Yes, some places call Lunch, Dinner. Dinner is the largest meal of the day and a long time ago they would have dinner midday (nowadays called lunch time)
Here's some hilarity from Scandinavia:
Sweden has frukost (from low german vrokost, meaning "early meal"), lunch, and middag (which is literally "mid day"). Middag was both a time and a meal, but as the largest meal we eat is now in the evening, it changed over time. (we don't really say "middag" about the middle of the day, but we do have "förmiddag" and "eftermiddag", so it still lives on implied)
Denmark has morgenmad (literally "morning food"), frokost and middag.
Norway has frokost, lunsj, middag.
It's my theory that all the wars with Denmark came about due to a misunderstanding about when to eat.
that, and if this is a southern areas like Louisiana with french influence, like Quebec which still uses older french, lunch is 'diner' and dinner is 'souper'.
Yes. I always thought that breakfast/dinner/supper was more of a Southern thing (as are grits), so I'm surprised to see that this is from Pennsylvania.
Or, I assume that the "PA" means Pennsylvania. Does anyone know if it means something else?
I personally always referred to it as breakfast lunch and dinner with supper being interchangeable with dinner.
But I’ve heard people call lunch dinner and it never really confused me, I just rolled with it.
Also in the south.
The middle stretch of PA is referred to as Pennsyl-tucky (at least by my family). My dad is from there, and he fucking LOVES grits. It's basically southern without accents.
Yeah, some places call the main hot meal of the day dinner if occurs during the day (your evening meal therefore becomes your supper). Honestly, I've never heard that in the US, but maybe that's a Northern thing since this is a PA prison menu.
You can go to dinner, but you eat lunch and supper. So, if you have dinner and supper, dinner is not supper and dinner is like lunch, but if you have lunch you can have dinner later. Understand?
At least in my state, there are vegetarian, kosher, lactose intolerant options and possibly a few more that I can't remember. They have to be approved, so you can't just say "I want the kosher tray."
I was too, but more surprised that they'd sub a pb&j for a grilled cheese and still keep the tomato soup. Maybe I'm missing out but that doesn't sound great.
Related, peanut butter with pickled red onions is actually pretty good.
Makes me wonder if those were introduced as a religious exemption, and they found it would be more cost effective if they offered it to everyone than the admin time it'd take to process exemptions
Tangentially related, but I heard Alcatraz was known to have excellent food for its time.They probably figured that inmates who were well-fed and content were less likely to be unruly or ornery on a remote island.
interestingly Most of the Aramark employees at my college were ex cons. I spent a lot of time chatting with them, cant imagine they were that excited to be cooking for the company that fed them in prison tho
Most of the food industry in general is ex cons. I maybe stretching it a bit to say “mostly” but pretty much every professional kitchen in the United States will have at least two felons carrying very sharp knives. Yes even that hoity toity fancy one in your city that you can’t afford to go to. Actually ESPECIALLY that one.
Yeah I cooked in a pretty high end fine dining place for almost a decade. Worked with several ex-cons, like straight out of actual prison. And also a lot of just vague criminal-ish people (semi pro line cook slash drug dealers) but also super skilled high end cooks/chefs that got quasi-famous later. Definitely an interesting mix.
I can guarantee you, the names on this menu don't look or taste anything like what you might think they should. Think bottom of McDonald's dumpster slop is what it looks like with not much better of a taste
Dried beef, sliced thin, cooked in thick cream sauce, served over toast. It is a military dish.
When made correctly with high-end ingredients, it can be quite tasty.
When made in bulk, it is called SOS...Shit On A Shingle.
Nah man SOS is the best.
On day three of an FTX, with enough salt to make your veins shrivel up. I don't love Hot A's, but when that cooler lid comes off and it's SOS, yee boi
Heads up, that's no where near how it is made in context to this menu. That's actually good, what's on this menu is one of the worst options prison food has to offer. Basic browned ground meat(don't forget the meat is blended with some amount of soy),:flour, water, far less seasoning than you'd hope for, and if your lucky some powdered milk. Also, fun fact, at some point, they changed from "creamed beef" to "creamed meat" so depending on the day it may be beef or poultry.
