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Inside the penitentiary there’s really not much of choice of what you can eat. You can get the nasty grub that is served in the cafeteria. Or you can  order food from the canteen. Now, let me remind you that prison is extremely strict. You can’t just have your family send in meals. Unless that is, you are approved for a food visit. Then your family and friends can bring in food from your favorite outside eatery or you can enjoy some home-made cooking. But items that are allowed in are extremely limited.  Bones that can be used as weapons — that is, sharpened and turned into a shank (prison knife), are off limits.

Now you may ask, how are we able to cook?  Canteens are our prison’s personal grocery store where some ingredients can be purchased. You can buy milk, sodas, condiments, etc. Things not sold can be obtained by trading a pack of cigarettes for something stolen from the kitchen by a cafeteria worker. Whenever inmates got together to make meals, it usually took 10 to 20 inmates to chip in. Canteen is like gold. I’ve seen people get stabbed or assaulted over snack cakes.

Every utensil in prison is plastic. We couldn’t have anything metal. In order to cut, we would use our State ID as a cutting utensil. Or if we were really lucky we might find a razor blade or a piece of metal we could turn into a knife. Getting caught with these meant going to the hole or catching another charge. We did have plastic sporks we could buy from the canteen for 75 cents and plastic bowls. Everything, including coffee mugs, were transparent so we couldn’t hide anything illegal.

After being released, I attended culinary school. There were no classes in prison for cooking. However, if you worked in the cafeteria serving thousands of inmates, you did get a certificate.  And we did have people from the outside that helped us cook. (And kept a close eye on us to make sure we didn’t steal any knives or food from the kitchen.) Prisons don’t really care if we get sick from food. We believed they fed us horse feed for breakfast, calling it cracked wheat. I am glad to be out where I’ve  learned about food safety and  foodborne illnesses. I use these lessons every day where I work now. I enjoy where I work, cooking steaks and lobster. I’m still young. Some advice I can give is don’t just work in one place. Gain experience. Learn Italian, French, Czech cuisines. Cooking isn’t just cooking. It is a form of art and science. You have to present your work to attract the customer’s eye. Make the ingredients blend so well that their palates go on a roller coaster ride of exciting flavors. My main goal is to make myself known for what I do well. And bring whoever I’m cooking for back for more.

In jail, all you have is time. I have been cooking since I was a kid. In prison I found that all the cafeteria food is horrible. We had to use whatever we could find to make the perfect meal. We made pizzas, cakes, pastas, you name it. We had no grill, toaster ovens, etc. Just two microwaves shared with fifty other inmates in a pod.

Even though I have done some time, and people may look down on me and other inmates, we still love food like anyone else. Inmates will do whatever it takes to get the right nutrients we need to survive each and everyday. The incarcerated have no choice but to be smart and work with what we have.

Just know that each one of us is human, and humans make mistakes. Hopefully my story can help someone stay out of that life I once lived. If you want meat loaf that looks like actual break pads from a tire and has no flavor, prison will suit you. If you want good steaks, I’d say stay out. Take care and enjoy cooking.

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It was suggested to me, a sometimes filmmaker, that both a man and a place down in Milledgeville Georgia were worthy subjects for a documentary. I’d been to Milledgeville once before to visit Andalusia, the family farm of Flannery O’Connor—the famed writer of magnificent essays and fiction. This time the place was Comfort Farms, and the man was Jon Jackson, an army ranger, and veteran who spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s founder of STAG Vets and Comfort Farms, a place where farming and therapy come together, a place to grow quality food, support the local economy, and help veterans with PTSD get back on their feet — a place to, as Jon says, give veterans the opportunity to serve again.

Making a connection with Jon Jackson

I agreed that a documentary was a good idea, if for no other reason than to help promote such an interesting place. In the meantime, I got a call about doing photos to accompany an article for the blog. So I headed down to Milledgeville to make pictures and to do a little preliminary research and interviewing for the documentary.

When I was talking to Jon, he said two things in particular that really stuck with me. One, and I’m paraphrasing them both, was that talk about veterans often suggested pity for the pitiful. And the other was that farming was, in a way, a analogue to war. That working a farm is kind of like trading in battle with a human enemy for battle with Mother Nature — a rugged, powerful thing, not a vocation for the faint of heart or pitiful.

So I wanted to capture the essence of those things in the photographs — Jon in the midst of it all, surrounded by wilderness — nature and beast, finding some sense of control over the situation rather than letting the situation totally control him.

The wiry vertical trees exploding up in the background, the whole of the composition, in my mind, conveys a sense of order in the midst of what could easily be chaos. Which is kind of the essence of what goes on down there.

Of course there’s only so much we can control about Mother Nature, but we can, to varying degrees, control how we react to and approach it.

Making a Connection at Comfort Farms with a Camera

For the photo I used a Canon 5d ii with 24-70 mm lens fairly wide. I set up one Speedlight camera right, modified with a deep octabox. I used the sun for a backlight. I spent about an hour in Photoshop. And pigs, well… being pigs, aren’t the easiest animals to direct. So a lot of waiting went on, as I wanted to get a shot with one of the pigs looking forward. One of them finally did and we captured an image that I think we both felt was worth the wait.

Read more about Comfort Farms on Good Turns. 

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Utilising well worn utensils and linens in photographic compositions featuring food has long been a trend. Rather than detracting from the food subject, unmatched, burnished cutlery and unstarched linens set on rough-hewn surfaces contribute authenticity to an inherently “make believe” genre.

This aged to perfection Hoosier cabinet, minus its original flour bin-cum-sifter, presents shelves stocked with Depression Glass and  mid-century Fiestaware-style ceramics. The props’ cheerful bursts of color and classic vintage shapes evoke “good old days” nostalgia.  

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