Prison Recipes By and For Incarcerated People

The first recipe of La Cantine is called Orlando’s Breakfast Grill Cheese. 

It’s a “monster” grilled cheese sandwich, made with two slices of white bread, three slices of Monterrey Jack cheese, three slices of “wonderful bacon,” two slices of cafeteria ham, one scrambled egg and a bit of butter.

After the list of ingredients and the instructions, the page ends with a drawing of the finished dish: a yellow and orange square-like shape at the centre of what appears to be a white plate with a thick black rim. Some pencil-drawn lines symbolize the heat rising from the sandwich.

Above the drawing is a note: “I really enjoy making this recipe with my co-inmates, on a nice Saturday morning!”

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In prison, a place where life is generally characterized by little choice and autonomy, food takes on multiple meanings.

Food is a way to express one’s identity. It is a deeply personal thing, says Amanda Wilson, associate Professor at St. Paul University with expertise in carceral food systems.

As the journalist Lucie Inland says in her book Surveiller et Nourrir, food in prison is “a perspective of the future, a means of fighting back, a tool of punishment, and even a pop culture object; but above all it is a crucial issue for those who are locked up.” 

A grilled cheese sandwich on a nice Saturday morning is a way to build community, connect to our culture, and to express ourselves.

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A black-and-white drawing is on the front page of La Cantine. It is a person with a mushroom-shaped chef hat, black medium hair, and making the “Okay” hand gesture, insinuating that the dish in front of them is delicious. To their side is a DIY stove made with a can and a candle, and on top of the stove, another can serves as a pot.

The illustration gives you a good idea of the kind of equipment these cooks will be using. After all, La Cantine is the first prison cookbook in Quebec. It compiles 17 recipes, from breakfast to salads, savoury dishes and desserts, prepared by incarcerated individuals inside Quebec’s penitentiaries. 

The Association Québécoise pour la promotion de la santé des personnes utilisatrices de drogues (AQPSUD), a community organization focused on harm reduction and prevention, created this cookbook in collaboration with formerly and currently incarcerated individuals.

“We host art and prevention workshops. We ask for their participation to create drawings and prevention slogans. We try to get closer to these communities as best we can,” explains Samuel Daigle, project manager at the AQPSUD.

The organization connects with incarcerated individuals through the professionals who work with them, whether they are social workers, nurses, or chaplains, to involve them in creating harm reduction tools, such as a prison calendar with messages and slogans about sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention and health promotion. 

More than a cookbook, La Cantine is also a risk-prevention tool. It’s a guide that reminds incarcerated individuals to maintain habits that support their physical and mental health. From a popular pedagogy perspective, slogans like “eating well is important for maintaining good health and morale,” or “the buzz is better when you’re in good shape,” La Cantine emphasizes the importance of self-care, especially when deciding to consume any substance.

“If you’re not feeling well because you’re hungry or something else, you might sometimes forget basic instructions or basic health advice. I think people generally know this, but it’s always good to remind (people) that,” explains Daigle.

To create the cookbook, the organization received recipes by mail from incarcerated people in some Quebec penitentiaries. A committee formed by AQPSUD members, including former incarcerated individuals and parents, selected the most original dishes, as well as some classics, from roughly 70 submissions. 

Most of the recipes are handwritten. Some include drawings of the ingredients needed to prepare the dish, while others depict the finished dish, just like in traditional cookbooks. The recipes were published exactly as received, sometimes without titles or the contributor’s name, and sometimes with spelling mistakes and scratch marks. 

“It’s all hand-crafted. We left the recipes as they were, with the intention of preserving their original style. We wanted to show that there can be mistakes, and that’s okay,” says Daigle.

One of the recipes included is chicken ramen with cheese sauce and Doritos. To prepare it, heat three cups of Cheez Whiz to make a cheese sauce, then add it as a topping to cooked ramen noodles. Finally, add pieces of chicken and crushed Doritos on top. 

This particular dish is mentioned in “La Recette,” a song by Quebec rappers Souldia and Tizzo. After spending three years in prison, Souldia first wanted to create a prison cookbook, which later evolved into a song. 

Daigle contacted Souldia to invite him to contribute to La Cantine. In the cookbook, the AQPSUD included some of his recommendations for the readers, such as exercising, eating, reading many books, and consuming Omega-3.

“In prison, it is easy to get into the frenzy of drinking Pepsi and just eating chips,” Souldia recommends in La Cantine. 

During his time in prison, Souldia spent 14 days in solitary confinement. In that cell, a phrase written by one of the many men who had been isolated there caught his eye. He read it every time he lay on the floor: prison is just a passage.

