Turkey Tales : Thankfully for Inmates, Jail Is No Bar to Traditional Holiday Feast

If you think cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the family is work, be thankful you’re not in Daniel Ardoin’s shoes.

Ardoin, food services supervisor for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, is in charge of preparing turkey, stuffing and all the fixings for about 4,200 inmates in the county’s jails.

Granted, roasting a 20-pound Butterball just right is something of a sweat. But Ardoin’s staff must set out nearly a ton of boneless turkey roll; 1,050 pounds of corn bread dressing; 210 gallons of mashed potatoes; 125 gallons of gravy, plus buttered corn, rolls, salad, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, ice cream, Kool-Aid, coffee and roasted peanuts.

“You or I would have a very difficult time” finishing the meal, said Ardoin, “but 90% of the inmates will eat it all.”

Ardoin, 55, has been fixing mass meals for more than 35 years--28 in the Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of major, and 9 with the Sheriff’s Department. The recipes he uses are modified versions of armed forces food service recipes. Cooking for a highly regimented jail environment “is not much different than cooking for Marines,” he said.

“About the only thing I changed was the color of my uniform,” Ardoin said with a hint of a Cajun accent remaining from his upbringing in Mamou, La.

Inmates will start lining up for their special Thanksgiving meal about 11 a.m. Thursday. Ardoin’s preparations were on schedule Wednesday afternoon. Cooks poked thermometers into turkey rolls browning in giant ovens, while trusties poured peanuts into hundreds of 2-ounce cups or washed and drained lettuce for today’s salad.

“We started preparing yesterday (Tuesday), making the corn bread for the dressing” Ardoin said in his basement office in the men’s jail in Santa Ana. “We’ve been getting the products in for this meal since last week.”

Inmates from the James A. Musick minimum-security facility in Irvine are bused each day to the main jail do most of the work in the huge kitchen. About four Sheriff’s Department employees supervise them at any one time, Ardoin said.

“With the tools we use down here, it makes it unwise to have a bad individual here,” Ardoin said. “The state and federal prisons, they have people in there for life who they can train. They become very professional.”

For security reasons, inmates at the main jail are served no meat with bones or any items that require a knife--hence the boneless turkey roll rather than drumsticks or a turkey wing.

But Ardoin said the food is “excellent” and that the inmates appreciate the extra effort that goes into holiday meals. They receive an extra dessert, a cup of peanuts, two drinks instead of one, even a cigar or cigarettes provided after the repast. Ardoin figures that he spends about 75 cents per inmate on Thanksgiving and Christmas meals compared to 72 cents on other days.

“They appreciate the fact that we remember, that we do something special for those two holidays,” said Ardoin. “The highlight of an inmate’s day is going to eat. There is not much else to provide him with enjoyment.”

Ardoin plans to leave the jail about 2:30 p.m. and have Thanksgiving dinner with his family. But he said he probably won’t eat much.

“I’m not very hungry after smelling and seeing all of this food all day,” Ardoin said.

JAIL MENU

Inmates in the various county-run jails will sit down today to this Thanksgiving dinner: Boneless turkey roll, 4 oz. Corn-bread dressing, 4 oz. Mashed potatoes, 6 oz. Turkey gravy Buttered corn, 4 oz. Brown-and-serve rolls, 2 Lettuce-and-tomato salad, 8 oz. French dressing, 2 oz. Cranberry sauce, 2 oz. Pumpkin pie, 3 oz. Whipped topping, 2 oz. Ice cream, 2 oz. Roasted peanuts, 2 oz. Kool-Aid Coffee