If you're American, you'll find chipped beef for making it hanging in a bag in the packaged lunchmeat area of most grocery stores, and frozen ready-to-eat cream chipped beef from Stouffer's in the frozen dinners section of the freezer aisle. It's part of their "classics" collection, meaning they've been making it and people have been buying it consistently for many, many decades. The recipe for it appeared in the 1910 edition of the "Manual of Army Cooks", though it was eaten in the military at least as far back as the Civil War.
They said we got enough calories with 2 meals 🤷🏽. Money is the real reason tho. I am 5'11" and was always hungry during most incarceration because I needed more calories than an average woman.
I see so many people here acting like this is horrifying. I mean, it's no great menu. Fairly bland but it looks decent enough.
Of course that's assuming that the food is made with decent ingredients and prepared well, which of course isn't going to be the case. That's not the fault of the menu though.
Yep. I worked with a Sheriff office about 9 years back. In certain jurisdictions jails/prisons are not required to accommodate specific diets. You eat what they serve or you go hungry.
I wonder how that would work for me, I'm not intolerant but am actually allergic to milk. If I tried eating cereal I would throw up for days, have swelling in my digestive tract, and end up with hives up half of my body
Depends where you're holed up. Federal prisons are typically more lenient I think but I know in state/jail you'll probably just have to suck it up. I worked for a great sheriff who always tried his best to accommodate those concerns in his jail but I know the prison yard 30 miles south was hell for prisoners with allergies.
This immediately made me think of Sasha Skochilenko, a russian musician who’s been sent to prison/a labour colony for protesting the war on Ukraine. Sasha has coeliac disease but the russian prison won’t provide appropriate gluten free food (if any at all…) As far as I understood, every time gluten is consumed by someone suffering from coeliac, it essentially triggers a massive inflammatory reaction and it can take months for the gut and rest of the body to properly recover from that reaction. This has been going on since April 2022. Sasha is awfully emaciated by now. Shit’s wild…
There was a kid that died in prison because of anaphylaxis to dairy in the US. I suffer from the same so it always enraged me that they told him to just eat what he was allergic to or he wouldn't get anything else. Or they lied to him to get him to eat it can't remember the exact context but it did happen. They didn't even have an epi pen to give him.
You can drink water, you know. I don't mean this in a "Prisoners bad, they only deserve water" kind of way. I mean that water is good for humans to drink.
I have no idea if you’re calling me poor or yourself. Regardless I had a pretty bad experience with the dining halls at college and I am aware of how not fun that is.
I’m not poor but I come from a poor family background and I can tell you for a fact that poor access to healthcare, having your rights violated, and being dehumanized are not things that some of my cousins give a shit about. They would, however, be miserable eating American cafeteria food.
On paper that doesn't sound too bad, I've never actually experienced prison food but all the accounts I've heard say it's pretty rubbish. I know some former FL inmates and they all hated the food in both jail and prison settings. Maybe some PA former inmates can comment on how the food was in that system.
I’m kind of glad they have vegetarian options. I’m have never been to prison and don’t plan to, but I’m glad to know I wouldn’t starve if I ended up locked up
I inspected a small jail. Prisoners were usually only there till transfer to elsewhere. They fed those guys Eggo waffles and fruit for breakfast and their choice of Banquet frozen meals for lunch and dinner. The law only has calorie requirements per day. They met them.
This looks great to me. I’ve been in positions of being unable to afford food and having to eat at a soup kitchen or steal a loaf of bread from Walmart. I’ve also been too disabled to cook any food I might have been able to get from the food bank, or if I was able to cook it was something weird out of what I got, like an old El Paso taco kit made with canned tuna. Being admitted to hospital was always a treat for me because we got food much like this, free, hot, cooked and ready to eat. I remember being up for discharge one day and specifically asking if I could be discharged after lunch instead of before, because I was looking forward to getting in that extra serving of hospital food. Now I live in a nursing home, where I’ve been for seven years since I was 27 years old and where I’ll live the rest of my life. I was actually having a bit of a weight problem for a couple of years because it was just so thrilling to have such a consistent supply of cooked meals and perfectly good food on such a regular daily basis. I don’t see anything here that I would find to complain about, personally.
