Martha Stewart's former inmates reveal star chef’s ‘kind gesture’ while in prison

Martha Stewart has always been a friend of friends.

According to a recent sneak peek video from CNN's The Many Lives of Martha Stewart show that People was able to obtain, the 82-year-old lifestyle expert may have "smuggled food" into her private jail room in order to continue practicing her craft during her time there in the 2000s.

In the documentary, Susan Spry—who identified herself Stewart's "prison friend"—said, "everyone smuggles food out of kitchens."

“I mean, what else are you going to make? Unless it’s smuggled food.”

Meg Phipps, who was incarcerated at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia alongside Stewart, remembered being given a dessert surprise by her.

“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,” she recalled.

She continued by saying that Stewart had once sent her a note and an apple that had been baked.

“She had already tackled the idea of cooking in your dorm or cottage by using the microwave and what resources that you could find,” she hypothesised, “because the baked apple had caramel on it and probably some cinnamon.”

Phipps added, “I suspect some of this may have come from the cafeteria, which we’re not supposed to do.”

After more than three years in prison for extortion, Phipps was freed in 2007. She had happy memories of hosting a potluck at Alderson on Stewart's last day of incarceration.

“We brought different dishes, but Martha did bring a caramel flan, and I don’t know how she made it,” she remembered.

“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.”

The celebrity chef was found guilty of lying to federal authorities regarding a stock deal that happened in December 2001, as was previously reported. 

She served five months in prison between 2004 and 2005 and then five months of home confinement, according to the New York Times.