When Ashley Fox landed in jail for the first (and only) time two years ago, she said, "I wasn't used to being told what to do. Here, you're told when to use the phone. You're told when to eat."

On the women's pod at Allegheny County Jail, Ms. Fox, 22, of Titusville, Crawford County, forged a mother-daughter type bond with fellow inmate Diane McCoy, 41, of the North Side. Ms. McCoy knew from prior jail visits that the toughest part of the equation was relinquishing control of what you eat.

"It's not home no more. You know? It's not greens and cornbread and fried chicken and pork chops. The macaroni and cheese comes up a little bit," she said, which she might have meant both ways -- "up" to the pod, or cellblock, and "up" a second time.

		Dining In (Jail), Dining Out podcast This week, PG food editor Bob Batz Jr., dining critic China Millman and staff writer Gabrielle Banks get the inside word on institutional cooking, a la the County Jail. Click here.

The institutional food delivered in plastic sectional trays was, at best, bland and uninspired compared with the soul food Ms. McCoy was accustomed to eating. Still, Ms. McCoy, who is big-boned, says she put on about 40 pounds in jail, which inmates agree is not uncommon.

Of course, making prisoners happy isn't a requirement. All the state law calls for is three "nutritionally adequate," "well-balanced" meals, wherein hot food arrives hot and cold food comes cold. Meals must be cooked on the premises and weekly menus planned in advance and "arranged in a nonmonotonous manner."

If you're lucky, you've never had to contemplate a plate of jail grub. But people in lockdown think about food all the time, and guards are quick to recognize it's an important factor in maintaining prisoners' physical and mental health.

Post-Gazette photographer Darrell Sapp and I visited with Allegheny County inmates twice at lunchtime over the past several months to hear their thoughts about a switch in food vendors. Our taste testers were part of a group called Men and Women of Truth, a speaker's panel for visitors to the jail. They agreed with no prior warning to tell us about the old and new food, although their conversation often drifted from the food in front of them to what they'd rather be eating.

Apparently, in jail -- just as in the free world -- food is a recurring theme in daydreams.

Inmate Leonard "Tiger" Smith, who has spent 20 of his 42 years in jails and in several state prisons, said he has had vivid culinary fantasies during his stay at "ACJ." He conjured images of seasonings, Lawry's seasoned salt. Mr. Smith, of Garfield, saw himself chopping onions and simmering them with green peppers. "That flavoring, that taste that gets your mouth watering?" he said, his eyes misting with reverence. "Pork chops? Lasagna? You can't get that."

In fact, inmates hoard salt and pepper packets and flavoring packets from instant soups purchased at the commissary so they can whip up bootlegged hot sauce on the sly. Hot sauce is considered contraband, the inmates said, because it can be used as a weapon.

Jailed citizens often spend as much as $100 a week supplementing free meals with items bought from the commissary. The inventory includes Snickers (85 cents), Moon Pies (65 cents), Atomic Fireballs ($1.10), 3-ounce tuna pouch ($2.55) and 18 ounces of peanut butter ($2.80), plus items such as an XL sports bra ($10.50), 2XL boxers ($4.60) and denture cleanser (60 cents). They combine their joint food purchases on the pod to fix "Chi Chi's," a common jail dish. Ms. McCoy explained the recipe: You take an old chip bag or a garbage bag and mix in Oodles of Noodles ramen, Cheese 'n Crackers, beef sticks and pepperoni ("if you can afford a pack").

"You don't think about it, but you're eating out of a garbage bag. That's crazy," said inmate Cory Harrigan, who worked for years as a short-order cook at his grandfather's restaurant, The Original Hot Dog Shop in Oakland.

Once he got sober in jail, Mr. Harrigan, 23, of Greenfield, began craving homemade angel hair pasta and gnocchi with prosciutto and fresh parmesan, family specialties he grew up eating.

Before his arrest, he used cocaine and heroin. "I didn't eat properly," he said. "Food was, like, secondary. I was homeless for awhile, so my first concern was getting high and not being dope sick. Second was getting something to eat and finding a place to stay.

"It was like dine-and-dash. I walk into a restaurant. I order something. I'm high. I eat it and I'm gone. Dine-and-dash. I don't know how long I'm gonna hold it down," he said.

When he first arrived at the jail, the 5-foot, 6-inch Mr. Harrigan was extremely underweight, he said, and he had no problem scarfing down whatever came on the jail food trays.

