For breakfast this morning, I decided to try out this Meatloaf with Gravy MRE produced in 2005 by The Wornick Company. Let's take a look at it!
Here's the front and back of the ration.
This is the inside of the packaging prior to removing the contents.
Here are the contents of the ration laid out on a tray. It includes toffee with walnuts, crackers, cocoa beverage powder, apple jelly, meatloaf with brown onion gravy, mashed potatoes, oatmeal cookie, flameless ration heater, a spoon and an accessory packet.
Here are the items in the accessory packet. It includes iced tea drink mix, ground red pepper and the other standard components. Unfortunately it didn't include coffee so I couldn't make an Army mocha with the cocoa.
Here's a closeup of the meatloaf and mashed potatoes in their retort pouches. I don't like relying on the flameless ration heaters so I boiled them in water for about 10 minutes.
Lastly, here's the entire MRE prepared!
The meatloaf was very much like a Salisbury steak but maybe a TV dinner or school lunch version of it. The meat seemed very artificial and processed but it was chewy and edible enough. The brown gravy was somewhat salty but I could tell it had a nice onion broth flavor added. The mashed potatoes smelled sour when I first opened the retort pouch but I decided to pour them on the tray. I think it was the butter in them that was starting to spoil. I took a few small bites of them and they didn't have much flavor. They were also somewhat liquefied and not firm at all.
The toffee with walnut candies were pretty sour, they didn't make it. I took a bite of one and a sour, bitter flavor ran across my tongue and I had to spit it out. The cookies were still tasty and reminded me of ginger snaps but softer and slightly less crunchy. They were toasted pretty well and had a slight ginger/caramel flavor to them.
The crackers and apple jelly were okay but I only took a few bites of them because I felt satisfied enough after eating the cookies. These MREs are very carb heavy and it becomes too much for me to eat in one sitting. The cocoa was pretty tasty, but it had more a milky flavor than the cocoa from the 1980s MREs. It was okay but if I had to choose between them, I'd prefer the 1980s cocoa beverage base any day of the week. The iced tea was pretty tasty too. I remember liking them as a kid and it's pretty nostalgic when I drink them now because it has a distinct, artificial lemon flavor.
