Not sure about those bisquits being any good, seems to me I recall it was a bit of a scandal at the time. There was a decided rush to procure these and numerous other items and distribute them, due to the Cuban Missile Crisis with the Soviets and other Cold War tensions. Many different firms got con...

I think they are Pinto beans, actually? Rice and Pasta too benefit from extended soak or rehydration times. Hungry travellers will tolerate some crunchy bits, but. We used to carry a squeeze bottle of margarine, to boost the calories of the entree. Foods to be freeze-dried are prepared very lean to ...

"If it's good, they'll stop making it."

Those combination knife sharpener/cornflake bars were pretty tasty. Van Brode had the contract for the oatmeal bars in later years, too. Freeze dried meals definitely benefit from extended rehydration times! 10 minutes is not long enough by any stretch, if they contain beans/potatoes etc. Overnight ...

I have had excellent results with vintage entree, assuming they were stored reasonably. The Beef Stew was widely considered among the, if not the "best" MRE. Unfortunately in recent years the rations no longer use actual stew meat, having substituted an ersatz "beef" made with scrap pieces, floor sw...

Actually the OP isn't wrong for questioning. The pouch is (almost ) 4 oz. net, with a claim that it "Serves 2". Serves 2 what , exactly, isn't specified. The .mil cold weather rations are 5 oz, and are reconstituted with 16 oz of water and make no claims other than a single serving. This is about ri...

Early or earlier MRE issue beverage powders were quite good, I thought. They did seem to use a rather high proportion of non-dairy creamer maybe in the cocoa. But it was tasty when doubled up. The trick you see then was, as always, to save up 2 or 3 packets and then make a large canteen cup worth al...

Widely despised, I had some previous experience with Oregon Freeze Dry products from hiking, so the FD pork patty didn't bother me. As I recall there was also a FD potato patty. I liked those too. The freeze dried fruits were pretty fancy for the time, and all the FD items were generally of high qua...

The "Wheat Snack Bread" was a solution in search of a problem. The calories are the same as crackers. Shelf stability is certainly no better, and arguably much worse, moldy snack bread is not unusual. But I've never seen or heard of a moldy saltine. Not to say it can't happen, just that I've never s...

They sent some off to the lab for testing. It came back with "Your Horse has Diabetes".

Nice gesture on A-Bs part, seriously.