How Prison Ramen Saved My Life (Reheat)

Hey everyone, Dan here with another reheat. And this one is one that, you know, even all the years since this episode came out, people still come up to me and ask me about it. They tell me that it's one of their all time favorites. So I'm really excited to share it with you today. It's my conversation with Gustavo Alvarez. He's the author of the cookbook Prison Ramen, Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars. Now, when we spoke, Gustavo told me about how he connected with people over food during his time as an inmate, first as a teenager, then again in his 30s. Gustavo also explains how to make teriyaki sauce using commissary ingredients. And he tells an incredible story about a riot that broke out when he was in prison and the role that food played in a pivotal moment in that very scary situation. Remember, if there's an older episode of The Sporkful, you want us to reheat, drop me a line. We take requests. I'm at hello at sporkful.com. Thanks so much and enjoy. When Gustavo Alvarez was 18, he was convicted of assault with a firearm and sent to prison for the first time. On the day he arrived, he was met by a group of guys like him, Hispanic men from West LA. They took him to a common area and sat him down at a table. My heart is pounding through my chest. I just turned 18. I was just, you know, peach fuzz on the lip. I was a kid, you know, and these dudes were grown men, killers. And what they do is they have a spread, which is just like a meal, potluck or whatnot. And then that meal is where they're going to get to know you. They're going to get to read you. They're going to get to figure out who you are. Gustavo, or Goose as he's known, was served a plate of makeshift cheesy tacos. And the older guys at this meal were trying to answer one question. Can we trust this kid? They already know if you're a snitch, they'll know that because you'll never make it to the table. You feel me? They'll have somebody stab you before you get there. And of course, they question me to see if I'm honest. And of course, 100% honest. And, you know, that causes them to say, okay, he's good. And once you have that blessing, he's good, then the schooling begins. The first lesson Goose learned, prison is tribal. A lot of people say, oh, well, I'm not racist. Yeah, neither am I, but guess what? If you want to survive, you have to run with your people, man. You have to take care of your own. And it's sad because, you know, I have a lot of brothers and friends and, you know, they're obviously not my race, but they're my family. But when it comes down to prison, all that is left at the door. And it's a sad experience because you're bred to hate. And that hate is what protects you in there. And it saved my life many times. The older guys in the West L.A. crew taught Goose more specific survival skills. If you're not a good fighter, you better use some steel, a weapon. And in most cases, they teach you how to, first of all, how to cut the weapon, sharpen the weapon. They physically train you. You do these crazy routines. You get involved with stuff that you never thought you'd ever do. There's one more lesson Goose learned pretty quickly. How to put together a decent meal. You know, back and forth, you create this community of cooks. God, I learned so many ways. For example, to make teriyaki, we'd get some strawberry jam and some soy sauce, mix it together and put a little garlic powder on there. Boom, you have some type of teriyaki that you could put on some chicken from dinner and mix it up with a ramen, and there you go, you got a meal. You know what I mean? In prison, food is a big deal. Oh my God. Well, it's everything. Today on The Sporkful, I talk with Goose Alvarez about cooking and eating in prison, including the meal there that changed his life forever. This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Goose Alvarez has served two major prison sentences. There was that first one you heard about at the start of this show. that was for assault with a firearm. He was locked up from age 18 to 23. When he got out, he started making a life for himself. He got married, he had three kids, but Goose says he still felt he had to carry a gun around to protect himself and his family. When he was 33, he was busted for possession of a firearm. While he was in prison the second time, he began mentoring at-risk kids, went through a 12-step recovery program, and he started writing his first book, Prison Ramen, Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars. He got out in 2013, the book came out, and Goose hasn't looked back. Today, he's 47 and lives in Tijuana, Mexico. The success of his book has led him to pursue a career as a writer and producer on several TV shows and movies. Yeah, can you speak? Testing. Thumbs up. All right, cool. As you might guess, the food served in prison is pretty bad. So the men pocket food in the mess hall, steal ingredients from kitchen storage, then bring them back to their cells and get creative. If you have money, you can buy some