Not So Naked Lunch

"Tacos," at least that's what I've heard today's lunch called more than once by the deputies. I get one "hot meal" a day, and lunch is it; thank god only one! I refused to eat my "hot meals" at all for more than two months straight when I first got here over a year ago once I saw the way it was served. Because I am in "isolation" all my "hot meals" are served in three compartment styrofoam trays, which means the food routinely gets mixed together; I get gravy in my pudding and pudding in my salad all the time. Today we had beans, ground meat (possibly beef, possibly not meat at all). Iceberg lettuce and salsa. I was lucky and they did not put the salsa directly on the beans or meat today, so I only had to pick a few green peppers and onions out of the meat and I was good to go. I like "taco" days merely because of the quantity of food I get. It means I don't have to be hungry later. Even if they dump the salsa on the meat and beans I will either scrape as much off as i can or just mix it in and count my blessings that I have plenty to eat as it burns its way down to my stomach. We also get a small packet of artificially sweetened juice (to mix with 8 ounces of water), which was orange today. And a single pack of dressing (italian today) that I usually save until I have enough to actually use for either a salad or on my hard boiled eggs in the morning (since we get no salt or anything else to put on the eggs). Actually the "hot meals" aren't all that bad compared to other jails (ADA County jail in Idaho was hands down the worst food I have ever had to eat in my life, with Kootenai County jail a close second-even the plain bread tasted horrible-here in Indio the bread is pretty good!). The only problem here isn't the food itself so much as the propensity they have for peppering it to the death with green, black, red, and other unamable peppers! Yuk! Don't people realize that pepper only came into use historically as a way to mask the flavor of spoiled and rotting food. And that's exactly all it's good for since even a little will completely dominate the taste buds so you can't taste anything else. A far far cry from plain unsalted popcorn!