A week of MREs
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DangerousDave
- Posts: 1148
- Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2005 4:48 pm
- Location: Virginia
Excellent Post
Just above by Kman. The Bill Murray pic eating the "Chocolate Sports Bar" and the Judges' Wife feinting, in the movie. Good thinking! If I remember correctly, it was a Baby Ruth. I'll take a Baby Ruth over the SB, unless I'm starving.
Day 7: Sunday lunch: #14 - Pasta w/Veg. in Alfredo Sauce
Day 7: Sunday lunch: #14 - Pasta with Vegetables in Alfredo Sauce
I decided to go ahead and finish off the week of MREs with this Pasta in Alfredo Sauce MRE that's been sitting in my garage for the past few years. I wasn't ever particularly excited about trying this one but it was in easy reach and I figured "what the heck?...let's see if it's still good". This one was from late 2000 so it was about 4.5 years old.
Talk about a veggie-all-the-way MRE - check out the contents: pasta in alfredo sauce entree, pineapple, vegetable crackers, peanut butter, fruit bar, granola bar, iced tea, and hot apple cider. I certainly wasn't expecting any meat-based products in there, it just looks like they went the extra mile to "vegetize" this one.
While the entree was heating up, I snacked on vegetable crackers and peanut butter. I always thought the vegetable crackers went best with cheese but this wasn't bad. Here's a pic:
Vegetable Crackers and Peanut Butter
There's definitely an art form to opening the peanut butter packet and spreading it on the crackers. If you tear off a corner and the hole is too big, you squeeze out these huge globs of peanut butter on each cracker and as soon as you try to spread it out with your spoon (or finger), your cracker breaks up into a hundred pieces. Or if you cut it too small (like I did in the pic above), you get these dainty little peanut butter swirls and if you're eating around anyone else, they're going to look at your crackers...look at you ...and snicker. Ideally, you cut a hole just right and you get a nice flat ribbon of peanut butter about 1/4 inch wide. This makes it easy to cover each cracker with just the right amount of peanut butter and you won't have to worry about trying to spread it out manually.
With my snack finished, I took the freshly heated entree out of the heater, cut it open, and had a look:
Pasta with Vegetables in Alfredo Sauce
I have to admit...when I first looked at this entree, I thought, "yuck" and thought about ditching it. I'm not a huge fan of peas and there were just way too many of the little guys in there to make it look appetizing. But I gave it a sniff and since it didn't smell rancid, I decided that with enough tobasco sauce and salt, it would be ok. And sure enough, it was. I was actually surprised at how good it was. If I didn't look too closely at it, I could almost not tell that it was a vegetarian MRE. It could very well have had some sort of chicken in there that was cooked down enough to make it mushy - that's the kind of texture the entree had.
The entree went pretty quick and I was still a bit hungry so I dug into the side of pineapple. This is the one single component from this MRE that I could tell was four years old. A few days ago, I had a fresh pineapple side and the pineapple was nice and yellow. This older side's pineapple was definitely a darker color - still yellow, just darker. The taste was spot on, though - nothing bad about it. Maybe it wasn't as crisp as the newer side, but it was still good.
I thought it was funny that they included both a granola bar and fruit bar in the same MRE. You normally don't see many bars at all and all of sudden, here's two. They both look to be commercial items packed in MRE pouches:
Fruit Bar and Granola Bar
I didn't eat the granola bar but I did eat the fruit bar for dessert. I was a little crumbly (probably the age) but tasted just fine.
I decided to go ahead and finish off the week of MREs with this Pasta in Alfredo Sauce MRE that's been sitting in my garage for the past few years. I wasn't ever particularly excited about trying this one but it was in easy reach and I figured "what the heck?...let's see if it's still good". This one was from late 2000 so it was about 4.5 years old.
Talk about a veggie-all-the-way MRE - check out the contents: pasta in alfredo sauce entree, pineapple, vegetable crackers, peanut butter, fruit bar, granola bar, iced tea, and hot apple cider. I certainly wasn't expecting any meat-based products in there, it just looks like they went the extra mile to "vegetize" this one.
While the entree was heating up, I snacked on vegetable crackers and peanut butter. I always thought the vegetable crackers went best with cheese but this wasn't bad. Here's a pic:
Vegetable Crackers and Peanut Butter
There's definitely an art form to opening the peanut butter packet and spreading it on the crackers. If you tear off a corner and the hole is too big, you squeeze out these huge globs of peanut butter on each cracker and as soon as you try to spread it out with your spoon (or finger), your cracker breaks up into a hundred pieces. Or if you cut it too small (like I did in the pic above), you get these dainty little peanut butter swirls and if you're eating around anyone else, they're going to look at your crackers...look at you ...and snicker. Ideally, you cut a hole just right and you get a nice flat ribbon of peanut butter about 1/4 inch wide. This makes it easy to cover each cracker with just the right amount of peanut butter and you won't have to worry about trying to spread it out manually.
