Martha Stewart is a domestic icon. She would not let a little thing like being behind bars get in the way of that. A new CNN miniseries, The Many Lives of Martha Stewart offers new insights on her interactions with her fellow prisoners. Meg Phipps and Susan Spry remember her fondly because she made baked goods.
Martha was convicted on charges relating to insider trading in 2004. She served five months at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia in 2005. It appears she made the most of her time there.
Martha made friends with Meg in a special way. “How we communicated was by note, a handwritten note and someone from that cottage or dorm, you had to wait for someone to take that in for you,” Meg explained. Martha sent Meg a note asking to meet up.
“She also sent that note with a baked apple, which meant she had already tackled the idea of cooking in your dorm or cottage by using the microwave and what resources that you could find — because the baked apple had caramel on it and probably some cinnamon,” she went on to say.
Cooking was against the rules but she is Martha Stewart, after all. Meg believes Martha smuggled food. “I suspect some of this may have come from the cafeteria, which we’re not supposed to do,” she speculated.
Susan understood why Martha did it. “Everyone smuggles food out of kitchens. I mean what else are you going to make? Unless it’s smuggled food,” she mused.
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Always a host, Martha had a potluck in prison to celebrate her release. “We brought different dishes, but Martha did bring a caramel flan, and I don’t know how she made it,” Susan recalled. “It’s a big part about what made prison tolerable is that fellowship of cooking and celebrating someone going home. She thanked people for making her time there go as well as it did.”
