Everybody Come To The Table...
Nothing about being on Death Row is cool. I think we can all agree to that. But that "last meal" thing they always report never fails to be a source of fascination to me.
"John Lee Harvey Wayne David Allen William PsychoKiller's last meal, in accordance with his wishes, was fried chicken, fish sticks, onion rings, apple pie, fritos, and Coca Cola."
Really? That's it? That's what this guy wanted to eat? Seriously? More than anything in the world?
Where's the imagination? The adventurousness? The last-ditch impulse to Stick It To The Man by costing a whole damned lot of money?
I tell you what. I ever end up snapping and make it all the way to the end of Death Row, my last meal's not gonna be cheap. You taxpaying suckers are gonna be on the ropes for the following meal:
Appetizers
Uni (a couple of trays, please)
Oysters (a couple of dozen)
Foie Gras (Yeah, you wanna make something of it? I'm about to be executed! Deal with it!)
Added for Cartouche. Caviar. A kilo.
Champagne. Just enough, and no more.
Main Course and Sides
Roast Duck. Whole.
Artichoke, Heavy on the Butter
A nice risotto, thank you very much.
A porcini Yorkshire Pudding? Yes! Yes!
Lots of this. Good stuff. Not the cheap crap.
Dessert
Chocolate Molten Cake and Raspberries
Humboldt Fog cheese
Enough dessert wine to make sure I'm already passed out when I get strapped down for the Big Walk.
You Show Me Yours (Part Deux)
So...If you were planning your last meal, what would it look like?
(Jeanette D. provided this link to Texas's real "last meals" going back to 2003...a list which, the deeper you get into it, just gets sadder and sadder and, as she points out, illustrates perfectly the class issues involved in the death penalty. It was a request for a last meal of whipped cream and cherries that really got to me.)
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Comments
(In real life, I am not an expensive a date, btw. Dutch or nothin'.)
If we ended up on Death Row together, ate both yours and my choices and then ordered some chocolate fudge pop-tarts, THAT would be a crime. Or would it?
(As a side note, great job on middle names for psycho killers. The ones we catch, anyway.)
I'll have to think about a last supper menu.
But, I guess that's not really what this post is about, so I guess all I can say is that I think I would be way too sick to eat anything, knowing it was going to be my last meal.
http://digg.com/d1na36
(Oh, and I just also read somewhere else that Florida, another leader in executing people, limits the cost of the last meal to $40.)
And two forks like my lawyer uses. Stylish.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think I'd be all that hungry.
The sulfur content in egg yolks is always good for creating odor when heated. Pull a Cool Hand Luke and load yourself with a bowl of boiled eggs and die with a smile knowing what the witnesses are about to endure.
Last words: "Take a whiff of this."
I'm with you, Verbal on everything except the desert wine (I'd prefer an after dinner cognac), and I like my oysters grilled. I'd also like Cartouche's homemade pasta with truffles, the lobster and the exact salad she mentioned. I'm afraid I have a thing for homemade raspberry ice cream (who cares about calories at a time like this?). I'll drink the crème fraîche, thank you very much. A Meritage red wine please-- love me that Cabernet/Malbec combination.
My mouth is watering. I am sooooooooo hungry.
You realize that this menu thing is a class thing. Most folks on death row don't know about uni or truffles. They're poor and steak is about the most luxurious thing they can identify. Okay. Sorry to be a downer here.
denese
Excellent post. Loved the idea and the pics made me salivate.
rated
The idea of offering a "last meal" before execution is really strange to me. "Before we kill you, here's some sustenance for your body." Huh? And it's even stranger that many inmates accept the offer to pig out one final time. Me, I don't think I could choke anything down in my last hours of life.
Six Gouda Dinner Rolls.
One Roasted Chicken.
Brie.
