And now for something completely different: Parsley Does Thyme is the third book in a series by author Linda Olle (originally from Racine, WI, but long a resident of NYC's Upper East Side). The books on this series are novel/cookbook hybrids about a woman who is, or was, a food writer (as am I! just not the kind who can afford even 1/10th of UES rent), and in this book she goes to prison and spends her entire 5-month stretch collecting recipes from her fellow inmates. Hardly any of the recipes are ones that could be cooked in an actual prison, especially not the one I cook (well, assemble, since no actual cooking is involved) in this episode. But if you want some more plausible prison recipes, I write about those here: https://www.mashed.com/197721/prison-food-that-youll-actually-want-to-try/

What I do not mention in the above article (since the websites I write for do not do first person) is that I did spend a year working in a prison, a private, federally-contracted men's prison in New Mexico, so I do have a good idea of just what is (and isn't) available in the commissary or can be smuggled out of the chow hall. (You don't even want to know how they get around pat-downs - I didn't have to do these as a case manager, but I did have to shake down cells pretty frequently, and for some reason, I was always the one to discover the, er, altered undergarments used for smuggling purposes. Adds a more literal meaning to the term "banana hammock," let's just say.)

The other books in the Upper East Side Cookbook series are not available through Kindle Unlimited (as this one was), and I do not feel like buying them, so this is probably a one-shot, but it was definitely quirky and more or less a cookbook, so I wanted to share it in a mini-episode featuring about 30 seconds of actual food prep.