With my snack finished, I took the freshly heated entree out of the heater, cut it open, and had a look:
Pasta with Vegetables in Alfredo Sauce
I have to admit...when I first looked at this entree, I thought, "yuck" and thought about ditching it. I'm not a huge fan of peas and there were just way too many of the little guys in there to make it look appetizing. But I gave it a sniff and since it didn't smell rancid, I decided that with enough tobasco sauce and salt, it would be ok. And sure enough, it was. I was actually surprised at how good it was. If I didn't look too closely at it, I could almost not tell that it was a vegetarian MRE. It could very well have had some sort of chicken in there that was cooked down enough to make it mushy - that's the kind of texture the entree had.
The entree went pretty quick and I was still a bit hungry so I dug into the side of pineapple. This is the one single component from this MRE that I could tell was four years old. A few days ago, I had a fresh pineapple side and the pineapple was nice and yellow. This older side's pineapple was definitely a darker color - still yellow, just darker. The taste was spot on, though - nothing bad about it. Maybe it wasn't as crisp as the newer side, but it was still good.
I thought it was funny that they included both a granola bar and fruit bar in the same MRE. You normally don't see many bars at all and all of sudden, here's two. They both look to be commercial items packed in MRE pouches:
Fruit Bar and Granola Bar
I didn't eat the granola bar but I did eat the fruit bar for dessert. I was a little crumbly (probably the age) but tasted just fine.
That's all folks!
That's all folks!
That last MRE brings to a conclusion my week of MREs. I realize that technically, I still have a dinner and lunch to go to make it a full 7 lunches and 7 dinners, but my wife is arriving back in a few hours and I don't think I can talk her into dining on MREs tonight and tomorrow.
Overall, I'd say it was a good experience. I thought I might gain a little weight by eating only MREs for a week but surprisingly, I didn't. Maybe that's because I only ate two MREs a day. Since I didn't eat everything in each MRE (usually didn't go for the beverage base powders, chewing gum, or sugar packets), I'd say I averaged about 1000-1100 calories per MRE. So that's around 2200 calories per day.
In terms of being sick of the food, I didn't even come close to experiencing that. I had the benefit of eating out of a single case of MREs and that meant none of my meals would be a repeat. I suppose if I had to eat them for two weeks or more, I'd start running into repeats and who knows how I'd feel then.
As for being hungry, that wasn't much of a problem. By the time lunch or dinner time rolled around, I was just starting to get hungry and the MREs would fill me up completely...just enough to tide me over until the next meal. The only time a MRE left me dissatisfied was when I had that Vegetable Manicotti MRE for dinner - a few hours after I ate it, I started getting the munchies. Maybe that's because they gypped me out my fruit side.
One last thing I wanted to add was that I very impressed with the "portion discipline" of the MREs. You see, for me, it's real easy to put too much food on my plate. For example, when I'm home and fixing a taco salad, no matter how hard I try, I always end up making a salad about twice as big as I mean to - and of course I end up eating it all and feel way over-stuffed. Or when I'm eating at a Chinese Buffet (or any buffet for that matter), it's always too easy to put more food on my plate than I really should. But with MREs, there's enough food to leave me comfortably stuffed but not so much food that I say, "damn...I shouldn't have eaten so much!". So in that respect, I found the experience great.
That last MRE brings to a conclusion my week of MREs. I realize that technically, I still have a dinner and lunch to go to make it a full 7 lunches and 7 dinners, but my wife is arriving back in a few hours and I don't think I can talk her into dining on MREs tonight and tomorrow.
Overall, I'd say it was a good experience. I thought I might gain a little weight by eating only MREs for a week but surprisingly, I didn't. Maybe that's because I only ate two MREs a day. Since I didn't eat everything in each MRE (usually didn't go for the beverage base powders, chewing gum, or sugar packets), I'd say I averaged about 1000-1100 calories per MRE. So that's around 2200 calories per day.
In terms of being sick of the food, I didn't even come close to experiencing that. I had the benefit of eating out of a single case of MREs and that meant none of my meals would be a repeat. I suppose if I had to eat them for two weeks or more, I'd start running into repeats and who knows how I'd feel then.
As for being hungry, that wasn't much of a problem. By the time lunch or dinner time rolled around, I was just starting to get hungry and the MREs would fill me up completely...just enough to tide me over until the next meal. The only time a MRE left me dissatisfied was when I had that Vegetable Manicotti MRE for dinner - a few hours after I ate it, I started getting the munchies. Maybe that's because they gypped me out my fruit side.
One last thing I wanted to add was that I very impressed with the "portion discipline" of the MREs. You see, for me, it's real easy to put too much food on my plate. For example, when I'm home and fixing a taco salad, no matter how hard I try, I always end up making a salad about twice as big as I mean to - and of course I end up eating it all and feel way over-stuffed. Or when I'm eating at a Chinese Buffet (or any buffet for that matter), it's always too easy to put more food on my plate than I really should. But with MREs, there's enough food to leave me comfortably stuffed but not so much food that I say, "damn...I shouldn't have eaten so much!". So in that respect, I found the experience great.
Re: mre
LOL, you and me both!doggar wrote:I appreciate the tip on opening the entree pouch lengthwise instead of from the top, for some reason this never occured to me and it would make it a lot easier to eat.
"THEY CALL ME DIRTY...DIRTYDAVE"
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paul heath
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2005 12:44 pm