Course, I'd never let them take me alive in the first place.
shit, my last meal? i don't cook so: gazpacho, avocado with the sauce that they make at that spanish restaurant in Hahvard Squaaah, fried clams from Legal Seafood, Bluefish from there too, cannoli from mike's pastries in the North End of Boston, brownies from Whole Foods, any great cake made with chocolate ganache, oh, and a lobster!!!! i'm allergic, stop breathing, which is very inconvenient but, shit, i'm going to be dead momentarily, right? and i'll ask for an epi-pen. so okay, crab, shrimp, lobster, all the things i could never have. wow, i'm hungry. thanks for this!!! now someone please fly me back to Boston!!!love lvoe lvoe
jimmy dean sage sausage crumbled in a cast iron skillet greased with bacon drippings, sauteed with muchrooms until the whole thing is a savoury dark jumble, then the raw eggs whisked smooth with cream and tony cacherie's poured over and slooooooowly, slooooowly cooked while constantly being stirred with that flat edged wood spoon. add a side of biscuits split and buttered and topped with my aunt elsie's chocolate gravy and a proper cafe au lait. a muffaletta from that place around the corner in st. francisville with a dr. pepper - then i'd want a newspaper covered table with fresh cooked crawfish (caught that morning, cooked five minutes ago) dumped on top and my pawpaw's hush puppies and a six pack of very cold bland smooth dixie beer. i'd wrap up the evening with a seven layer missisipi mud and all the community coffee with fresh cream i could drink.
damn, think i'm a little homesick?
Mine would have to include a massive seafood platter with lobster, garlic/chilli prawns, scallops, everything but squid in fact. I would also require homemade potato chips and blue cheese dip, and jerk chicken. I'd also like steak Diane. Scalloped potatoes with lots of sharp cheddar, baked potato with all the trimmings, a medley of fresh veggies lightly steamed or raw, including corn and artichokes (yum), some great fish tacos and green chile chicken enchiladas with home made salsas, cabbage rolls, angel food cake with orange cream cheese icing, fresh berry pie with creme fraiche, raspberries and dark chocolate -- hell, I'll just follow Persephone's lead and have it all!
Macaroni & cheese made by my grandmother's recipe; stuffed artichoke. Hunk of dark chocolate. Amaretto.
I guess.
And coconut pie!
So a lot of convicts end up ordering whatever their favorite food from the prison cafeteria is, just more of it. That's why you see the requests for pizzas, french fries, and the like.
So, what kind of last meal would you choose with those kind of restraints?
Eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns with some really good coffee with lots of cream.
And damn. With a $50 budget I guess I'd just have to go with a couple of bottles of champagne.
Fine. We'll get rid of the Death Row portion of the game (because that's too depressing) and say Budget Be Damned.
If that's good enough for Mr. Bourdain - and, hot damn, osso bucco is TASTY! - then it's good enough for me as well.
Under budget-be-damned rules, I'd start with a glass of dry Madeira and some black olives, maybe with a piece of crusty bread. For starters, a green salad with a vinaigrette dressing, some berries and walnuts and bits of a mild soft cheese. Some fizzy water to drink. The main dish would be grilled lamb chops with garlic and rosemary, charred on the outside, rare on the inside. Wild rice and asparagus on the side. Free-flowing Cabernet, and it would flow freely. After dinner, a few glasses of Scotch: Talisker or Lagavulin, the older the better. Fifty years? Let's do it.
I could die happy. Well, maybe not happy, but well lubricated.
a venison tenderloin with a juniper berry sauce
a big maine lobster, steamed
3 dozen kumamoto oysters on the half shell - maybe more, they are the best oysters I've ever had, anywhere
3 dozen cherrystone clams on the half shell
Beluga caviar (Iranian) one kilo is plenty, served on toast tips with lemon wedges - nothing else
a grande marnier chocolate souffle with creme anglaise
Champagne, and pinot noir served at appropriate moments, ending with some ice wine, and then some vintage extremely expensive port, and while I'm at it I'll specify the Champagne, Taittingers Blanc de Blanc 1976, case should do.
Cant say what my last meal would look like, might not be much different than yours (except I would just have to have creme brule) but I know what I wouldn't have - at the end of this gut busting calorie laden cholestrol saturated fantasy, I would throw caution to the wind, and not take my Lipitor!
Uni=Sea Urchin roe...the sweet, sweet butter of the sea!
The cheese should be okay.