- Pouched main meal, luncheon meat, and peach-apricot iced tea
These pieces of a Slovenian 24 hour ration were in a package from
steve1989 a long time ago. While it's not a complete meal, it was definitely enough foood. The date code on the pasta was 8059, and the best before date was March 2010, so I'm assuing the code means that this was manufacturered in 2008 and was meant to last two years.
- Pouch contents
The meal, heater and saline activator come inside a bubble mailer from the UK. The flameless ration heater used in these rations works like just about any other. Pop in the ration, add the salt water pouch, and let it cook for about ten minutes. In the bubble mailer, I think it heats up a little faster and gets to a really decent temperature.
- Cooked meal
The pasta still had a little bit of texture and firmness to it. Mixed in amongst the pasta and generous amount of tomato sauce were three vegetarian sausages. They were really interesting actually. They were tough to some degree, and although it certainly wasn't sausage - the fake meat was good and I thought it was the best part of the dish. For something produced over 8 years ago that was only meant to last 2 this was a winner. 4 times the shelf life - good job whoever packs these for the Slovenian military!
- One of the vegetable sausages
With the pasta, I also had a can of luncheon meat (Mesni Narezak). The meat had a best by date of 2012, so it was only at double the expected shelf life. I didn't have any Slovenian crackers, but that's ok - I always have plenty of good ol' trusty Wheat Snack Bread available. The bread had a date code of 6321, so it was just shy of being 10 years old. I would eat this potted mechanically separated slurry of meat any day - it was excellent. It was like softer, less salty spam with a noticeably higher fat content. I had it cold on bread and a few hunks by itself.
The peach iced tea is one of my favorite drinks from a European ration. It called for 200ml of water and is never overpoweringly sweet. Like the other items, I feel like it held up very well for the age. I hope you all enjoyed the review - as with the other Slovenian rations I've reviewed on here, I would highly recommend them if you ever get the chance!
