Today I bring you another brown-bag review, this time a 1991 DoP Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, which was menu 5 that year. This older MRE was part of a lot that I picked up on eBay not too long ago, and the exterior looked to be in very good condition, so I was hopeful as to the condition of the components.
- Before opening
I was excited to find a maple nut cake inside!
- Contents
I went ahead and heated the entree using the BIB method for 10 min and got everything plated in fine dining fashion
- Plated and ready to eat
The spaghetti was perfectly fine and tasted brand new. The noodles were a bit soggy, but what can you do when you've been sitting in tomato sauce for 25 years. There was a decent portion of beef in the sauce, and was quite good.
- Spaghetti entree
The crackers were crisp and tasted as good as new. A little saltier than later production MRE crackers. The cheese spread hadn't aged quite as well. There wasn't a "bad" odor upon opening, but it was certainly darker than newer production cheese spread, and the texture had changed a bit. While not "bad", the smell was without a doubt different than when it was new. It had an "aged" smell, not unlike Parmesan cheese. I decided to forgo the cheese spread. I've got a little sinus infection as it is, and I don't have any desire to add any GI symptoms to the mix as well
- Cheese spread on crackers
The maple nut cake, I am happy to say, was perfectly fine! I was a bit surprised, I had fully expected the nuts to have gone rancid, but amazingly it tasted brand new!
- Maple nut cake
The M&M's were all intact, and tasted new as well. They hadn't turned to powder like the older ones sometimes do in less-than-ideal storage conditions.
- M&M's
The coffee was Taster's Choice, and tasted just fine. The grounds were a little more brown than black, but the finished product smelled and tasted great. The lemon-lime beverage powder was still nice and "powdery", and mixed up into a beverage that tasted just like new.
- Beverages
The wet wipe was still moist, and the gum tasted just as new, and left the same awful after taste that it always does
While I didn't use the creamer (I like my coffee black), the creamer seemed to be in fine shape and was still in powder form and hadn't clumped or hardened. The same for the sugar, it appeared perfectly fine.
I was really impressed how well this one held up over the past 25 years. This seems like one that ended up stowed away in a dark, cool basement, forgotten for a couple of decades. Other than the cheese spread, everything was great! Thanks for reading!