“Sometimes, there is the impression that (prison) is eternal, that we’ll never leave. But from one day to the next, that will stop. Prison is just a passage,” Souldia says in La Cantine.

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La Cantine emerged from the realization of how crucial food is for incarcerated individuals, especially because the meals they are given often fall short of what food can represent. From the perspective of the institutions, in a carceral context, food is just a means by which the state preserves the lives of prisoners.

“There was this interest among inmates in creating this kind of tool because, in terms of food, they are really fed the bare minimum. They have to get food and then make do with what they have to feed themselves,” explains Daigle.

Food in Canadian prisons comes from two sources: it is provided by food services, and sold at the canteen. If they don’t have money in their account to buy from the canteen, they can’t access these ingredients.

The recipes in the cookbook not only portray how incarcerated individuals prepare creative dishes with limited resources, but also restore the meaning of food as a source of pleasure and comfort in a hostile environment. Even though the dishes aren’t balanced or healthy, they are something that incarcerated individuals can enjoy, unlike the often unpalatable food offered by Correctional Service Canada (CSC).

“The quality of food is horrible. It’s used as a tool to discipline people, to keep them from organizing and speaking out. It’s really a tool to try and dehumanize people,” says Wilson, who also holds a PhD in sociology, with a specialization in political economy.

A study by the University of Moncton in 2022 concluded that “overall, CSC’s food offered in Canadian penitentiaries is nutritionally adequate.” However, this doesn’t mean that it is pleasant to taste.

In the study, the researchers note that most Canadians (incarcerated or not) consume more sodium than the amount recommended by Health Canada, which makes a menu with less than 2300 mg of sodium (the one offered at Canadian penitentiaries) difficult and unpalatable. 

As a result, incarcerated individuals often rely on canteen products, such as canned goods, jerky, soup bases, instant noodles, and biscuits, which are generally high in sodium and more pleasant to eat, though potentially more harmful to their health. The researchers therefore recommended a more liberal approach to sodium in CSC meals to better protect their long-term health.

Food quality worsened significantly after the federal government introduced the Food Services Modernization Initiative (FSMI) in 2014, which implemented a National Menu for all federal penitentiaries, explains Wilson. This means that from coast to coast, everyone in a federal prison eats the same dish, except those with medical or religious dietary restrictions.

The FSMI, as Wilson explains, was introduced as a way to minimize costs. It centralized food production into a “cook-chill” system, in which meals are prepared on an industrial scale at five regional hubs, rapidly chilled, and shipped to prisons to be reheated and served. Before those changes, every penitentiary had its own kitchens, and incarcerated individuals had job opportunities related to kitchen and food service work. 

In Quebec, the regional food-production centre is in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines. It supplies the penitentiaries in Cowansville, Drummond, La Macaza, Archambault, the Federal Training Centre, and the regional reception centre. All meat proteins, soups, sauces, and other items are prepared in the regional centre and shipped to the institutions once a week.

In one of her research papers, Wilson conducted a survey with current and former incarcerated people to better understand their experiences with the food they received. Even though the National Menu included dishes like roasted turkey and gravy or pork stir-fry, what people actually received wasn’t as appealing as it sounded.

“There really is a disconnect with many things involving prisons, with the public discourse from the government, and the actual lived experience of incarcerated folks,” says Wilson.

Many survey respondents described food as “slop,” “bland,” or without nutritional value. One respondent said that “the food was not seasoned, despite what was written in the CSC cookbook.” Another respondent mentioned that certain dishes didn’t have meat, even though meat was listed on the menu, and that various sauces would be diluted. In another response, an individual said that the changes made on the menu were usually for the worse, such as removing or reducing particular items, like milk, cereal in the mornings, or fruit.

“A lot of provincial facilities, and I can’t speak for Quebec, but in Ontario, BC, Saskatchewan, the food service is privatized. It’s an outside company that provides both the food service and the canteen,” continues Wilson. “It is kind of a conflict of interest, because the worse the food is, the more people are relying on the canteen.”

In Wilson’s eyes, a decentralized food production system could change the food experience of incarcerated individuals.

“Any opportunity to give incarcerated folks more chance to have autonomy over what foods they’re eating, how they’re eating, would be a step in the right direction,” says Wilson.

In a place where life is characterized by little choice and autonomy, initiatives like La Cantine will continue to inspire and give readers agency to create Oreo cheesecakes, burrito doritos, and Jamaican-style spicy tuna mac ‘n’ cheese, helping them care for themselves and their mates as they await the final day of their passage through prison.

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