Dedication, perseverance and patience are just some of the life skills Darlene Kitchens, Allen County Jail kitchen manager and jail supervisor, is teaching inmates through her cooking.
Kitchens will be holding a cooking demonstration, along with fellow cook Debbie Holderman, at Thursday’s Allen County Farmers Market on the courthouse square.
Kitchens is part of a unique program with the jail that gets inmates involved with helping maintain the community garden catty-corner from the jail.
“We feed them something freshly grown with every meal,” Kitchens said.
Approximately 150 meals are made every day. That includes three meals a day for the inmates and officers who are working long shifts at the police department.
“Many times officers work 12-hour days and aren’t able to go home to eat,” Kitchens said. “We make meals for people during emergencies as well, such as when the flood happened and the train wreck.”
The hope, Kitchens said, is that by giving the inmates the responsibility of gardening and also eating the produce they are growing, they will take a healthy lifestyle and a sense of responsibility with them when they get out of jail.
“I think if the inmates are going to bed with a belly full of food they worked to make — it’s a good thing,” she said.
Kitches thinks all jails, especially county jails with adequate amount of space, should have similar food programs.
Her inspiration came from the work of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Prisoners of the penitentiary grow their own food. They also hold a rodeo a couple of times a year where the inmates even sell food goods at concession stands.
Allowing inmates to grow food and even sell it, gives inmates an opportunity to enhance skills they can later use, Kitches said.
KITCHENS has a garden of her own and has always grown fresh food.
Some of the foods growing in her garden are grapes, berries and vegetables, but every year she tries something new. This year it was celery.
She found success with celery and will bring some with her to the farmers market cooking demonstration.