basic items at the commissary. Canned goods, hot sauce, ramen. Mayo is key because it's one of the few ways you can get your hands on fat. There's a lot of bartering. And like with just about every other place on the planet, food is a big part of gatherings and special occasions. Oh, Johnny boy is parolee today. Okay, you know, we're going to throw him a little party before he leaves. So who's involved? Okay, well, these people are involved. And then what are we going to cook? We're just going to cook. Who's going to be the cook? I'm going to be the cook. okay, well, this is what I'm going to need from each and every one of you. You can assign one person to get all the summer sausages, one person to get all the ramens, you know, and everybody has their responsibility. Whatever they bring to the table, they leave it there and just let one cook do his job. And, you know, you literally cook in buckets for about 30 men and everybody helps you clean. Obviously, everybody helps you prepare, you know, but it's usually one person that's driving, You know what I mean? And birthdays sometimes. For example, I know of an older retiree who was in prison already like 40 years and it was his birthday. And, you know, we all wanted to do something nice for the old dirt bag, you know. So we all bought a bunch of Hostess chocolate cupcakes and we all put it together in a circle. We make a cake for this guy. And then we smother it with peanut butter and jelly, believe it or not, and get some cocoa from the kitchen and sprinkle it on top and create a little cake for the old man you know And somebody might throw a little ornament on there to just tease him you know I not going to get into that little ornament but you know and he have a good time have a good laugh, and we'll all enjoy a little birthday party for the old man, you know? What's a Cadillac? Oh, the coffee. A Cadillac is basically cream and sugar. However, the way we make it in there is we use a Milky Way bar, and we put it inside the coffee with the cream and sugar. The coffee has to be nice and scorching hot in order for the Milky Way to dissolve. And you stir it until it dissolves to a foamy kind of espresso or cappuccino kind of way. It's so good. That sounds really good. I've got to tell you, Goose, there are like fancy, fancy schmancy hipster cafes in Brooklyn and San Francisco. They're probably charged $8 for what they call like a Mexican hot chocolate or something. And I'll bet that a Cadillac runs circles around whatever those people are selling. You would love it. You would love it. The Cadillac does sound amazing. But of all the foods you find in prison, one reigns supreme. Ramen. That's why Goose's book is called Prison Ramen. In fact, a 2016 study looked at the bartering economy in prison and found that ramen is more valuable than cigarettes. Ramen goes for about a dollar. Well, last time I was there, it was a dollar. I'm hearing it's starting to go up even more like to two to three. So you can imagine people have walls and walls of ramen in their cell and they use it to barter. They use it to buy things, pay things. And those are what we call the ballers. Those are the guys that, you know, got a little money. According to that study, the rise in ramen's value is largely due to budget cuts that have reduced not only the quality, but also the quantity of food available. There's not always enough for incarcerated people to eat. So once you get the ramen, how do you cook it? In a maximum security prison like Goose was in, you don't have access to a microwave. So it makes something called a stinger. For example, you'll cut a cord out from an old radio or whatnot, and you keep the mail plug. And the opposite end, you disconnect the wires and connect them to two brand new razor blades. Put the razor blades inside a cup of water and then connect it to the wall. Within about 30 seconds, you got boiling water. And there you go, you know? So you basically like cut open an electrical cord and stick it, attach it to metal and stick it into water. Right. So that's not— Some razor blades work. We should probably tell the young listeners out there not to try that at home. Oh, yeah, don't. Please do not try that at home. Do not try that at home. But if it doesn't kill you, it'll heat up your water. Is that what you're telling me, Goose? Definitely. If it doesn't explode, it'll definitely heat up your water. What was your experience with ramen before you went to prison? Never touched it. Never liked it. Maybe a couple noodles every now and then, you know, but I've never, I've seen it all the time at the stores or when I never bought it. And do you remember the first time you had it? Oh, yeah. It was like the best thing ever because, you know, we hadn't been eating for a while and we were able to go to the store, which is commissary. And I bought me a couple and I made me a nice little hot soup and it just brought some comforts from home. You know, like I felt anything nice and warm in a rough place, it gives you some type of comfort. And ramen did that for me. What