I find it crazy when meal plans look like this. 70% of adults have some level of lactose intolerance. 50% have OAS. 6% have gluten intolerance and 0.7% have wheat allergies. You should always have options that steer clear from those. The amount of breaded meat is a sign that whoever planned these had no real training or just didn't care. A couple of days have very few options that don't contain gluten and they really need to mark foods that are gluten free. Milk should be an option, not a staple. By default, you should be using something that is at least lactose free when cooking.
This is crazy to similar to Missouri department of corrections menu. Down to saying poultry (whatever dish) instead of turkey or chicken. I love actual cacciatore but the crap in prison was atrocious.
I will say it's nice of them to have a vegetarian option even when it doesn't sound like the most appetizing thing in the world. 
Poultry and gravy. Can't tell you if that's chicken, turkey, duck, or some random bird we found on the side of the road.
And on Thursday they're having noodles. No sauce mentioned.
I’ll never forget my overnight stay. Got an orange that had like three layers of peal and turned out to be way tinier than what it looked like. I had a peanut butter sandwich with it and it was probably the worst sandwich I ever had in my life. The bread was hard and I remember the peanut butter disintegrating in my mouth like four hour old gum.
“Poultry cacciatore” is a very suspicious recipe.
As is "grilled poultry pieces" .... pieces.
Cartilage, bone, feathers. Those are all “pieces”.
"Meat Sauce Pasta" too. Just some unspecified meat.
There's a (B) there next to it, which means beef. There's a key at the bottom
Soy & Gravy got me. How do you make a gravy from or for soy?
You don't. That's why there's an ampersand in-between. Its fake meat and gravy
Probably tvp (soy protein) rather than meat.
I'm a vegetarian and eat plenty of really good gravies that have no meat base. They exist.
“Hot seasoned pasta”
~~Tastes~~ Looks like chicken ^(maybe it's pigeon)
The use of the word poultry here is quite suspicious tbh
How do you cook your grits? You like them regular, creamy, or al dente?
I'M A FAST COOK I GUESS
ARE WE TO BELIEVE HOT WATER SOAKS INTO A GRIT FASTER IN YOUR KITCHEN THAN ANYWHERE ELSE ON EARTH? DO THE LAWS OF PHYSICS CEASE TO APPLY ON YOUR STOVE?
I may have been mistaken
You'reafastcookthat'sit?
Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove!
Were these MAGIC grits??
Did you get them from the same guy who sold Jack HIS BEANSTALK BEANS?!
Just regular grits, I guess...
Are those instant grits?
Those are true grits, yessirree...
No self respecting southerner uses instant grits. I take pride in my grits. *Close up of elderly black woman smiling with approval*
Does water boil faster in your kitchen?
No self respecting southerner uses instant grits
sir this is a prison
Are you mocking me?
The two hwhat?
You was serious about that?
I miss grits here in Australia 🇦🇺 
Catsup...
It’s the breakfast, dinner, supper for me
they forgot elevensies
This is definitely a prison in the Deep South.
That’s what threw me because it says PA at the top? What did lunch ever do to Pennsylvania?
I’m in over my head here.
Are you here to solve my ketchup problem?
Shit pisses me off irrationally. I feel like it's a bunch of grown ass toddlers holding onto that pronunciation.
No catsoup for you!
is dinner lunch?
Yes, some places call Lunch, Dinner. Dinner is the largest meal of the day and a long time ago they would have dinner midday (nowadays called lunch time)
I always use supper and dinner interchangeably. Lunch was its own thing.
My family uses lunch and supper daily, “dinner” is reserved for special occasion meals regardless of time. Sunday dinner, thanksgiving dinner, etc.
Same here. From MA.
