Recently, I started to wonder about the best meal served in my prison. Unfortunately, there are only two contenders: the chicken tray and the spaghetti and meatballs.

I figured most rational people would say the chicken tray. It’s got a lot to love: a quarter chicken (the drumstick and thigh), rice, beans, some white bread, vegetables and a few confused leaves of iceberg lettuce. But the most significant reason I suspected this would be the favored choice is because the chicken tray contains the most identifiable meat of the meals Aramark serves us.

Other meals provided by the Florida Department of Corrections through its food vendor are less conspicuous. We can’t really know what’s in the myriad patties they feed us. Some are billed as ground poultry. I don’t know what’s in it, nor do I want to. Why? Turns out poultry is any domesticated bird kept for eggs and/or meat. Does emu qualify? Pigeon? Is there a chance we are eating pigeon patties in prison?

Anyway, when it comes to the chicken tray, most people only eat the chicken itself and the sliced white bread. The mashed “potatoes,” which taste more like cardboard, are hardly touched. The rice is hazardous; it’s so undercooked the grains have been known to crack teeth. The vegetables, submerged in murky, swamp-green water, have lost all structural coherence. I have nothing bad to say about the baked beans — they are fine.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good-enough meal. But my real qualm with the chicken tray is that it doesn’t come with dessert. That’s an instant disqualifier right there.

So that leaves the spaghetti and meatballs.

First off, and perhaps most importantly, there’s dessert on the spaghetti tray, and it’s usually chocolate cake with frosting. The new Aramark mix is lighter and butterier than whatever the FDC used previously. Also, whoever was slicing the cake has become more generous — kudos to you, kitchen worker. With good dessert and portions, so goes the rest of the tray.

Second, the pasta sauce Aramark provides isn’t watered down or skimpy on the tomato flavor. In fact, on more than one occasion I have spotted — and not in a grainy, could-be-Bigfoot-at-night kind of way — herbs! Real herbs in the tomato sauce! They might even be Italian herbs, but it’s hard to tell because the serving is so small. I’ll keep investigating.

The truth is the meatballs suck. They’re Ikea Swedish meatball-sized and seem to be boiled instead of baked. When you bite them, they squeak.

I should also mention that spaghetti is rarely the pasta that ends up on the tray. Most often, we receive rotini (thick corkscrew). I’m not too picky about what kind of pasta I receive. I’m much more concerned about how my pasta has been cooked. When cooked properly — not al dente, they never quite get al dente here — the sauce plus pasta plus subpar meatballs form a nearly acceptable meal.

Plenty of residents don’t eat the meatballs. But usually someone — like my friend Cory — will happily take them back to the dorm and toss them in a ramen soup. Occasionally people pass on the whole plate. In those cases, I’m happy to take it off their hands! By the time these trays leave the tables and reach the trash cans, they’re clean. And the best meal is surely one where the least amount of food is thrown away.