But once he got clean and gained weight, he began giving his trays to inmates who didn't have money in their commissary fund. Other guys on the pod sold trays for whatever the market offered.

Some people won't touch the food trays when they first get to jail. But Ms. McCoy said the more common pattern is that inmates become more discerning after they've been locked up for awhile: "There's a lot of people who come in here off the street and it don't matter what it is, they're gonna eat it."

She said, "Once they detox or get theirselves together, then they get picky. They don't get this and they're allergic to that. They want a special tray. But when they were out there in the street, they didn't care."

We first met these wonderfully candid taste testers last summer when the jail was in its final week with its prior food vendor, Aramark.

The Aramark meal consisted of two slices of white bread, a slice of bologna, a blob of mustard, a square of cheese, baked beans, coleslaw and yellow cake with vanilla icing.

Ms. Fox called it everyone's "least favorite meal."

Mr. Harrigan simply said, "I can't conform to this," but he did sample the cake.

He pinched the orange cheese slice in his fingers, waved it above his head and said, "I don't think you could melt this with a blast furnace." Others agreed.

Ms. McCoy said she couldn't stomach the beans.

Mr. Smith traded his cake for a sandwich. He reminisced about going down the food line at the old county jail on Ross Street, where they served fresh baked bread, fresh soup and hot, roasted meat.

The new food vendor, Canteen, began providing meals in August. The county now pays 80 cents per meal instead of 68 cents. Guidelines require that the county jail provide no less than 2,900 calories of nutritional value for adults and no less than 3,200 for juvenile inmates. The daily menu is tailored to provide 50 percent carbohydrates, 35 to 36 percent fat, and 14 to 15 percent protein, per American Dietetic Association recommendations. But Maj. James Donis said some vendors meet caloric requirements by tossing extra pats of butter on the tray.

Cost-wise, he said, some correctional facilities go as high as $2.50 a meal. On the flip side, he mentioned a notorious sheriff in Maricopa County, Ariz., who boasts about serving green surplus bologna and cold beans two times a day for less than 40 cents a meal.

"[Sheriff Joe Arpaio] has a lot of lawsuits pending. Is that worth it?" the major asked. Maj. Donis uses himself as a barometer to judge whether the jail's food is palatable: "I've been eating this food here for 20 years," he said, scraping a plastic spoon to capture the last bits of beans on his Aramark platter.

Since the new vendor, Canteen, started preparing meals, he said, "complaints are going down." He still eats about once a week on the pod to stay abreast of people's responses.

Inmates with religious or medically prescribed diets can get low-sodium, vegetarian or other custom-made meals from the kitchen. Kosher meals come frozen and cost the jail $7 a pop.

On our second visit to the jail in September, Darrell and I saw Mr. Smith again and met inmate Brandon Pool, 22, of Lincoln Place, who had been serving the Canteen food trays on his pod for awhile.

To the untrained eye, the lunch food looked very similar to the last meal we'd seen: two slices of white bread, a wrapped slice of cheese, turkey, coleslaw, potato chips and sandwich cookies. However, Mr. Pool said he's collected more empty trays on the pods since the jail brought in the new vendor. Personally, he has no money to buy commissary, so he eats the institutional food regularly but said he stays away from carbs, because they slow him down. He said the cheese is better.

Mr. Smith said, "You can melt this cheese."

There's more variety in the vegetables and more variety in the breakfast menu. Also no more baked beans. Little things make a big difference, Mr. Pool said.

By the time of our second visit, Mr. Harrigan had left the jail for a halfway house, and the two female taste testers we'd enlisted had been released next door to the Renewal Center, also a halfway house.

The "mother-daughter" duo kindly tasted the new food trays we'd brought over, with a jail guard as our escort. Ms. Fox said the new turkey seemed moist and she and Ms. McCoy agreed the cookies were better than before. But they said the fresh food cooked by the chefs at Renewal was much better.

With fewer residents to feed, the cooks put finesse into the cooking.

And Ms. Fox, who had just been hired as a telemarketer, admitted she couldn't wait for her first paycheck so she could a buy a meal on her own. "I'm gonna get Chinese."

Since our last visit Ms. McCoy has re-settled on her own on the North Side and plans to study social work at Community College of Allegheny County. She works at McDonald's and has a second gig serving, of all things, Aramark food at Penguins games at Mellon Arena.

She said life on the outside has led to indulgences: "I can't walk past a restaurant without stopping in and getting something."

However, she said she plans to see a nutritionist soon to talk about taking off the 40 pounds she put on in jail.