*Biggie intro music
Ayo, welcome to Cooking with Convictions. I'm your host, the thief with the beef, inmate #A371-209. Wut up? In today’s episode, we gon' hook up this Chili-Break straight Cadillac.
So grab ya stingers, ghetto s’ghetti, summer dogs n’ a can lid ‘cause this slam’s ‘bout to be life, dig? I got ya faded, so don't bounce.
But first, I needa holla ‘bout our sponsor, “The Whole Shebang potato chips”; Shebang, cuz Lays is fo punks.
Okay, now that we're all feeling sufficiently loosened up, let's get to the real meat on this plate. I often joke about how cooking was my mid-life crisis, but that's not accurate in the least. I caught the cooking urge all the way back in the beginning of my prison sentence in the late 90’s.
However, proceeding all of this, food was something I was hyper fixated on given the reoccurring scarcity I had experienced in my childhood. I know what starving is in a very literal sense. I think the nerd term is Food Insecurity.
I shoplifted food every time the opportunity presented itself even if I wasn't hungry. I'd eat your food if you left it unattended. All rules were out the window when it came to that. I'd steal from your fridge if you lost line of sight with me within your house. I had scavenging down to a science. Hell, I'd even eat found-food. I'll let your imagination run wild with that. It's probably why I have the digestive system of a desert vulture. I could eat a bowl of toxic waste and it would probably just make me gassy. I've eaten raw chicken and been just fine.
I tell all of that to establish that I've always taken food very seriously. If you saw the wall-to-wall cabinet pantry I built in my home you'd think I was a doomsday prepper. To this day I'll sometimes pull up a chair, open all of the doors, and just sit there and stare at it. Just seeing all of it makes me feel calm. Because of seemingly infinite abundance, I feel that people take it for granted.
That kid was then sentenced and introduced to the world of 3 hots and a cot. All I had to do is be there and I was going to get a tray. Three times a day, every day, all year long. As terrible as everything around me was, I remember being specifically grateful for that. People joke about prison food but I looked forward to each tray.
I thought, “it doesn't get better than this”.
It wasn't long before the guys within those walls showed me that eating is only part of what food is for.
What I came to discover was that my prison had its very own foodie culture. Men would pool their resources and get together to cook meals. Nothing was rushed, no ingredients skimped, no man in the group left wanting.
This wasn't just about trying to make something that tasted good, it was the comradery of the process. In prison, you always wanted too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone had something to do. Some were cutting and prepping ingredients while others were in charge of the cooking itself, however all of us would sit around and just run our mouths the whole time.
The process was perhaps as important as the meal itself if not moreso. Whether you were using a can lid to dice a summer sausage or vegetables, or the guy in charge of boiling a bucket of water with a stinger without blowing out the power or the guy mixing it all together in a trash bag, or the guy with a toilet paper firebomb working a makeshift griddle, we were all involved and no one was ever in a hurry.
Not only that, but you took pride in what you could bring to the table. While the man with just a few Raman soups still got his equal share, there was something about being the fella who busted out fresh green peppers or onions to the ooos and ahhhhs of the other guys there. I never felt cockier than when I smacked a can of chili out of my dude's hand and slapped a pair of steaks on the table like I was slamming dominoes.
“SAY MY NAME!” I boomed with chest slaps. Apparently my name was “Got dayum!” that day.
With each year that went by, this ritual, this bonding through meals, became more ingrained into me. It evolved into a new means to be a provider. Not just in what I gathered and hunted down, but in what I created with those things. Who I shared those meals with, who I would allow to eat with me.
I had no problem threatening or even harming another man to demonstrate that one of my raps didn't stand alone however it was oftentimes unnecessary. If you saw me sharing a meal with that man you already knew any problems you have with him included me. My food is more important than you and he's eating it. It wasn't hard to draw conclusions regarding your own placement on that food chain. I'd break bones on behalf of any person I'd break bread with.
That is not creative wording for impact.
While I acknowledge that I'm cartoonishly extreme in my position here, I still wish more of you took it at least a little more seriously. You eat so that you don't die, why is everyone so casual and mindless about it? It's kind of a big deal.
Hell, not only are you flippant about it, you've even turned it into a negative aspect of your life. You've managed to take a thing you must do to live and turned it into the very thing that's killing you. How can you handle such an overwhelming degree of bat shit crazy in your life?
However, that's drifting into a tangent. Let's get back to my point.
Having not only developed an bizarre obsession with food, but also a deep appreciation for preparing and sharing it, this naturally led to my current state within my citizen-life. My cooking quirk.