was your favorite way to have ramen when you were in prison? You know what? I would say, obviously, eating with the fellas in a nice big spread where everybody can eat and contribute. But I have my own special recipe that I don't even, it's not even on prison ramen. It's an oyster, smoked oysters. Canned smoked oysters. Yes. And ramen, cilantro, a little bit of chili pepper, and some mayonnaise. For me, that's the lick right there. That's my thing. you know so now you're you're out of prison you can make ramen however you want oh yeah do you do you ever still make it the way you made it when you were in prison i actually do i'm not gonna lie i actually do um i cook it for you know family friends and you know they always want to try them and then yeah i do it it doesn't taste the same i don't know why and a lot of Ex-cons could probably relate to this. You know, I tried to ask some, you know, friends of mine, ex-con friends of mine who are authors as well. And they're like, yep, I just can't get that flavor for some reason. I don't know if it was because of the utensils we used in there. Because sometimes we'd cook in plastic bags, to be honest with you, in a bucket. So I don't know. I just, I can't pinpoint why it doesn't taste the same. But I wonder, Goose, if maybe it's not an issue of not having the right equipment or not having the right technique. Maybe it's something about just the way you feel when you're in prison, about the comfort that that provides. Preach, Dan, preach. Actually, you know what? I think you're right because of the atmosphere. You've got a bunch of hungry men that have one thing in common, their stomach's growling. So whatever they're going to eat, it's going to be good. It's interesting to me that you would still have a food that you kind of miss and wish you could recreate. That there's a part of the experience that you wish you could re-experience. Wow, there is. There's, wow, you touched me on that one. We would have this certain lunch every Saturday, you know, Hitman burritos. We would sit there and have these burritos with this older gangster dude. And he was like grandpa, you know, he had stories for us. He would, you know, discipline us, talk to us like, you know, like we were his kids. But at the same time, you know, this guy murdered so many people, you know. And it was hard to register that, to fit those two pieces together. But it touched me because, you know, that was a father figure that some of us youngsters didn't have. And we drew to him, you know, because he was that cool, you know, slick back hair, older, you know, real in shape veterano, as we called it, or OG. And he was the person that we looked up to. And it's sad, you know, when you get transferred and you're never going to see these people again. And I miss that because that was a genuine experience and conversation with a killer that actually cared, believe it or not. Tell me about those burritos he made, the Hitman burritos. He had a way of making it work with mayonnaise, okay? I don't know if that was his thing, but they were awesome. He would get the roast beef packets and shred the roast beef. He put a lot of love into them you know And of course it made him feel good to know that we enjoyed them You know it like where kids He like yeah you know I cooking for my sons you know and that right there was everything Coming up, more with Goose Alvarez. We'll hear about the prison meal that set his life on a totally different course. I actually thought I was going to die, you know. This is where the road stops for me. Stick around. it's time to open up a can of advertisements welcome back to a sporkful reheat i'm dan pashman hey if you're not already following this pork full in your podcasting app, what are you waiting for? In Apple Podcasts and Spotify, go to our show page and click follow. In other apps, it might be like a plus sign or a subscribe button or a heart. Whatever it is in your podcasting app, please do that thing. It's the best way to ensure you'll never miss an episode and it's good for our show. So please go ahead and do it right now while you're listening. Thank you. Now let's get back to my conversation with Gustavo Alvarez, a.k.a. Goose, author of Prison Ramen, Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars. As you heard, Goose has a lot of memories about connecting with people over food during his time in prison. But there was one meal that really changed him, that changed the whole way he looked at prison. Before we get to that meal, though, you have to understand the events that led up to it. It was Goose's second stint in prison, so he was in his 30s. He had a good behavior record, so he was able to get a menial job. And he lived in a dorm type of setup with other incarcerated men who also worked at the prison. Although it was a mixed group, black and Hispanic men, there was an understanding. We're all older guys. None of us wants any trouble because we don't want our sentences extended. But the men in the other parts of the prison, they were a different story. When