Lockdowns are a time of meal deprivation in prison.

It's ten, half gone one Tuesday as I write. I was sequestered behind the door for another lockdown at Blessington, and I haven't had a meal served correctly since midday Monday (and even that one was questionable as all get out).
Hell, I haven't even had a meal.

You see, Blessington has the most inept food service company working here, called Trinity Services Group. Trinity, and the inmates working in Food Service for them, are incompetent as all get out. I have a special diet: 2600 Calorie Regulated Diet, No Meat. I am likely the only person at Blessington who gets this diet. It's issued by Medical, conceding to my sincerely held religious beliefs while attempting to manage my health.

It's not a difficult diet, surprisingly, to prepare:

• Where regular trays receive pan bread, cornbread (Jiffy mix style), pancakes, or waffles, I am to receive just a slice of white bread due to its predictable calorie count and carbohydrate load.
• When a dessert (like cake, cookies, or a brownie) is part of the meal, I am to receive fruit (generally, either a whole apple, or a security modified one) in its place.
• All meals served MUST come with a protein on board. If regular diets were served pancakes, syrup, and oatmeal as their entire meal as example, then the aforementioned bread swap must be done, and a protein source must be added.

Now here's the 'hard' part:
- All protein sources must be suitable for (ovo-lacto) vegetarians.

"Wutz dat meen??"

My inappropriate jab at intellects around Blessington aside, it means I do not eat flesh of any creature that has lost its life.

As part of my faith, I choose to adhere to the First Precept, which translates in some schools roughly as "Neither kill, nor get others to kill on your behalf."
So, to eat meat products (especially in Florida), someone has to kill the animal to harvest it; one could justify it as the kill "not being specific for me, but for the feeding of many". I'm avoiding that letting down of the hair, so to speak, and choosing to adhere to a diet whereby no living being is required to suffer its own extinguishing in order for me to be fed.

Wait, "especially in Florida?"

Yes, sidebar: Florida became the first state to ban cultured ('lab-grown' as an epithet) meat. This means that a chicken option that did not require more than a moulted feather, or a beef option that might have been grown from a hair plucked from a cow's brow is unavailable legally in the state.

Difficulties in Translation

The difficulty is getting these unpaid inmates, these residents of this system, to follow simple written instructions. The difficulty is getting the food service department to do their QA checks to make sure that residents aren't being sent incompatible meals (like meat for a vegetarian or peanut butter for a person who has an anaphylactic reaction to consuming it). The difficulty is getting dorm officers to follow a procedure for procuring corrections.

The difficulty is having my faith's choices respected in the Bible Belt, when it's a smaller subsection of the groups served. While pork products are banned in the chow lines to ensure it doesn't disparage two faith traditions, screw you if you're simply asking not to be served meat at all to adhere.

The difficulty... is not biting the hook.