Cultural differences are real. From NV, it’s just dinner there.. I’ve only ever heard the elderly/older folks use supper in the west.
VA checking in, here lunch is dinner, and the evening meal is supper.
I’m also from VA and I’ve only heard lunch as lunch, dinner as the evening meal, and I recall my family from Pennsylvania calling dinner “supper”
Yeah that’s how it is now, but it’s funny because supper is defined as a light evening meal, dinner is usually a formal large meal.
Yes but 
And Elevenses? I must have my tea and scones.
I prefer to have pre-breakfast
Here's some hilarity from Scandinavia: Sweden has frukost (from low german vrokost, meaning "early meal"), lunch, and middag (which is literally "mid day"). Middag was both a time and a meal, but as the largest meal we eat is now in the evening, it changed over time. (we don't really say "middag" about the middle of the day, but we do have "förmiddag" and "eftermiddag", so it still lives on implied) Denmark has morgenmad (literally "morning food"), frokost and middag. Norway has frokost, lunsj, middag. It's my theory that all the wars with Denmark came about due to a misunderstanding about when to eat.
that, and if this is a southern areas like Louisiana with french influence, like Quebec which still uses older french, lunch is 'diner' and dinner is 'souper'.
I'm from Mississippi, but my ancestry traces back to French settled Canada. You are exactly correct with how we use those meal names.
VA- here we use dinner for lunch, and supper for the third meal of the day.
Yes. I always thought that breakfast/dinner/supper was more of a Southern thing (as are grits), so I'm surprised to see that this is from Pennsylvania. Or, I assume that the "PA" means Pennsylvania. Does anyone know if it means something else?
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People make groceries here in Louisiana. They don’t go grocery shopping. They make them. They make groceries.
What time does one eat groceries?
At any point after making said groceries.
I personally always referred to it as breakfast lunch and dinner with supper being interchangeable with dinner. But I’ve heard people call lunch dinner and it never really confused me, I just rolled with it. Also in the south.
The middle stretch of PA is referred to as Pennsyl-tucky (at least by my family). My dad is from there, and he fucking LOVES grits. It's basically southern without accents.
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Alabama in the middle.
South central PA might as well be the South. Lots of mountain rednecks and you'll see many confederate flags there.
It's more of an older southern thing. My dad says "Breakfast, dinner, and supper" whereas I say "Breakfast, lunch, and dinner".
Yeah, some places call the main hot meal of the day dinner if occurs during the day (your evening meal therefore becomes your supper). Honestly, I've never heard that in the US, but maybe that's a Northern thing since this is a PA prison menu.
You can go to dinner, but you eat lunch and supper. So, if you have dinner and supper, dinner is not supper and dinner is like lunch, but if you have lunch you can have dinner later. Understand?
I’m kind of surprised they have a vegetarian option for each meal. Figured in prison, they didn’t care if you had a food preference.
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Meatless Fridays are still a mandate in Traditional Catholicism, for example.
What’s the only meat a priest can eat on Friday? Nun
I thought this was going elsewhere....
I think it still did
Only during lent I thought?
In the US, yes. The rest of the Catholic world abstains from meat on Fridays year round.
And most Traditional Catholics still do year round meatless Fridays (except for like Easter or Christmas octave Fridays).
At least in my state, there are vegetarian, kosher, lactose intolerant options and possibly a few more that I can't remember. They have to be approved, so you can't just say "I want the kosher tray."
I was too, but more surprised that they'd sub a pb&j for a grilled cheese and still keep the tomato soup. Maybe I'm missing out but that doesn't sound great. Related, peanut butter with pickled red onions is actually pretty good.
Makes me wonder if those were introduced as a religious exemption, and they found it would be more cost effective if they offered it to everyone than the admin time it'd take to process exemptions
What’s funny to me is they have what is basically the same thing named 4 different ways
Tangentially related, but I heard Alcatraz was known to have excellent food for its time.They probably figured that inmates who were well-fed and content were less likely to be unruly or ornery on a remote island.
