Local food or Identifiable food? (2 Comments)
Col. Panic. has been having adventures at work. They tried to implement something new and it ended up causing quite a few problems. Some of them effecting the 911 dispatch- not a good thing. He has been working late hours trying to get it all sorted out. Monday and Tuesday night he was there late and didn’t have enough food to tide him over so he scrounged around and found some MREs to eat. MRE stands for Meals Ready to Eat. Yes, the lovely things that our soldiers out in the field get to eat daily. When you are hungry- food, or anything slightly resembling food, is a good thing. He described the omelet and hash browns he ate on Tuesday night to us last night at dinner. (He made it home in time to eat with us last night! Yippee!) He said the eggs were kind of recognizable, using your imagination, and the hash browns were a soggy mass but he poured hot sauce on them and that covered a multitude of sins.
We had tortellini soup for dinner last night with fresh focaccia bread, celery sticks with cream cheese in them and salad. I was feeling rather good about our meal because I have been reading a lot lately about “local” food or “knowing where your food came from”. I didn’t make the tortellini (I’m not that crazy, but it might be interesting to try someday…) but the turkey broth was some I had made from our Thanksgiving Turkey and the green beans and broccoli (I chopped it up small and no one seemed to notice it was there. 🙂 was from my Parent’s garden. The rest of it was from who knows where but I thought it was a start. The Col. looked at it and his first thoughts were not that it was “local” food but that it was “identifiable” food.
Look a green bean! Look pasta! Look bread! And salad! Not this says it’s egg, I hope they are right.
I am very thankful we live in a place that has an abundant, identifiable food supply.
Hey!
I liked the MRE eggs. He should have tried stuff from the original MRE’s. They were truly an adventure.
You know the old question; “What to Chinese people eat for breakfast?… Chinese food of course!”
What do soldiers eat for breakfast? MRE’s of course. They didn’t have eggs back in the day. Having “spaghetti with meat sauce” at 4am is not real pleasant.
At 2000 calories per meal, the kept you filled up though. There were times we would 2 per day plus a hot dinner. I still didn’t gain any weight.
When they started putting the little bottles of Tabasco in each meal, things got a little better.
The dried fruit comes from right here in Albany, in case you didn’t know. They were the best trading material. You always kept one of the dried strawberry packs around in case you got stuck with the infamous “Pork Patty” meal. You would trade the strawberries for anything other than the “pork patty”. The “pork” consisted of a bone dry wafer that you were supposed to soak in hot water for 10 minutes, which when done, came out pretty good. But we never had 10 minutes and we certainly didn’t have any hot water. So, you ended up crunching through this desiccated food stuff and guzzling water from your canteen. Ick.
Comment by Eric — January 24, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
I knew you’d have to comment on this one. Being basically the only one I know with vast experience with MREs I thought you’d relate. He tried the fettuccine one too. I think he thought the egg one was better. Like I said, when you are hungry anything resembling food that might fill you up is fair game. 2000 calories sounds like a lot but I do know when a person is very active, like I am sure you were, then it goes fast.
Comment by JustMe — January 26, 2008 @ 12:11 pm