Hubby was lugging in two boxes when he noted my inquisitive stare.
"MREs," he said.
My brain is slowly going the way of the dodo, otherwise I would remember why we discussed the necessity of having MREs in the house.
"Cool," I said. "How do we make them?"
He started snorting. "MRE. Meal Ready to Eat. 'How do we make them?' she asks."
"Don't scoff at me! I have no experience with this! I've never eaten one in my life! Are they hot? Do you eat them cold? What?"
"Wanna eat one now?"
Among the many reasons to appreciate the husband is our camraderie in food adventures. Opening one of the boxes yielded twelve rather large plastic packages. Having had no experience with MREs, I assumed they were all the same. Not so! There was Turkey Tetrazzini, Spaghetti and Meatballs (Me: "Oh let's try that one!" Hubby: "No, let's not unless we're forced to!") and Chicken with Cavatelli among other flavors. He finally pulled a bag from the bottom and said, "This is a good one - cheese tortellini. It's vegetarian." (Yeah, I started laughing too).
Cutting open the bag, he pulled out the contents of our MRE pouch: an accessory kit including matches, salt, a seasoning kit for those who preferred non-sodium seasoning, a moist towelette, toilet paper, a powdered apple drink, and chewing gum. Also included: our main course (cheese tortellini), peanut butter to go with crackers made without any fat rendering it the crumbliest bits of baked flour ever to pass my lips, dessert (spiced apples and carrot pound cake), a snack (toffee rolls [which I was later miffed to discover were nothing more than Tootsie Rolls], a spoon and-- this was really cool, a heating pouch which is referred to as a flameless ration heater (FRH).
To prepare your hot meal, you have to first fill your heating pouch with water. The flameless ration heater has pads of magnesium dust
mixed with salt and iron dust which are activated when water is added. Within seconds, the water begins to boil and steam (this was probably the coolest part of dinner). The tortellini pouch is put into the FRH which is then put into the box in which the tortellini was packaged. Please note the instructions (to the left) which shows us the proper way in which the meal should be heated in the FRH. Lacking a rock, we used "something" (a bag of bread). A few minutes later -- a warm bag of tortellini. The apple drink and spcied apples were likewise added to the FRH for a warm drink and warm dessert.
How did it taste? Well, while the carrot pound cake was surprisingly moist and quite good, as were the spiced apples, the main course left a lot to be desired -- a little too gummy and bearing a strong resemblance to Chef Boyardee. Entirely possible we didn't heat it enough to yield a less viscous sauce. On the other hand, we are talking about a meal with a potential shelf life of 9 months. I was more interested in the warm spiced apples and the cake. At least those were a little better than palatable.
Now the crackers and peanut butter weren't so bad, but it's hard to go wrong with a classic. You have to try really hard to screw up peanut butter and crackers. Hubby sighed as he spread the peanut butter. "We got kind of screwed with the apple cider," he said. "If we had hot chocolate, we could mix it with the right amount of water for consistency, add the peanut butter and the crackers and a creamer packet and a little sugar to make peanut butter pudding. It's really good. Oh yeah, one I always wanted to try -- if you have dried fruit, a little water, creamer and sugar, what's that called?"
Me: "Disgusting?"
When friends of his were in Afghanistan, they had culinary contests with their MREs to see who could make the tastiest dish using the ingredients available. He recalls that one of the winning entries was called "The Depauli Debacle," but can't recall its components. I'm afraid to find out.
Now would I reach for an MRE in a moment of laziness the way I would for a box of granola or my favorite packaged ramen? Probably not. On the other hand, I've got 23 other packages to choose from. Surely among those there is something I can sink my teeth into?
