Down and Out in Manhattan by Way of Club Fed

The cuisine and local patois at the Federal Corrections Camp in Alderson, W.Va., apparently is nothing to write home about - unless you get a happy heaping dish from new gal pal extraordinaire, Martha Stewart.

Roman Catholic nun Carol Gilbert, 57, who is serving time in the same prison as the famous homemaker, says she enjoys eating with Stewart, although the setting could be better.

"We're not talking about a tea party," Gilbert's attorney, Sue Tyburski, told the Rocky Mountain News for a story in Saturday's editions. "We're talking about a big cafeteria setting with the terrible food."

Gilbert is serving 33 months on convictions of obstructing the national defense and damaging government property for her role in an anti-war protest at a missile silo in 2002. Stewart was convicted on obstruction of justice in May and began serving her five-month sentence at the women's federal prison Oct. 8.

Stewart, 63, is getting "kid-glove" treatment from the guards, Tyburski said. "She's in great demand for people to visit with at lunchtime."

Gilbert bolstered suggestions that Stewart is writing a book about her prison experience. Tyburski said her client she hopes she writes about women who have received lengthy sentences under federal mandatory drug-sentencing laws.

But in her spare time, the gracious yet incarcerated Martha has been organizing prison home economics with new ideas on things you can make with dried fruit items, decorating letters to your attorney, vases made from cigarette butts, colorful gang tattoos you can make yourself and prison decor that matches dull gray prison bars.