For whatever reason, I am basically incapable of preparing simple foods. 100% true story, I once caught water on fire while trying to make macaroni and cheese from a box for my kids. Absolutely no one, including myself, knows how this happened or how it's even possible. That said, they tell that story every chance they get. I once burned cookies black enough that the cookie sheet was damaged and ruined. Weird, right?
That's said, my made-from-scratch, slow simmer spaghetti sauce using whole peeled tomatoes would make you disrespect an Italian grandmother. Champagne Shrimp over angel hair pasta turning sinner's to Christ. I reverse engineered Applebee's Fiesta lime chicken and have since been sued by them because mine is ten times as dope. My steaks make Texas Roadhouse's taste like cardboard seasoned with drywall dust. My Manicotti make ya Ohmygoddi. Are you catching my drift?
I excel with elaborate, complicated meals. The more involved, the better my results are. Especially when they involve my giant barrel grill. (Side note: I can cook every single thing I just listed over charcoal or in my fire pit. Eat this flex)
Just yesterday I made Breakfast Burgers where I cooked the patties, bacon, shredded hash browns and eggs all on my grill. When they were done, they went onto the buns already stacked and ready to dislocate jaws like the Anaconda gobblin’ up Jon Voight.
I took the process home with me. I drag my kids in. I'm not cooking, we're cooking. I go get the ingredients fresh once I've decided on what we're making. Gathering is part of the enjoyment. I'm not after fresh because of some goofy allegiance to freshness but because I enjoy the process of preparing it. I love having lots of separate bowls filled with various ingredients. The longer it takes, the better. I won't eat chicken now that I haven't brined for at least 8 hours. I'd rather chew on barbecued shoes.
Just as I had once upon a time, we sit around prepping ingredients, main dishes and sides. Busy hands can't use phones. We talk, make fun of each other, argue, make fun of the arguing, and just exist in each other's lives. My schedule only allows me to do this a couple of times a week at best but I've done it so consistently, and been so involved, that even my adult children attempt to budget time to come home and get in on this ritual. My ten year old will see the cuts of meat and ask if we're doing a marinade or dry rub. She prefers the dry rubs because she gets to make a mess.
Just like I did with those killers and thieves, I cook with a group for that group. When we're done and everyone is sitting at the table ready to absolutely destroy what's in front of us, no one so much as reaches for a fork until after several ridiculous rounds of each of us thanking the others who helped, talking over each other like a comedy skit, for making dinner.
I average 50-60 hours a week and have worked that since getting out. It means I miss a lot. Where I fall short in quantity of time, I aim to make up with quality of time. Prison was a bad place, however I learned many good things there. The impact of something like this, shared with those who matter, being one of the most important. I wish it weren't so uncommon amongst citizens.
I wish stopping everything not only to share a meal, but to share the making of it, were commonplace out here. I get you're tired, I get things are busy, I get that it can be time consuming and even cost more, but I also understand what priorities mean. Was that movie you bought on Prime really a better memory than this could be? Is that chore really higher on your list than this? It's worth it, I swear. Your family, your people, is one of the few investments where the return is always greater.
I get to see them enjoy something I provided and prepared, but equally as important, I get to witness the same feelings exist within them. They get to know that comradery and satisfaction I had learned all those many years ago.
Like me, in their own way, they too now understand that it's not about the food you eat, it's about the meal we share.
Bone appetite or whatever.
Bed Rack Burritos
Brother, this brought tears to my eyes. For real I'm sitting in the laundromat parking lot trying not to bawl like a bitch because this piece just hit.
I was a restaurant cook for many years and what finally drove me out of the industry was, well, it's a fucking industry. An industry built around a community sacrament of food and, so, by extension, restaurants generally speaking are perverting the sacrament. I couldn't do it any longer. My food comes from a place of love and service; my calling is to feed people. It's both my vocation and my avocation; my mission and my muse. Food, for me, is sacred and so the process of bringing food to the table must be done mindfully, joyfully, reverently, gratefully.
I'm glad you were able to discover that while you were inside. I'm so very fucking happy that you brought it home with you and shared it with your people. What. A. Gift. You turned poison into medicine, man. That's Buddha level awesome. God bless ya, man.
Life is food and sharing!
I grew up in a post depression world where memories of food scarcity prevailed. WWII made it worse with rationing so years of victory gardens meant canning everything . We fought off the birds in the cherry tree so we had filling for pies later in winter.
Our house had family dropping in every Sunday for dinner and card games all afternoon.
It’s with gratitude that I have prepped by canning reserves for
Last minute invasions of unexpected guests ? I never worried with jars of vegetables and fruit on hand. My basement was stocked.
Decades later I still love to make fruit jam to give away to family and friends (requesting the empty jar
back for a refill).
Your experience, JC, is one every family should practice . Shut off the damn phones and talk to each other over something You all make and share!