The dandelion salad
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The dandelion salad is the meal John Kiriakou made for himself in the yard at FCI Loretto, and the last entry on his list of the best meals he ever ate, offered with the acknowledgement that it does not belong on such a list. "And then crazy as it sounds one of the best meals I ever had I made myself in prison."

Khaled

The idea came from another prisoner. "There was an Iraqi Kurd in prison with me. He was an Imam of a mosque in upstate New York and this guy was innocent innocent innocent. They set him up on a terrorism charge, and then when he finally finished prison, they expelled him back to Iraq. It was awful."

Kiriakou found him walking the grass. "Anyway, he was just kind of wandering around the yard one day, and I said, 'Khaled, I said, what are you doing?' Just wan- winding around, you know, the the grass. He said, 'I'm I'm looking for uh for um dandelions.' And I said, 'For what reason?' And he said, 'To eat them.'"

The answer landed on a Greek. "And I was like, 'What a great idea! We make dandelion salad in Greece. We make dandelion jam, all different kinds of things.'" He asked permission to pick at the far end of the yard, and got it.

The assembly

Kiriakou is specific about the washing and about why it mattered: "You got to wash it cuz people are like spitting all the time or animals are peeing or pooping or whatever."

The rest came from the commissary and from neighbours. "So, I picked an entire bag full of dandelions. And then I went to the commissary and bought a bottle a bottle of olive oil and some sea salt. And then I I had some instant rice with a chicken bouillon cube. And I threw in some peanuts to give it a little bit of crunch and some Sazón uh spice that the one of the Mexicans gave me."

One ingredient carries an explanation about the institution rather than the recipe: "Uh I had a bag of chicken. They sold bags of chicken there, not cans cuz you could make a make a shank out of the can and, you know, slash somebody with it. So, bags of chicken."

The verdict

"I put it all together, and then I had my dandelion salad. It was the single most satisfying meal I ever had in 23 months in prison."

Kiriakou's own gloss on that judgement is two words long, and he supplies it himself: "Sad, but true."

See also

- FCI Loretto
- The prison food economy
- The best meal overseas
- The Islamabad guest house
