The Unofficial Cook

We went food shopping at the Peterson AFB Commissary this afternoon and I saw MRE packs on a shelf.  It’s not the first time they went on sale at the commissary. They had individual packs going for $7.32 and boxes at about $87.00.  As I was sifting through the packs, Spouse came up to me and suggested I get a couple to test for this blog.  Good excuse I thought….why no? Let’s see what US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are eating out on the field.  I chose only one very common American meal:  Roast Beef with Vegetables.  There were others but this sounded like a good place to start…

What a surprise it was when I opened the pack and out came all this individual packets which came falling down on the counter.  There was cocoa mix, a carton which contained the main entree, oatmeal cookies, raisins, a spoon, crackers, peanut butter, and there was a miscellaneous pack with gum (2 pieces),  moist towelette, a tiny bottle of Tabasco, salt and what-not.  Boy, thisone pack generates a lot more trash than I ever imagined. Spouse said there must be a lot of these brown bags scattered all over Iraq by now.

Then there was a curious light green bag with some kind of paper in it.  Apparently, it’s a bag you put your entree in, add a small amount of water, seal and return to the carton from where your entree came from.  It heats up the food in about 10-15 minutes.  There was a warning on the bag which said ventilation was needed if 10 or more packs were going to be used in a small space.  I have no idea how this works, but it did get hot and emit steam from the water hitting that whatchamacallit heating pad thing. The vapors were apparently hydrogen, it said so on the bag.

The beef roast came in a thick tomato-based gravy mixed with the vegetables:  potatoes, carrots, celery I think and a few slices of mushroom. I cut it for this photo below and it didn’t seem to be real meat. Apparently, the beef slice was encased in this reconstituted, (for lack of a better word) pseudo-meat mash, perhaps to make it a uniform size. About a third of this roast beef was this pseudo-meat.

The flavor could be better…but that’s why you have the miniature Tabasco bottle there I guess. I put a bit of ground black pepper over mine before I started on my dinner because I usually do, with any meal. It wasn’t all that bad. It reminded me of those Campbell’s Chunky Soups which I once bought on a regular basis.  Pinoys have this thing for canned goods you see…Spam, corned beef and Campbell’s soups.

But I know I’d not be all that happy to eat Campbell’s soup everyday…or even twice a week.  My Campbell’s binges were mainly for when Spouse was away and I was too lazy to cook myself a meal.

I remember my dad was crazy about C-Rations. You could get it in Manila somehow when I was a kid.  There was a PX lady in our neighborhood who supplied us with Crisco for my mom’s pies and Blue Bonnet margarine, chocolates and some other US goods.  I guess it was all black market….but it was the 70’s and it was Manila…everyone knew it was going around.

Anyway, I think this is better than those C-rations we tasted back then.  Those tasted too much of baby food….which I also liked.  In fact, I’d sneak into Youngest Sister’s Gerber bottles when no one was looking….and thought I got away with it.  I don’t know how my mom knew…there must have been a perpetual streak of that prune mush on my cheek or something.  Mmmm…Gerber’s Prune mush….