you walk on a prison yard, you sense to feel a tension. You can feel it. It's in the air. And it's hard to explain unless you've been through it. I've been through a lot of riots, you know, And I know before one starts, you have that aroma. You feel it. When I came home from work, I noticed the grouping, all the blacks on one side, all the Hispanics on the other. And immediately my spider senses kicked in. I go, oh, it's on. Something's about to jump off. And, you know, I go to my area where my people are at. And, of course, they're like, hey, you know, something's in the air. Before we can even think, you just hear rumbling, like a bunch of rhinos running in the savannah. Just this rumbling noise. It's every Black against Hispanic, stabbing, killing. One dorm after the other, just ignited. One of the doors to Goose's barracks opened to a small courtyard, a grassy square surrounded on all sides by other buildings. In a building across the courtyard, there were a bunch of young Black prisoners who were involved in the riot. Then they were trying to escape it. Dozens of them poured out into the courtyard. They looked into our barrack and saw there was a bunch of Hispanic, you know, ball-headed guys in there just, you know, looking at them. And they somehow picked up this pipe and started smashing a door, an emergency door that's in the back of our dorm, which is right in our bed area. It reminded me like of medieval times where they have this huge log and they're ramming it against the fortress to break the door down, right? But in this case, it was a humongous pipe against the door hinges and broke them. And so then they just started bending the door inwards, you know, so that they could fit in there to do their damage. The building next door was on fire. Goose says you could feel the heat through the wall. The men in the courtyard had almost bent the door back enough to get through. Goose and his crew began getting ready for a fight. They put on all the jackets they had to protect against stabbing, tied towels around their necks to cover their jugulars. Some of them did try to escape out the back, but not Goose. I already know that I'm not going to be able to leave with them because in my little area, all I have that's valuable to me was pictures of my kids. That's all I had. That was everything to me. And I wasn't about to sit there and take down 80 pictures from my wall one by one without ripping them. Goose says, looking back on it now, maybe it would have made more sense to just try to get out of there, save his own life, forget the photos. But when he went to prison that second time, he became estranged from his wife and children. Those pictures were his only connection to his kids. So in that moment, it felt like the photos were all that mattered. This is it, guys. This is where I'm going to stay. And I'm just going to stay here with my kids. I actually thought I was going to die. You know, this is where the road stops for me. I'm looking at their pictures as I'm standing in my cubicle area and just sad that I never got the opportunity, you know, thinking I'm never going to have the opportunity to, you know, to have that daughter dance or do what I needed to do for my sons, you know, and it hurt me because I was like, wow, you know, it's all my fault, but this is it. I got to just accept it. And I was ready, you know, I looked like an idiot with my neck tied with towels and three different jackets and boots and a makeshift weapon but I had to go out swinging you know that was just that was my law you know I had to stick with it to the end but in the midst of all this what I didn't know what I couldn't see was an older black gangster was watching all this in our dorm never talked to us always kept to himself when he saw this he took it upon himself to walk up to 100 inmates. They could have told him, move out the way, you old battle cat, you know, and did something to him and hurt us anyway. But he had some type of respect. Wherever he was, he had a lot of respect and just, hey, check this out. You guys aren't coming in here. You know, I'm such and such. There's no way you're going to go through me. And then the argument began for about 45 minutes. And we just sat there ready like it's going to happen, guys. You know, he's not going to be able to stop them. But sure enough, he did. And they just walked away. We all looked at each other dumbfounded, like what happened, you know? I thought this was our demise, and no, it wasn't. It was actually a beginning of something amazing you know By now it was the middle of the night The prison guards were still somewhere else just trying to get control of the place All these men were left standing around outside in the courtyard They couldn't get back into the building they had come out of, and they hadn't fully broken down the door to Goose's dorm, so they were basically trapped. It was getting cold out there. The older guy who had calmed the situation was still talking to some of these young men through the crack in the half-broken-down door. And started handing them a little bit of coffee and whatever goodies he had in his commissary, which wasn't much, I noticed, you know what, this is an opportunity right here, and I'm not going to miss it. So I gathered the homies. I said, you know what, gather up all the ramens, everything you have in your locker, whatever you find in other people's locker, we're making a spread. