After the van from Martin's Caterers pulled into the back entrance, kitchen staff and inmates began unloading covered trays of Salisbury steak, mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy.
They donned hairnets, placed the food in Styrofoam boxes and stacked them in a multi-purpose room converted into a makeshift kitchen. It was dinnertime.
The 250 inmates at the Carroll County Detention Center received a culinary diversion that started Monday and will continue for about a month.
As the detention center gives its 1984-era kitchen a facelift, staff will gain a respite from the 300,000 meals they annually prepare there. Inmates are chowing down on fare from a Westminster banquet hall that is more used to feeding wedding and conference guests.
But detention center officials said having Martin's Caterers temporarily prepare inmate meals was the most cost-effective and least labor-intensive option.
"It's institutional food, not to be confused with banquet food," Maj. Stephen C. Reynolds, second in command at the detention center, explained to the county commissioners before they approved the contract. "There's no real change in the menu."
The county commissioners agreed to pay $3 for each lunch and $5 for each dinner served while the kitchen is closed for renovations. If the closure lasts three weeks, county officials said they will pay Martin's about $27,300; about $36,400 if the kitchen repairs take four weeks.
Normally the detention center budgets $700 per day for bulk food. Kitchen workers are preparing cold breakfasts, such as cereal and milk, to defray costs.
"I'd rather cook than have food delivered," said kitchen manager Janet Gates, who has worked at the detention center for 23 years.
During the month-long renovation, the aging kitchen will have a new walk-in refrigerator installed, its ceiling replaced and tile floor sealed with resin to prevent dirt and spills from ruining the grout.
Stacks of pots and pans, canned goods, water coolers, trays and prep stations have been crammed beside the computers and bookshelves in the detention center's multi-purpose room.
Reynolds said that religious programs and classes held there will be put on hold.
About $150,000 is budgeted for the kitchen renovation, though that doesn't include labor costs, said Mike Whitson, chief of the county bureau of facilities. Whitson said he was impressed with the progress when he stopped by the detention center kitchen Thursday.
Workers were smoothing with cement the edges of a four-by-eight-foot rectangular space that had been cut with an electric hammer in the kitchen's brick and concrete wall.
That hole will be filled with the door to the walk-in refrigerator, an attached 14-foot-deep by 18-feet-wide box that will sit outside the building when it is installed Wednesday, Whitson said.
The space that the old refrigerator occupied inside will create extra storage room for carts of supplies. The county commissioners approved Whitson's $35,000 request Thursday to fill-in that section of floor with pea gravel covered by a polymer.
The opaque resin that will coat the kitchen's floor is similar to that applied to the floors at the county's Safe Haven shelter, the North Carroll senior center and the new long-term drug treatment center, Whitson added. He said it will be an easier surface than tile for staff to maintain. No stripping, waxing and scrubbing will be required.
"You'll just get a wet mop, and it's done," Whitson said. "It will wear much better."
In the past, the kitchen's dry-wall ceiling had to be cut and then patched whenever pipes and ducts needed repairs. Now plastic ceiling tiles that can be removed, hosed down and easily replaced are being installed.
"It's going to be a brand-new, bright kitchen," Whitson told the commissioners.
Julia Becker, who has worked as a cook at the detention center for 22 years, said she is glad she will see the improvements before she retires.
"It'd be nice to have a new kitchen," she said.
But like Gates, Becker is anxious to get back to cooking.
While their equipment is being replaced, the staff is storing perishable goods in a refrigerated truck borrowed from the county board of education. That's where they store the milk and juice for breakfast. The kitchen's walk-in freezer is still accessible, so frozen items remain there.
Inmates said the variety and taste of the detention center's food is better than that served at other prisons. And the meals from Martin's were greeted with approval Monday.
Lunch included bologna and cheese sandwiches, bags of chips and nectarines the first day. The detention center meals must meet various nutritional requirements, adding up to about 2,800 calories a day, staff members said.
"You don't take food lightly - it's just something you pay attention to," Warden George Hardinger said. "It's just how we do business."
laura.mccandlish@baltsun.com