Grief. It’s What’s For Dinner.

Continuing today’s honoring of my wife’s father and brother this Veterans Day I wanted to talk about food. Or at least what the military has the audacity to pass off as food.

Name That Dish!
Before we begin, let’s see if you can determine what this is. I’ll give you a hint so that you can immediately discount the obvious…it wasn’t excreted. Nor is it pet food. The answer as below.

If you think this is bad, you should hear about some of the things my father-in-law was forced to ingest while serving overseas. He ate things that shouldn’t even exist on earth, let alone in someone’s stomach. As gross as it is to hear about some of the “delicacies” he had to eat while hunkered down in the wild, it does offer one distinct benefit.

You simply cannot serve this guy a bad meal.

No matter how burnt, how mangled, or how over-seasoned a dish is, it’s still better than a bowl of boiled sloth testes.

On certain rare occasions he did enjoy the luxury of an “MRE”, as pictured above, which stands for Meal Ready to Eat. You know, if the FTC is seriously all gung-ho about “Truth in Advertising”, they might want to start right here because they’re taking some serious liberties with the word meal. And ready to eat? Big steamy piles of donkey dung are ready to eat but that doesn’t mean you’ll want to.

For those who don’t know, MRE’s are comprised of powders and bricks posing as food. They pack about 45,000 calories into each serving and the contents are designed to lodge themselves in your bowels until you’re discharged from the armed forces. For soldiers in a pinch, the cookies can also double as projectile weapons.

I totally get the importance of MRE’s on the battlefield but I just don’t understand why civilians buy these kits on purpose. Not only are people selling these things on eBay but other people are actually bidding! Why would anyone want to voluntarily eat an MRE when there are perfectly good alternatives laying around? Like wall insulation or scrap metal?

Unless you’re storming a hill, participating in a 75-mile triathlon, or need to gain 40 pounds over the weekend, you really don’t need the calorie intake. MRE’s are designed to offset the rigors of a soldier’s life, for emergencies, or for survival. Eating an MRE on purpose just brings you one step closer to involuntary loony bin commitment.

As promised here’s the answer to the MRE photo quiz. The mystery MRE featured above is a Cheese Omelet with Vegetables. Someone actually ate this lumpy mass and his review made it sound as tasty as it looked.

It tastes like crap and quite frankly it reminds me of really terrible and rancid coffee, which dominates the palate, both on and off the tongue. The texture is basically what you’d expect; extra congealed and crumbly, with the dryness of extra hard boiled egg yolks despite an eerie moistness, which is the only thing remotely egg-y about this thing. The veggies were a lost cause as well, since their flavors were completely dominated and their texture was soggier than wet toilet paper. It smelled like really bad tin can food.

Yum! Sign me up! I know some say that MRE’s have come a long way over the years but suffice it to say that if this is indicative of the new dawn of MRE’s, what the heck were older generations being fed? I shudder at the thought and even get a little nauseous.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t think my father-in-law ever actually ate boiled sloth testes. I was just trying to think of something really repugnant because I know he’s eaten a number of nasty things. Then again, I’ve learned to assume nothing.