US MRE 2014 Menu# 5 Chicken with Tomatoes and Feta Cheese

[BTemple]

Didn't get a call for work today so I decided to have a ration for dinner. I know a lot of the ration community is divided on this particular menu, so I went into this with some degree of trepidation.

First of all.... I'm getting VERY tired of getting either a Tropical or Fruit Punch beverage base powder in this case of MRE's.... I've had 6 or 7 so far and I get one or the other EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Moving on from my rant... the rest of the components look great. I haven't had a First Strike bar in a long time, especially one of the larger-size ones. Ended up with the vastly superior Vegetable Crackers instead of the standard ones. Also lucked out and got Cheese Spread with Jalapenos. I would normally hate to see Raisins in a ration but they have begun to grow on me, which is certainly saying something. There appears to be a lack of "sweets" in here, but that's because there WAS a package of Reese Pieces in here as well but they were lost in a late-night search for snacks a few days ago. Haha

Moving on to my opinions.... I refuse to say any more about the beverage powder. It's red, it tastes vaguely of Kool-Aid. Done.

The First Strike bar was perfect. Nice apple-cinnamon flavour, and the rice crisps were still mostly crispy, certainly making the texture of the bar pleasing. It was also a lot stickier and more malleable than any other First Strike bar I've had. That may be a knock for some but I rather enjoyed it. Just don't enjoy the 2g of Trans Fat in it. Haha

The Vegetable Crackers and Cheese Spread with Jalapenos is an almost perfect combination. The crackers taste even better than Vegetable Thins or Breton Vegetable Crackers. And today the cheese spread was actually a little spicy. It's the best I've ever seen. Made me think "Is this my birthday???"... and no, it isn't.

The raisins were pretty standard. They haven't dried out yet and still have a good taste. You can't expect any better than that.

The entree itself was fantastic. Nice big chunks of actual chicken breast instead of cubes of rubber. There was an ample amount of tomatoes in the sauce and while I couldn't really find any discernable feta cheese itself, the sauce did have that slight tang/sour taste that one would find from a brined feta cheese. VERY pleasantly surprised... especially when piled on some vegetable cracker with the Jalapeno cheese spread as well.

Well that's it, an overall great experience. Even the Reese Pieces were great when eaten days before this. Haha

Thanks for stopping by. Have a good one.

[sourwes]

Nice review, thx for sharing! I've passed this meal over many times but I may have to actually try it now...I'm definitely with you on the drinks; I can't say enough BAD things about drinks in US rations other than yuk! What's even worse is I bought 8 cases of APack MREs this weekend, and all 96 meals have that same horrible lemonade lol! If the drinks in so many other rations are so good(Canadian,British, German), why do ours have to be so bad...

[BTemple]

Nice review, thx for sharing! I've passed this meal over many times but I may have to actually try it now...I'm definitely with you on the drinks; I can't say enough BAD things about drinks in US rations other than yuk! What's even worse is I bought 8 cases of APack MREs this weekend, and all 96 meals have that same horrible lemonade lol! If the drinks in so many other rations are so good(Canadian,British, German), why do ours have to be so bad...

Thanks man!
I'm actually a fan of all of those smaller pouch beverages usually found in the accessory packs. And the regular grape and orange.
Being Canadian I certainly have a soft-spot for the IMP beverages, but my all-time favourite right now would certainly be the ORP drinks.

[parafireboy]

Great review and pics! I like this menu as well. As for me, I seem to be on an orange beverage streak right now. I think out of the last six MREs I've had recently, all but one have had orange beverage. Ugh.

Thanks for sharing!

[BTemple]

Great review and pics! I like this menu as well. As for me, I seem to be on an orange beverage streak right now. I think out of the last six MREs I've had recently, all but one have had orange beverage. Ugh.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks a lot! Nice to do a written review sometimes when I don't have time for a full YouTube review.

Too bad we couldn't make a trade. Haha

[drcynic22]

This doesn't look so bad. I dislike raisins personally, but everything else in the photo looks good (and I do like Reese's Pieces!).

[alohakid]

BTemple - Thanks for the review... it certainly looked better than I envisioned.

mahalo

[ironwarning]

awesome review! i prefer the raspberry one in the accessory pack other others

[BTemple]

BTemple - Thanks for the review... it certainly looked better than I envisioned.

mahalo

I had heard so much conflicting info about the entree and its quality... I was rather surprised by how nice it was for sure.

[BTemple]

awesome review! i prefer the raspberry one in the accessory pack other others

I love all of the little beverage sachets that are found in the accessory packs... they're probably just Crystal Light or some other product like that, with different packaging than normal. The Raspberry one especially tastes JUST LIKE Raspberry Crystal Light