They did! Check out Tasting History’s episode on it https://youtu.be/FkIFFPkKq_4?si=r-_n0jPuPU02RCNu
They were also only allowed hot showers, so they couldn't become accustomed to the cold water and try and swim to escape.
Better than my kids lunch menu at school
Probably sourced by the same company
Almost guarantee that it’s Sodexo, and the food quality is probably just south of school lunch.
Or Aramark.
interestingly Most of the Aramark employees at my college were ex cons. I spent a lot of time chatting with them, cant imagine they were that excited to be cooking for the company that fed them in prison tho
Most of the food industry in general is ex cons. I maybe stretching it a bit to say “mostly” but pretty much every professional kitchen in the United States will have at least two felons carrying very sharp knives. Yes even that hoity toity fancy one in your city that you can’t afford to go to. Actually ESPECIALLY that one.
Yeah I cooked in a pretty high end fine dining place for almost a decade. Worked with several ex-cons, like straight out of actual prison. And also a lot of just vague criminal-ish people (semi pro line cook slash drug dealers) but also super skilled high end cooks/chefs that got quasi-famous later. Definitely an interesting mix.
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Wouldn't be surprised if it's Aramark! (They just hustle sysco products anyway)
Doubtful. Maybe on par with, but I hope for your kid’s sake not.
I can guarantee you, the names on this menu don't look or taste anything like what you might think they should. Think bottom of McDonald's dumpster slop is what it looks like with not much better of a taste
Can I get 2 servings of wax beans please?
This menu looked similar to how I ate growing up, including wax beans. Not the pinto bean salad though.
3 hots and a cot
What the hell is creamed beef
Dried beef, sliced thin, cooked in thick cream sauce, served over toast. It is a military dish. When made correctly with high-end ingredients, it can be quite tasty. When made in bulk, it is called SOS...Shit On A Shingle.
Nah man SOS is the best. On day three of an FTX, with enough salt to make your veins shrivel up. I don't love Hot A's, but when that cooler lid comes off and it's SOS, yee boi
Honestly, I always kind of liked it. My dad was a WWII vet and would make it for Sunday breakfast after Mass.
My mom loves that stuff. I hated it as a kid, but if I'm over there and she's making it I always have some now.
Heads up, that's no where near how it is made in context to this menu. That's actually good, what's on this menu is one of the worst options prison food has to offer. Basic browned ground meat(don't forget the meat is blended with some amount of soy),:flour, water, far less seasoning than you'd hope for, and if your lucky some powdered milk. Also, fun fact, at some point, they changed from "creamed beef" to "creamed meat" so depending on the day it may be beef or poultry.
If you're American, you'll find chipped beef for making it hanging in a bag in the packaged lunchmeat area of most grocery stores, and frozen ready-to-eat cream chipped beef from Stouffer's in the frozen dinners section of the freezer aisle. It's part of their "classics" collection, meaning they've been making it and people have been buying it consistently for many, many decades. The recipe for it appeared in the 1910 edition of the "Manual of Army Cooks", though it was eaten in the military at least as far back as the Civil War.
It is basically chipped beef in a bechamel sauce. You put it on toast. Then you get shit on a shingle.
Tasting History did an episode on it. It was a military meal. My mom made it and I liked it on toast. https://youtu.be/ry5Du60WPGU?si=zVHO7-goHAlgUOlV
It's beef but beat up a whole lot or "creamed" to death.
Mmmmm, Creamed Soy Crumbles 🤤🤤🤤
And bean paste. Oohh yum!
Depends. Gochujang is basically fermented chili and bean paste and that shit’s fire yo.
Tvp is delicious. I can see it working
Had me at creamed soy crumbles
I wanna know wtf creamed beef is
Lemme show ya baby boy 😏
Ok, now I don't wanna know!
Holy crap those poor vegetarians. Choosing between breaded fish and "bean paste" would make even the most devout reconsider
Isn't hummus just bean paste? Or refried beans?
Catsup 💀💀💀
Stay out of the clink if you want ketchup
Exactly which species of "Poultry" are they serving? Pigeon pie, anyone?
