Home Cooked Meals Behind Bars. Breakfast this morning was a bowl of apple cinnamon oatmeal and two toasted English muffins with strawberry jam. It is now 3:00 PM and I just finished off my ziti with a red octopus sauce.

The ziti was made last night. The stove was not all backed up and I was able to cook up a pound of ziti while I browned some onions and mushrooms in the cast iron skillet. I then added a can of diced tomatoes, one can of tomato paste, and the water from the mushrooms. Oh yeah, and two cans of octopus.

I ate half of it last night and the other half was just devoured. Both bowls were liberally sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese. The diced tomatoes were from the Care package that Mom and Dad sent but the rest of the ingredients are all offered for sale by the commissary here.

The other menu modification I have come up with is pasta salads. In addition to the spaghetti and ziti, they sell a one pound box of small shells. I cooked up the full pound last weekend and then was able to make five pasta salad meals over the next five days. I left the pasta plain and added chopped onion and green pepper as I prepared the salad.

I would use either a can of tuna or octopus and then add garlic powder, oregano, mustard, lemon juice, and honey depending on the flavor I wanted. I bought two large green peppers two weeks ago and as long as I kept them on ice I was able to slice off what I needed to add a nice freshness to the salads.

I had purchased the eight ounce package of mozzarella cheese, but I am saving that for the anchovies that should be arriving this week in the package from Mom and Dad.

Another sign at how out of sorts I am, I broke my "no soda" pledge and purchased fourteen cans of soda two weeks ago: seven Dr. Peppers and seven root beers. The former has caffeine, the later is caffeine free. I lent a can to another inmate and he has not paid me back yet but I still have five cans of root beer left. I was going to have one can a day and obviously did not even drink that much.

I did buy a box of sugar and it turns out that adding just two teaspoons of sugar to my twenty ounce mug with one or two tea bags is more than enough sugar to make the tea drinkable. It is certainly less sugar than in the premixed drinks or soda.

So that is where my beverage intake has been going lately. I try to be sure to alternate a mug full of water between the teas since the doctor said that lack of water intake could also be a factor for my clogged sinuses. And that'snot funny. Ha ha.  ¶ 7:12 AM