Once I opened the bag I found the contents. Unfortunately silly me forgot to take pictures of the whole bag, so I can only describe what was inside. I found the main meal, the Chicken with Salsa and the Mexican Rice, a bag of M&Ms, veggie crackers, a bag of Mocha Capuccino pwoder, Jalapeno Cheese Spread, Shortbread Cookies and an accesoire bag.
I planed to take the whole MRE bag to the barracks and eat it in the evening but I couldn´t resist to eat the candies and the shortbread cookies. So at first I opened the bag of M&Ms. I wasn´t sure if they would survive 6 years of being handled but fortunately all of them were alright. Their taste was a bit different from the M&Ms they sell here, but other than that they were alright.
Now to the Shortbread Cookies. I wasn´t sure what to expect, since I had no idea what "short bread" was. But once I opened the bag I was quite surprised to see a familiar shape, They looked like cookies you can buy in Germany. The only problem was that they had a slightly rancid smell. At first I ignored it and ate the first cookie, but they did not just smell rancid, they also tasted rancid and left a really disgusting after-taste. I don´t know what went wrong with them but I didn´t wanted to risk anything, so unfortunately they had to go...
Good looking, but not good tasting...
The evening after I decided to eat the Chicken and Rice. It was too cold outside and I didn´t wanted to use the heater indoors, so I safed the heater and nuked the meal in the micro-wave.
Here´s the rice on the plate. It had a rather oily surface and I had to crush it into smaller lumps. Other than that the smell seemed ok.
Chicken with Salsa on top of it:
And the whole mess after nuking it for 2 minutes in the micro-wave:
I added the cheesespread ut didn´t add the Tabasco sauce. For some reason the accesoire bag smelled like Tabasco sauce and the small bottle was almost empty, even though I couldn´t find a leak. Strange...
Now about the taste:
It was really spicy and well-seasoned. I could´ve added some Tabasco, bu for my taste it was hot enough. The chicken didn´t taste like much, but there was enough sauce to cover that up.The sauce itself was quite watery but alright. The tomatooes were alright, too. The rice was mostly good. Well-seasoned, mostly soft and not "boring". The only problem was that there were some rice lumps inside that still stuck to each other because of that odd oily surface. These lumps were hard and a bit difficult to chew. Maybe I should´ve crushed it more. But except for that the meal was good.
Afterwards I opened up the veggie crackers but unfortunately I used all the cheese-spread before so I had to eat the crackers like they were. For me it was the first time eating those crackers, so I didn´t knew what to expect. At first they looked like "Tuc" salt crackers you can buy here, but unfortunately their taste was rather dull. I don´t quite know why they´re called "vegetable" crackers, because there was no vegetable taste at all. I really regret wasting the cheese spread before because I think you´ve got to combine these two items. I still prefer the EPA crackers over both the WSB and the veggie crackers, but maybe it´s just the cultural difference between the USA and Germany. I wouldn´t say the crackers were bad, but all alone they were dull but with the cheese spread, still alright. Also they were pretty crumbly unlike the "tank plates", German soldiers are issued.
In the accesoire bag was also a small sachet of lemon ice tea, but I didn´t open it. Just like the mocha capuccino I´m going to safe it. I´m not a big coffee fan anyway, so please forgive me if I leave these items out.
CONCLUSION
Overall this meal was alright. It had no contents I disliked. The main entree and the rice were good, except for the small oily rice lumps and the wateray sauce. The M&Ms are a nice thing. Everyone likes chocolate so therefore it´s a nice cheer-up and also a good dessert to eat on the move. The crackers were not quite my cup of tea, but I guess it´s my own fault for not saving some cheesespread for them.
The only major let-down were the short bread cookies. I don´t know what went wrong with them, but I just couldn´t eat them. I really think they´re a nice dessert and a good variety but oh well, I guess you don´t always get what you want.
My next review will probably be a French RCIR I got from EBay.de but I think that´ll take a while (I´m especially curious about the French crackers and how they compare tp the US and German crackers).
I hope you enjoyed this review and have calm holidays!
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. That is really terrible, it destroys the taste and furthermore it looks unappetizing on the plate. Putting the pouch just in boiling water, believe me, that is much, much better for many reasons 
. Perhaps that needs some minutes more time, but you have to have the time for enjoying an MRE 
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