This is just a general overview of the contents of the Spanish Individual Combat Ration, Lunch menu B number 5. I prefer to and will not give anything more than the most basic opinion of the food as my subjective opinion is not particularly relevant to anyone else, I'll try and stick to objectives only. This post will follow the same format as my previous post.
I found at least one other review of this ration here. All pictures contained in this post and some extras
can be found here.
The Spaniards get crackers to eat with their meals, but these are not included in this ration so I provided my own bread. The contents of the ration are shown below:
- Overview of the whole contents of the box.
- Contents list.
Non-consumable items included with the ration are shown in the linked imgur album. The ration includes everything you may need. Hygiene products (10 sheets of toilet paper, toothpaste, disinfectant, water purification tablets for 2 litres) and fire making equipment (foldable stove, 3 hexamine fuel tablets and matches). In my opinion there should have been a French style can handle for the stew, but that's a minor omission.
As there were no forest fire warnings in place in my region when I had this meal, I used a wood fire to heat up my food and drink rather than the included stove.
For the entrée I chose the dehydrated soup, it is a fairly common vegetable (onion, celery, leek, carrot, spinach, pepper) cup soup, mildly flavoured and with small bits of green stuff (onion?) and some croutons (I believe) for texture. The packet requires 2 dl of water so I estimated by using about 2 thirds of my 3 dl tea mug.
- Powdered soup being prepared.
For the main course I had the green beans and ham. This had a fairly small amount of meat and could have used more, it consisted mostly of green beans. The broth was simple, fatty, salty and worked well with the other flavours. The inclusion of vinegar added a touch of acidity to the dish.
Overall the flavour was not offensive and tasted fine, no sign of any problems with packaging or transport (the can had taken an impact in transit).
- Bottom of the green beans and ham can.
- Cooked and ready to eat green beans and ham.
For accompaniment is the squid. The squid were clean, firm and felt almost like they were melting in my mouth. They were in vegetable oil.
- Bottom of the squid can.
- The squid once opened.
The pate was a very smooth and oily pork (meat and liver) and pepper pate. This went down easily.
- Pate can.
- Pate on bread.
For dessert were the peaches. These were your average canned in syrup peach halves. Nice and sweet and a good end to a meal. There were no signs of any problems with packaging or transport (the can had taken an impact in transit).
- Bottom of the peach can.
- Peaches in syrup.
As for consumable accessories, the chewing gum was soft with a mild peppermint flavour, quite a large lump and good for its intended purpose. The isotonic drinks were very similar to French ones, very little flavour, a little salty, but there to do a job and that's all.
- Isotonic drink and chewing gum packets.
Like the previous Spanish ration
I wrote about this is a decent ration and meal and likely gives you what is needed nutrients wise. It could, however, maybe use some little extras for comfort. The food included was very well made and tasted as it should and didn't offend any tastes. I finished my lunch break feeling satisfied.
