We often take our kitchens for granted. While we might wish for a new air fryer or a fancy new gadget, many of us are blessed with everything needed to cook a good meal. Take all or most of that away, and it becomes next to impossible to make a good home-cooked meal. This is exactly what businesswoman, lifestyle maven, and cookbook author Martha Stewart was famously faced with when she spent five months in prison in 2004. Although she certainly faced limitations without a proper chef’s kitchen, this didn’t stop her from cooking.
Stewart was incarcerated in the Alderson Federal Prison Camp after being charged with four counts of obstructing justice related to insider trading. While she was able to make neither her favorite recipes nor her favorite comfort food, she still put her culinary skills to use. One former inmate at the camp reported that Stewart had sent her a note that came along with the gift of a baked apple, seasoned with cinnamon and caramel.
The prison grounds also house some crabapple trees, and according to CNN, Stewart picked apples from the tree to make jelly. Maybe most impressive was the dessert she made for the potluck on the day of her release: A caramel flan. Martha Stewart has said that she doesn’t like to buy store-bought desserts, and that homemade is always better — but it’s impressive that she stuck with this ideology in prison.
How did Martha Stewart make dessert in jail?
Luckily for Stewart, the all-women Alderson Federal Prison Camp is known for being one of the best in the world, according to the International Security Journal. It promotes a rehabilitative approach, focusing on helping women reintegrate back into society, and even offering culinary classes. It is also a minimum-security prison, which means those incarcerated here are not as restricted as they would be in medium- or maximum-security prison; this means that Stewart would have had a decent level of freedom as well as time to make food for herself.
Based on a People interview with a fellow former inmate at Alderson, who was a friend of Stewart’s, it seems that the prison dorms and cottages at Alderson had microwaves. A statement from her lawyer in 2004 (via NBC News) shared that she was finding creative ways to use the microwave for culinary creations. It is completely possible to make a baked apple in the microwave — you normally need butter and sugar, and it would take about three to four minutes of cooking. It’s a not-so-known method to make a small batch of jam in the microwave, with about 15 minutes of cooking; flan can be made in as little as 3 minutes.
As for sourcing the ingredients … it’s not completely clear how Stewart was able to gather everything up. In interviews, her former inmates shared that it was likely that she smuggled food from the kitchen. It wasn’t permitted, but Stewart’s prison friend, Susan Spry, told People, “Everyone smuggles food out of kitchens. I mean, what else are you going to make?” The prison also offered a commissary to purchase food from, where her lawyer told NBC News she bought some of her ingredients.
