An Alcatraz Prisoner's Meal

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Looking forward to the Drinking History where Max makes prison wine

I think the weird recipe was her way of saying how to raise "well bred" kids by giving them lots of sunshine, flowers, water to play in, dogs to play with and a nice bath at the end of the day to wash away all the dirt. Perhaps she wasn't known to be a good cook, but a good mother :)

Fear of getting tapeworms from pork was a big scare during the 50s. Cooking pork to basically shoe leather was the norm. My Nana lived by this until she passed a few years ago. You don't want to get trichinosis!

Another fun fact: you could only get hot showers at Alcatraz. That was because the authorities worried that cold showers would acclimate the inmates to the cold waters of San Francisco Bay if they wanted to swim for it. It didn't work, as Morris and the Anglin brothers proved in 1962. :) This one was quirky and interesting. Thanks!

As a retired Correctional Food Service Supervisor of 25 years this was an excellent episode. It brought back many forgotten memories. As my first warden said, "Food is the cheapest form of morale there is." Over the last 20 years I saw the food quality slowly diminish which did have a negative impact on the inmates. Thank you for showing a bit of prison life.

The pigs of the 1950s had a lot more fat than modern pigs. Trichinosis was a huge concern then as well which would explain the long cooking time.

always joked that my grandmother basically cooked prison food but its still crazy seeing her cucumber salad recipe in the alcatraz menu lmao

Actually met someone who used to work as a guard on Alcatraz while back from a family vacation in San Francisco. Turned out he was the last guard out of the prison, locked it up and pocketed the key. Met him while we were eating dinner on Amtrak. He noticed I was wearing a "Alcatraz swim team" beanie I purchased while touring San Fran. Saw my beanie and struck up a conversation with us. He wrote a book about his time as a guard there and some of his stories. Pretty chill dude.

The children recipe meant....if children were raised with fresh air, time to enjoy nature and the love of a puppy.....they wouldn't turn into criminals.

I found the ‘well ‘bread’ children’ recipe really wholesome. Let your kids run around outside in the sun & nature with their dogs all day and then when they’re home, covered in dirt from the field and a little burnt, clean them off in a refreshing cool bath. Do this and you won’t be sending them to Alcatraz :D

Yo, not to be weird, but on your birthday could you please do a history of Max Miller? what kind of childhood recipes do you get nostalgia for, what kind of holiday dishes did you have? Did you perhaps have a go to homemade birthday cake? What do you go to today for easy meals? Maybe an all time favorite?

My grandfather, who was a Sioux activist in his later life and a farm hand who passed away in 2003 at the age of 105 spent three years in Alcatraz in the early 1930’s while in the army for punching a superior officer and breaking the officer’s arm. The officer had called him a derogatory name referring to his Native American race. I asked him a few years before he died what it was like to be in Alcatraz. I didn’t think he would tell me but he just looked at me and chuckled and then said, “Oh, it was pretty nice grandson. I worked in the bakery making pies so I made a lot of friends by giving them pies. I met some of the best people I ever knew there. Anyway, it was a whole lot better than that godd**med Army.” He died at 105 two weeks after his birthday while building fence. At the time he died he still lived on his own in a dilapidated old farmhouse in Butler. He had a 35 year old Navaho girlfriend, drank a fifth of whisky every two days, a case of beer every three days. He planted his own giant garden every year. He was a tribal elder at the nearby Indian Center. He poured concrete most of his life so his hands looked like catchers mitts. Tough old man with a powerful personality. He had a stroke in the field, was taken to the hospital, and passed away a day later. A good way for a real man to die.

I think the reason that the pork was baked for so long was because ovens weren't as efficient as they are now. Julia Child's cookbooks always used oven times and temps that were much hotter for longer as well as other recipes from back in the day.

Max, the reason for the 1-hour baking time is because ovens of the time were far less insulated than current-day ones, so lost a lot more heat, requiring longer cooking times, and also were far more uneven in their internal heating. It's very important to account for this when reading older recipes, including Julia Child's.

I've seen recipes like "Well Bread Children" before. These are typically descriptions of idyllic childhood scenes cheekily written in the format of a recipe. It's a bit of a maternal inside joke that states that if you want you kids to come out okay, then, you need to make sure that these things (such as exposing them to fresh air, sunshine, and nature) happen. The bathtub mentioned at the end refers to the parent/cook giving thier kids a bath after a day spent playing outside. I hope that helps.

I finally tried the cucumber salad recipe. I had a hunch that the trick to getting the evaporated milk to whip was putting it in the fridge overnight. I was right!

As someone who has never been to prison, I can understand the urge to throw your plate when they lower the quality of the pasta. Even criminals don't abide substandard spaghetti.

That looks way better than the lunches we had at school.

The fact that prisoners at Alcatraz got fed better then us kids on school lunch is crazy.