MRE Cooking

A while back David had 3 days of drill up in Sandy for the state wide earthquake drill. He brought back some leftover MREs so I could get a taste of 'army cooking.' So tonight, for our emergency preparedness FHE we ate the MREs.

David home from the hunt

On the menu tonight: Mexican 

Flameless heater
This was pretty amazing. Add 2 tablespoons
of water at it is boiling in less than 10 seconds!

David putting his heater between packages
of beans and rice

After adding water you are to place the carton on a rock
"or something"

David waiting for his food to heat...

While it sits on "something" 

My flameless heater 

I was a bit curious about the nutrition quality of the meal. I was relieved to see that the army had not completely over looked that detail. Food=Energy=Top Performance! Food is important!

While we waited for our food to eat we broke out some appetizers: Crackers with cheese spread and wheat bread. 

Wheat bread: The densest bread you'll ever have yet almost
completely devoid of fiber 

Wheat bread with cheese spread 

Then we ate our Mexican food meal. I was surprised at how good it was. You'd never guess it had been siting on the shelf in a sealed bag for a few years.

Rice 

Beans and meat 

Going in for the first bite

Digging in like a pro

Our meal even came with dessert! We had a strawberry dairy drink. Needs cold water, not luke warm.  

We spilled a bit 

Pink and chunky 

Trying a sip (straw not included) 

The remains of our meal 

As we were cleaning up David decided to make himself a quesadilla with cheese spread and a tortilla

The taste was pretty good and the meal had lots of calories (a lot from fat) and vitamins and minerals. However, it was missing one thing...Fiber. When David was at drill he sent me a text asking if fat caused constipation. "No, not really. Usually the opposite," was my response. 

When he got home later I asked him what brought up the question. He explained that the soldiers at drill were talking about how eating MREs will "back you up" and the general consensus was it was from fat and that the gum provided in MREs was actually secretly a laxative to compensate for the constipation. I don't know all that much about MREs but I'm guessing that the constipation has more to do with the almost complete lack of fiber. 

Alleged laxative gum 

Now we are all revved up and ready to work on our 72 hour kits! David has his and I just won a nice hiking backpack in a raffle and am ready to fill it up with MREs and other emergency preparedness gadgets! For ideas on 72 hour kits and emergency preparedness look here.