Jail Mixes Recipe for Rehab Success
Cooking classes prep inmates for life on the outside
24 November 2010
The San Mateo County jail cook off teams county leaders such as Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson (left) with inmates.
There's a special contest in the jail's kitchen. Women in white chef's jackets race around with onions and skillets. Four teams have just two hours to prepare and serve seven dishes. The dishes include Jambalaya stew, pecan pie and roasted salmon.
Inmate Angela Reyes scoops the vegetables, while the other women on her cooking team plate the fish and wipe the edge.
"Cleaning the edges with a wet cloth so that way its presentation isn't all the grease and oil that we might have spilt around," she says.
The team then rushes the dish out to the judges, who are generous with their praise.
Cooking for success
The chef at the San Mateo County Jail came up with the idea of offering cooking classes so inmates could learn the basics of the trade. Elihu Catell was frustrated to find the same inmates returning to his breakfast room once they'd done their time and been released.
"I started asking them, what happened? 'Well, nothing happened. I didn't do nothing. I just went back to the same things,'" says Catell. "I said, 'Well, what if something happens here that makes you see something different than that?'"
Catell's friend Adam Weiner runs the culinary program for a local social support organization called Job Train. The two teamed up in January to offer weekly classes at the jail. All 12 of the women inmates, and almost a dozen of the men, participated in the most recent class. Weiner says the hope is that - once they're released - the inmates will continue their studies with daily courses at Job Train's facility.
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