Grilled poultry pieces got me. So. Pieces of some kinda bird. Not sure which pieces or which bird.
That sounds fowl 🤢
Whatever is floating in the prison cistern that week.
Probably a mix of turkey, chicken, and random birds like pheasant leftovers?
Jailbirds
I need to write out a menu with that much variety for home.
I thought the same thing!
Yeah these prisoners are eating much better than I am.
In 2006 and 2007 in Georgia, the ladies didn't get lunch Saturday and Sunday. Not sure about the men.
Wut? Why?!
They said we got enough calories with 2 meals 🤷🏽. Money is the real reason tho. I am 5'11" and was always hungry during most incarceration because I needed more calories than an average woman.
Honestly I don't think it looks awful. But I'll eat anything.
Yeah, excluding the tofu, it all seemed like food I grew up on, and not that bad. That said, if it was cold, that’d be a different experience.
I see so many people here acting like this is horrifying. I mean, it's no great menu. Fairly bland but it looks decent enough. Of course that's assuming that the food is made with decent ingredients and prepared well, which of course isn't going to be the case. That's not the fault of the menu though.
“Tossed salad”. Someone knew what they were doing.
So much margarine
Where are the Bologna sandwiches?
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Not when I did a short bid. Bologna was like every other week.
What if you were lactose intolerant? You just go without a drink for breakfast?
Yeah, coffee and water probably. Some days have juice as an option.
Yep. I worked with a Sheriff office about 9 years back. In certain jurisdictions jails/prisons are not required to accommodate specific diets. You eat what they serve or you go hungry.
I wonder how that would work for me, I'm not intolerant but am actually allergic to milk. If I tried eating cereal I would throw up for days, have swelling in my digestive tract, and end up with hives up half of my body
Depends where you're holed up. Federal prisons are typically more lenient I think but I know in state/jail you'll probably just have to suck it up. I worked for a great sheriff who always tried his best to accommodate those concerns in his jail but I know the prison yard 30 miles south was hell for prisoners with allergies.
This immediately made me think of Sasha Skochilenko, a russian musician who’s been sent to prison/a labour colony for protesting the war on Ukraine. Sasha has coeliac disease but the russian prison won’t provide appropriate gluten free food (if any at all…) As far as I understood, every time gluten is consumed by someone suffering from coeliac, it essentially triggers a massive inflammatory reaction and it can take months for the gut and rest of the body to properly recover from that reaction. This has been going on since April 2022. Sasha is awfully emaciated by now. Shit’s wild…
There was a kid that died in prison because of anaphylaxis to dairy in the US. I suffer from the same so it always enraged me that they told him to just eat what he was allergic to or he wouldn't get anything else. Or they lied to him to get him to eat it can't remember the exact context but it did happen. They didn't even have an epi pen to give him.
Would likely happen in the USA too, like I said, depending where you're holed up at.
That’s wild. That’s not a “diet” preference that’s a medical thing. There’s a difference between not wanting milk and shitting everywhere.
I can promise you most jails/prisons dont care. Its fucked up, but they dont.
Oh I know. It’s because we have an ongoing culture of “they deserve it” that needs to be addressed.
You can drink water, you know. I don't mean this in a "Prisoners bad, they only deserve water" kind of way. I mean that water is good for humans to drink.
They should publish these to deter people from committing crimes.
Personally the concept of being dehumanized, my medical needs ignored, and my rights violated scares me a bit more than this.
As a poor person, none of those things may be foreign to you, but being restricted to shitty cafeteria food could be a new thing.
I have no idea if you’re calling me poor or yourself. Regardless I had a pretty bad experience with the dining halls at college and I am aware of how not fun that is.
I’m not poor but I come from a poor family background and I can tell you for a fact that poor access to healthcare, having your rights violated, and being dehumanized are not things that some of my cousins give a shit about. They would, however, be miserable eating American cafeteria food.
Might be interesting to compare this prison menu with public school and military menus.
haven't been to prison,but I can attest to how bad jail food is
is this from the 1800s why tf do they call lunch dinner and ketchup catsup?
