All the Right Ingredients

Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row

by Ty Treadwell

'Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row' is one of those quirky books that will either turn your stomach or leave you hungry for more. Most of the condemned inmates requested uncomplicated meals that would never be found listed in the Healthy Heart Cookbook. Little wonder. However, one prisoner, Carmine 'The Garroting Gourmet' Rossi, convicted of strangling and dismembering a club DJ because he included a Neil Diamond record on his playlist, ingeniously worked the system to his benefit. Ty Treadwell cites the incident on page 68:

'The Warden came in to Rossi's dimly-lit cell and asked what he'd like for his final meal.

"I can have anything I want?" Carmine asked.
"Sure you can," the Warden replied softly. "Every condemned man has that right."
On hearing this, Rossi smiled, opened a recipe book he'd stolen from the prison library and said, "I want this. It's a Chinese dish... tofu with sesame oil and a 100-year-old-egg."
"But we don't have an egg that's one hundred years old," the Warden stated.
"Well you'd better start preparing one now 'cause I ain't goin' nowhere till I eat. And Warden, tell the doctor to call back in about a century and blow the candle out when you leave."
Rossi is now the prison's chief librarian and submits regular culinary articles to 'Penitentiary Petit Fors' magazine.'