MRE lunch – Dallas, TX

While we were at the Dallas Arms Gun and Knife Show in Dallas, DreadPirateNick wanted me to try an MRE – or Meal, Ready-to-Eat – a military super-calorie meal ration used by soldiers to keep them going. DreadPirateNick would waffle between telling me how terrible they were and how much he wanted me to try one, knowing I write about food-type things. He found one that we could both agree on eating, although he was trying REALLY hard to find the gross ones – something about omelets or other things that I hope to never eat out of a bag. We knew we were going back to the hotel, so he offered to cook me a gourmet MRE lunch of Beef Ravioli!

The whole thing is self-contained in a bag and is intended to be heated up, although DreadPirateNick assured me there were times where there was no possibility of heating it up and you gulped whatever was in your bag down your throat and tried not to gag it up. Inside was usually most of the following:

• Main course
• side dish
• dessert or snack
• crackers or bread
• spread of cheese, peanut butter, or jelly
• powdered beverage mix (fruit flavored drink, cocoa, instant coffee or tea, sport drink, or dairy shake>
• utensils
• flameless ration heater(FRH)
• beverage mixing bag
• accessory pack: xylitol chewing gum, water resistant matchbook, napkin/toilet paper, moist towelette, seasonings (salt, pepper, sugar, creamer, tabasco sauce), and freeze dried coffee powder

Our other friend M.Butterfly showed up and joined us poolside for some delicious lunch, with DreadPirateNick giving us the play by play, like a cuddly Julia Childs. It was a special moment for all of us, I assure you. DreadPirateNick started by dumping everything out on the ground so we could see it.

Then, he showed us the bag that you dump water into to heat up whatever your entrée is – in this case, Beef Ravioli. He told us that sometimes these things emit some smoke as they heated up, so it’s better that we didn’t do this inside the hotel room. He put the ravioli pouch in the other pouch, dumped in some water and set it aside to heat up. Kind of cool.

He then gave us the appetizer – Osmotic Raisins. We had to look up what osmotic raisins were, but it wasn’t anything aside from they added some sort of sweetener to them to make them more palatable. That did raise some red flags. We tried them and they were pretty disgusting. Even more disgusting than raisins usually are. They also had some sort of coating on them that stained whatever it touched, including your skin and clothing. Just ewwww.

DreadPirateNick showed us the wheat snack bread and then cheered loudly when he saw that it came with the cheese spread with jalapenos. Apparently, this was the best of the bunch. He opened up the bread which was similar to those weird sandwich slices kind of bread that’s like a smushed-down actual slice of bread. The flavor isn’t really there, and the texture didn’t help. With the addition of what appears to be expired EZ-Cheese (aerosol cheese), it helped a little bit. It was pretty dry all around.

Since we were parched, DreadPirateNick giggled as he opened up the kool-aid pouch (but that’s a trademarked term). He dumped the red powder into the mixing bag and shook it for a while until it resembled a blood donation bag. I’ll be honest, this fruit punch wasn’t terrible, however, drinking out of a super flimsy plastic bag was more of a challenge than any of us imagined.

Our ravioli had heated up and was ready to be served. We all passed it around and shared it. I was surprised to find it wasn’t terrible. It tasted like a super generic version of Chef Boy-R-Dee Ravioli. I’m glad it was hot, as well. Those water-powered heaters worked pretty good. You could tell it was meat-flavored and the sauce wasn’t great, but it was edible. I’d guess after eating these every meal for a few years, you’d be ready to eat a shoe.

And speaking of shoes, there was beef jerky!!! It was, without a doubt, the worst beef jerky I’ve ever had. It tasted like they had dropped it in the dirt before they packaged it. It was like chewing leather. I would not recommend this jerky.

And finally, for dessert, there was a frosted brown sugar toaster pastry. Now don’t get your hopes up about it being like a pop-tart. It looked like a pop-tart, but it tasted like you accidentally ate the box instead. Not good.

Honestly, I’m glad DreadPirateNick was so adamant about sharing one of these with us. I had heard horror stories about some of the meals the military eats, and this was apparently one of the better examples of the field training meals they get. There are better options in the mess halls, but when you’re out in the field, you have to pack light and eat fast. This was all of those things – just remove the flavor.

Thanks for being a good sport DreadPirateNick and M.Butterfly. I probably won’t rush out to buy a case of these, but I now know what to expect if someone busts one of these out while camping or I get into an apocalypse situation sometime soon.