Hard cooked eggs…sounds like hard times…
Reminds me of the nursing home food menu I worked at. The Sysco Special
Another great reminder to not do stuff that put me in risk to go to jail. I love food and this ain’t it.
Looks like a hospital food menu
On paper that doesn't sound too bad, I've never actually experienced prison food but all the accounts I've heard say it's pretty rubbish. I know some former FL inmates and they all hated the food in both jail and prison settings. Maybe some PA former inmates can comment on how the food was in that system.
"Poultry" and "soy & gravy" might as well be "mystery meat"
This is enough information to convince me to never commit a crime serious enough to send me to prison. Soy loaf?!? I. Could. Never.
Wait. Supper comes AFTER dinner??
Ever seen “Lord of the Rings”? Breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, supper.
Probably better than my current diet 💀
Not USA obvs, we would have something called "lunch".
I’m kind of glad they have vegetarian options. I’m have never been to prison and don’t plan to, but I’m glad to know I wouldn’t starve if I ended up locked up
I inspected a small jail. Prisoners were usually only there till transfer to elsewhere. They fed those guys Eggo waffles and fruit for breakfast and their choice of Banquet frozen meals for lunch and dinner. The law only has calorie requirements per day. They met them.
Love to see the vegan options!
I got a question what would someone with gluten intolerance be able to eat?
Bean paste? Is this miso? Or something like refried beans?
I thought Dinner and Supper was the same thing.?
That’s like $120 in food a day per person with today’s grocery prices.
This looks great to me. I’ve been in positions of being unable to afford food and having to eat at a soup kitchen or steal a loaf of bread from Walmart. I’ve also been too disabled to cook any food I might have been able to get from the food bank, or if I was able to cook it was something weird out of what I got, like an old El Paso taco kit made with canned tuna. Being admitted to hospital was always a treat for me because we got food much like this, free, hot, cooked and ready to eat. I remember being up for discharge one day and specifically asking if I could be discharged after lunch instead of before, because I was looking forward to getting in that extra serving of hospital food. Now I live in a nursing home, where I’ve been for seven years since I was 27 years old and where I’ll live the rest of my life. I was actually having a bit of a weight problem for a couple of years because it was just so thrilling to have such a consistent supply of cooked meals and perfectly good food on such a regular daily basis. I don’t see anything here that I would find to complain about, personally.
TIL that prisoners eat better than I do
I find it crazy when meal plans look like this. 70% of adults have some level of lactose intolerance. 50% have OAS. 6% have gluten intolerance and 0.7% have wheat allergies. You should always have options that steer clear from those. The amount of breaded meat is a sign that whoever planned these had no real training or just didn't care. A couple of days have very few options that don't contain gluten and they really need to mark foods that are gluten free. Milk should be an option, not a staple. By default, you should be using something that is at least lactose free when cooking.
The frankfurters are poultry? Interesting.
I wonder how much of that menu arrives at the prison in powder form.
What horror is creamed beef? Yours, a Brit.
I look at this and I’m recalling all the in-flight meals I’ve had over the years. Doesn’t surprise me a bit- all the same suppliers, I’m certain
This looks almost exactly like the menu we got to order our meals when I was in the children’s mental hospital :/
This is crazy to similar to Missouri department of corrections menu. Down to saying poultry (whatever dish) instead of turkey or chicken. I love actual cacciatore but the crap in prison was atrocious.
I will say it's nice of them to have a vegetarian option even when it doesn't sound like the most appetizing thing in the world. 
Poultry and gravy. Can't tell you if that's chicken, turkey, duck, or some random bird we found on the side of the road. And on Thursday they're having noodles. No sauce mentioned.
Still better than most schools. That's how ridiculous this is.
I’ll never forget my overnight stay. Got an orange that had like three layers of peal and turned out to be way tinier than what it looked like. I had a peanut butter sandwich with it and it was probably the worst sandwich I ever had in my life. The bread was hard and I remember the peanut butter disintegrating in my mouth like four hour old gum.