno, a fermented drink often made by prison inmates. Well, here's something from the other end of the "cooking in prison" spectrum: The Cellblock Cafe. John "The Jailhouse Gourmet" Mandala, an inmate at Sing Sing Correctional Facilities medium security annex, hosts this site of recipes and musings about his experiences learning to cook during more than a decade in prison. The Cellblock Cafe is an offshoot of Friends Beyond The Wall, a New-York-Based prison pen-pal program. Apparently Mandala and some of the other recipe contributors have limited access to kitchen facilities, so some of the recipes aren't as dire as you might expect. While Mandala's introduction does recount scenes of broiling hot dogs with radio antennae or heating a cup of coffee with burning toilet paper, the recipes hosted here are a bit more refined. Things like fried rice and Jamaican stew reflect the diverse backgrounds of the cooks, and pancake batter figures a little more heavily than I would've expected.