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I go, just cook. Canned oysters, canned tunas, every seafood that we could find with every chips, everything. I mean, I even seen some guy bringing out some beef sticks and some chicharonis. And we did it in this humongous plastic trash bag and poured all the ramens in there first and then boiled them and then drained the water and then started adding the seasonings, the mayonnaise and all the cans. And then with this huge spoon, just mixed it all up, tied the bag in a big balloon, so to speak, and just shook it around and cut a little hole at one end and just used it as a thing to squeeze in the ramen. in every bowl and we're just passing it out, passing it out. So full bowls of ramen are going out through the crack in the door and empty bowls are coming back to be refilled and sent back out. My God, the guys on our end, they looked at me like, what are you, crazy? And then the guys that we were feeding looked at us like, what are you, crazy? But I'm like, hey, you know what? This guy took a stand for us and we thought, what are you, crazy? And so, you know, some people were using the same bowl. Some people took the bag and ate out of the bag. I mean, whatever, just to feed them, you know, and give them some sense of it's going to be okay. We're finally getting to know each other. We realize, dude, we're the same. We're the exact same. And at that point, I started, you know, having second thoughts about a lot of things. And, you know, we were helping these guys make phone calls because some of the phones we had access to were on. So we called their families. Hey, they're okay. They're fine. And, you know, took us a few hours of that until the National Guard came in there stomping everybody out and taking us out of there. What was it that you saw in those younger prisoners out in that courtyard in that moment that made you? Me. I saw me. I saw my little 18-year-old stubborn butt. I saw it. I saw exactly where I was at. I said, wow, I go, maybe somebody back then would have intervened at that age, you know? It would have prevented a lot. He's just misled. He's just a misled kid. That's all it is. And he could be led the right way by showing love. And that's what I thought we did. I asked Goose if he ever talked to the older guy who calmed the prisoners in the courtyard that night. No, it's funny. We never saw him again. And I never saw him again up until maybe, what, three, four years ago, I found him on Facebook. And I touched base with him. His name is Phil. I touched base with him. And I thanked him. And I thanked him. And I told him that, you know, my kids, they thank you, you know. And he's like, no problem, man. And then I wanted to keep a dialogue with him. And then a few days went by. I looked back. He was gone. No more Facebook. No more nothing. I tried to ask friends about him, and nobody knows where he's at. So I'm praying that he's okay somewhere, you know, safe. But I owe a great deal to that, man. What was the first meal you ate when you got out of jail? Oh, my God, which time? You're going to laugh. You're going to laugh. But the most recent, and people say you're disgusting. Why do you do that? I'm not trying to knock this franchise, but I ate a Big Mac. I'm not going to lie. I had a Big Mac. For some apparent reason, I just craved it because of years of never eating it for so long. You know, as a kid growing up, McDonald's was a thing. Oh, where are we going? McDonald's, cool. And I just thought, you know what? I'm craving a Big Mac. And I went and they ate me a Big Mac. That had it a taste. Awful, but, you know, hey, don't tell McDonald's that. But I needed it. You know, I wanted to, you know, capture some of my youth again, which obviously it's long gone, but it was just, it wasn't the same Big Mac as I ate back as a kid, you know? That's Gustavo Alvarez. He's the author of Prison Ramen, recipes and stories from behind bars. These days, Goose tells us he's still cooking. He's making his prison ramen, but with some new innovations like octopus. And he's still writing. Last year, he self-published his first novel, The Pawn. We'll have a link to it at Sporkful.com. The original version of this episode was produced by me along with senior producer Anne Sani. This update was produced by me along with senior producer Emma Morgenstern and producer Andre Sohero. The show is mixed by Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. It's Tiana from Seattle reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better. This Reheat was produced by Tiana Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM.com slash Sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.