I´m not sure if anyone knows the book "Generation Kill" by Evan Wright, but it´s about Recon Marines and their missions during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. MREs played an important role in their story since they don´t have any supplies except for the stuff they carry in their Humvees. When I first read that they had brand candies in their MREs I was surprised because I only knew the EPA chocolate, so I did some research on MREs and found this website. I was completely surprised to see that US soldiers have such a wide range of different meals and the advantage of the flameless heater whereas we are stuck with 3 meals and need our ESBIT cooker to prepare them. Then I searched a bit on Ebay to get me some MREs but was kinda surprised about how expensive these things are. Last week I found a good deal, though, and ordered three MREs to test them.
I think these are 2004 meals, the veggie burger, beef patty and beef ravioli:
Yesterday was a sunny day, noone was at home and I was hungry, so I grabbed my first MRE and prepared to eat it:
I took the Veggie Burger since I feared it was the worst of the three. I´m just no veggie and rather have some good meat than some wanna-be-soy meat.
Anyway, here is the content of the bag:
I felt like a child digging through a pile of christmas presents and was surprised about what was in there. I decided to give the wheat snack bread a first chance and tried one of these first:
When I first unpacked it the shape reminded me of the soft bread I ate in Great Britain. My first bite was...interesting. It´s absolutely not like the hard EPA crackers and had an unknown taste. Unfortunately there was nothing in the MRE I could´ve used as a coating, so it was rather dry and not exactly my cup of tea. There were two wehat snacks in the MRE so I saved the other one and will eat it later with marmalade or EPA sausage.
On further search I found raisins. Yuck! I didn´t try them but I hate raisins as I hate spiders, so I put them away and will most-likely give them to someone else.
As I ate I became a bit thirsty, so I prepared the Lemon Ice Tea drink. Fortunately there was a beverage bag inside the MRE so I knew how much water I had to add (no clue how many mililitres an ounce is ^^). Accidently I added too much water but the drink was still quite good. Pretty sweet and it tasted just like ice tea which is sold here. The poweder dissolved pretty well in the water and I had no clumps at all.
So, the next thing on my list was the Veggie Burger. Afterwards I wanted to eat the chocolate banana nut muffin as a desert. So I followed the instructions on the heater and started to prepare the meal. At first it was a bit difficult getting the MRE in the heater but with a bit of trying it worked well. Next was the water (of which I added too much again). As soon as I poured in the water the bag started to become warm so I hurried and put everything inside the box and leaned it against "a rock or something" (in my case a stone ball).
Now, patience is a virtue, but unfortunately I don´t have much patience so I grabed the muffin and ate it before the main meal. It just sounded soooo good!
And wow! It tasted pretty good! It was a bit moist and crumbly but it was just delicious. The nuts were crispy and the banana pieces moist and soft. It was full of chocolate-banana-nuts taste and a really great desert.
After I ate the muffin I had to wait only a little bit more and some minutes later the main meal was ready. I had some problems getting the MREs out of the heater but when I managed to get it out I prepared myself for the unknown.
IT!
Well, I guess when you eat an MRE it´s the same as when you eat an EPA: Just eat, don´t look at it.
Then I took my nice red friend here (Tabasco) and poured some of it over the meal in order to spice it up.
My first bite was...ok. The burger itself doesn´t taste like much, but the Tabasco-BBQ-sauce mix was quite good. The BBQ sauce even had that "smoky flavour" they printed on the box, so as long as you have enough BBQ sauce the burger is edible.
Conclusion
My first MRE was a trip into the unknown, but I must say it was quite well. Although it was a veggie meal it´s sure better than nothing if you´re out and need something to eat. I didn´t eat the whole set of calories in the MRE because I wasn´t that hungry but the stuff I tried was alright. I´m really looking forward to eat some beef meals next time and I´m curious about what is in these meals. The flameless heater is a really good concept and the great variety of available meals another plus. I´d be glad if the Bundeswehr would adopt such a system, too, but I guess now with the budget problems this will never happen...
When I´ll eat the other meals I´ll probably make photos, too and share my experiences here. I´m especially looking forward to the cheese pretzels!
Regards,
Homer
