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I decided to eat one of my rations today...or over the weekend actually. The UK 24-hour ration has a LOT of food and snack items, so I doubt I could eat it all in one day anyway. And my wife won't want me skipping dinner to eat "one of those weird food things".

Lets start with a rundown of the contents, then I'll eat breakfast. The hot cocoa had a small hole in it, so everything was lightly dusted with cocoa powder.



The accessory pack on top and a pack of tissues


Fruitful Muesli and apple sauce


Tomato Pasta Salad, Biscuits - Fruit, Caramel cereal bar


Beef Bolognese & Pasta Shells


White Chocolate Brownie, Apple Cinnamon Cereal Bar, Raspberry jam, Green Tabasco sauce, Squidge tube (like Nutella?), Instant Hot Chocolate Drink


Tiny can of peanuts, 3 drink mixes: Orange and Grapefruit powdered drinks and Exotic electrolyte drink


4th drink mix, Apple, and the Accessories pack shown again.


The accessory pack has tea, coffee, whitener, sugar, a spork, moist towel and gum.

Rob

For a late breakfast, I made up the Fruitful Muesli and the Hot Instant Chocolate. Both looked and smelled completely normal and I had no hesitation about making them up and eating them.


(sorry for the dark picture)

Despite the small hole in the Chocolate package, it was still in good shape and nearly all of it was still in the pack. The instructions say to mix it with 350 ml of hot water and this made for a very flavorful, sweet, rich drink. Great stuff!

The Fruitful Muesli called for 100 ml of water. This was not really enough and even after adding another 50 ml, it was still thick and gluey. It was also not at all sweet. It had raisins and another fruit which I first thought was golden raisins, but I think was pineapple. These were both sweet, but overall still bland. I added one packet of sugar from the accessory pack and that made it better to my taste. A second packet might have been better (but I didn't want it to sweet).

EDIT: I checked the ingredients for the Muesli and it shows the following fruits: apricot, pineapple, papaya, cranberries, melon, mango, raisins, sultana and apples. Yeah...never would have guessed there were that many fruits in there.

A little later, I ate the Orifo Apple Cinnamon Cereal bar. It was great! Really liked the taste and texture. It was chewy with a little crunch, too. I would buy those bars for the pantry!

Rob

Lunch time!

My daughter selected the Exotic electrolyte powder for me and I chose the Tomato Pasta Salad. The Salad says it can be eaten hot or cold, but I think I'm very glad I heated it! Don't know why this is called a "Salad". It is tomato sauce with macaroni and basil.

The drink takes 400 ml of water. Shown is half of the water in the glass to start. Kinda foamy and lumpy at first, but some good stirring and the rest of the water dissolved the rest of the powder.



I heated the Pasta Salad in boiling water and made it nice and hot


And here's lunch!


The Exotic drink tastes mostly like pineapple, but not straight pineapple juice. There are other background flavors. Sweet, but not too sweet like fruit juice would be. It was OK

The pasta with tomato sauce tasted alright, but not great. It actually had a little bitter taste. Not like it had gone bad, really, but maybe from the basil? The pasta had almost no "bite" or texture. I liked it less the more I ate and I ended up leaving a few bites uneaten. Some hot sauce might have been good, but I didn't think the green Tobasco would have been the right way to go. Maybe just some crushed red pepper, or even plain black pepper. This is also a dish that might have worked with having some crackers broken up into it like I have seen some other reviewers do. Give it a little crunch. But this ration only has "fruit biscuits" which I don't think would work.

After eating, I also broke out the tiny can of peanuts. It actually had more inside that I thought as I was pretty full when I was done with them. I think the can is 100 g, but it didn't say that prominently. Big nuts, moderately salty and VERY crunchy. Nice nuts.


The next installment will likely be tomorrow. There's still a lot of food to eat. Maybe I'll try the "squidge" later, but I'm not sure what on.

Rob

This morning I ate the Caramel Cereal Bar and had a cup of the English Breakfast Tea.

The Caramel bar was not as good as the Apple Cinnamon. It didn't really taste like caramel so much and certainly didn't have any chewy/stringy caramel feel. But it was OK.

The Tea was ok. I am more of a coffee guy, but do drink tea occasionally. I added on sugar and one creamer for a "cream tea". Might have wanted to steep it a little longer to make it stronger.

Later in the afternoon, I opened the "Biscuits - Fruit" and Raspberry Jam. Really like the biscuits and I could eat them by themselves no problem. Slightly sweet, good crunch, a hint of spice even. Good with the jam, too. I have 3 left and I'm not sure how to devour them. Plain? With Squidge?


Rob

I'll go ahead and finish this up quickly today as there doesn't seem to be much interest in it.

On Monday I finished the rest of the ration (except for a couple of drinks, gun and the 2nd tea).

I made the two coffees and used one cream and one sugar each.


I liked the Kenco best as it was rich and, as self-proclaimed, smooth. The Taster's Choice was just instant coffee.

For lunch, I had the Beef Bolognese and Pasta Shells, the fruit puree and an Apple beverage.



The Apple beverage was very apple-y. It tasted OK, but really wasn't much like real apple juice. I don't think I've ever consumed an artificial apple drink before and won't mind not doing it again. Not bad. Just not that good.

The fruit puree was apple, mango, passionfruit, IIRC. Apple sauce and fruit purees aren't really something I eat usually. This was a bit grainy and the texture didn't do much for my tastes. I don't think there was anything wrong with it. I ate about half of it.

The Pasta was really good! Nice beef, good rich sauce and even some texture left in the pasta shells. You can see there was some fat/grease/oil, too. Even though I was liking it "as is", I decided to try some with the green Tobasco. Wow! Mixing a bit in gave it just some extra depth and pop without really making it "hot spicey". Good flavor! I don't think I have ever had the green Tobasco before.

Dessert was supposed to be the White Chocolate Brownie.


I wasn't expecting a plain looking brownie with some browned white chocolate chips. Alas, even though only 1 year past the printed expiration, the brownie had turned, man. Smelled ok, looked ok. Did not TASTE ok. I couldn't put an exact label on it, but it just tasted wrong. Off. Spoiled. Ick. No me gusta. Into the trash it went.

The final major bit from the ration was the tube of Squidge.


As the tube says, it is Hazelnut Spread with Cocoa. It is a lot like Nutella, but different. Not as creamy, maybe? Different mix of the hazelnut and cocoa?
The ration didn't come with anything that screamed "put Squidge on me." I thought about using some with the Biscuits - Fruit on day one, but decided that wouldn't be that great. <shrug> So I had to pull something else out of my butt and used some plain soda crackers. Not the best match, really, mainly because of the salt on the crackers. Would be better on something less salty.



So there you have it. A 4+ year old Brit ration. The only "spoiled" bit seems to have been the White Chocolate Brownie. The Fruit Puree and the Tomato Pasta Salad just didn't taste very good. Everything else was pretty good.

Thanks for reading. Or if you didn't, then you won't see this. : )

Rob