Tired of eating the same old things? Then it’s time for you to get creative like us prisoners and mix up a new dish. Try my black beans and beef bowl.
I once had a roommate with whom I had developed a sort of sisterhood. We looked out for one another, got along great, and had lots of fun as roommates. We ate lots of meals together in our small cell, taking turns cooking for one another.
On one such occasion, we had movie night and I made my famous black beans and beef bowl for us to eat as we watched the action thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx. Our bowls were so filling that pretty soon, the movie began to watch us! So, I turned off the television and off we each went into oblivion, sleeping like infants.
It is times like those that make these concrete walls more breathable and a little less suffocating.
My recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
1 2-oz bag of nacho cheese-flavored Doritos ($0.71)
1 packet of spanish rice with cheese ($0.62)
1 8-oz bag of Brushy Creek Black Beans and Beef ($2.13)
1 packet of ranch dressing ($0.59)
(Total cost: $4.05)
Directions
First, you can either crunch up your Doritos, or leave them whole. After your spanish rice is cooked to your perfection, pour it over your Doritos. Next, add your heated black beans and beef. And last, add your ranch dressing because everything is better with ranch!
All of the above items are sold to us by our prison commissary company, Keefe Commissary Network. But I’m certain that you can find similar items in your neighborhood grocery store. So go out, find these ingredients and try my creation! And remember to put some love in it. That’s the key ingredient with which you will never go wrong. Enjoy!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.
Food Tales: Chanell’s Black Beans and Beef
