Just had my first MRE !!
 

and it is not bad at all. I actually liked it. I had the chicken with noodles and veggies.

It is pretty cool ... comes with its own flameless heat source which get REAL freaking hot. The water actually boils in the bag.

Then you get a pack of Reese pieces, 2 pcs of gum, fig bar, cracker, processed cheese spread, cocoa powder, coffee, sugar, creamer, wet towel, tabasco, salt and napkins.

Fig bar -- tastes like a normal fig bar
Cheese spread -- HORRIBLE
Cracker -- tastes like cardboard
Reeses -- comes in its own orig packaging
Gum -- okay

have yet to try the coffee or the cocoa powder.

I heated the meal and then added a bunch of Tabasco and salt and it tasted pretty good. I ended up eating the whole thing. Each MRE is equal to 1200-1300 calories.

Pretty nest stuff -- Now, I will try some other flavors !!

How did I get the MRE -- next door neighbor is a Capt. in the US Army stationed at Ft. Bliss.

He has a few at home, so he gave me one to try.

you can buy them at any surplus store for emergency supplies, I have a few around just for that.

That being said any full sporting goods store will have camping/backpacking foods that are similar and taste better in many cases. Nothing great about any of them but better than nothing if you are without power for long periods

Avoid the ones that have eggs, those are the worst.

I did this for fun...just always wanted to know what an MRE tasted like.

Plus, I am huge military fan -- all thei know how, tech, guns and so forth. This weekend I am going out shooting with neighbor -- M-16, throw a few grenades, stuff like that !!

I think that some backpacking meals are actually quite good, good enough that I almost wasn't disappointed that if we didn't catch fish that day..... almost!:)

Sounds better then the Ham and MF'rs we got back in the 80's ^

There have been some serious improvements in both MRE's and backpacking meals over the past 10 years... we still have some vintage MRE's @ my house (in case of a natural disaster)...

But the aforementioned MRE sounds excellent!

Chili Mac is one of the better ones I always thought. Whoever decided to make eggs and hot dogs in the MRE's could not have tasted those before hand. I always liked the little hot sauce bottles that came with them.

Yuck! I remember the German Army version called "Einmannpackung" or short "EPa" from my service time Content Einmannpackung. It was said that the crackers combined with shoe-polish would be a good heat source.

One of the biggest in MRE's or C-rats (as we used to call them) is no cans.
The 1st 2 years of my tour we had the canned C-rats. You only got so many can openers (john waynes) per carton but after a few meals everybody had them.

Then the issue was stowing your cans. With the MRE's you can pretty much roll all the left over packaging up.

Even back then the MRE's were a cut above the canned stuff.

I will be sure to go visit my dad out in San Elizario this weekend before you start throwing grenades in El Paso. :-)

In El Paso, G.I. Supply on Fred Wilson just west of Dyer sells MRE's, in case you need your fix of them.

As for MRE's, my dad was once an Army Capt. and he also brought home some surplus MRE's after he served in Operation Just Cause. Good stuff ^

A buddy of mine gave me a case of MREs in 1991. I rotated them out, but still the newest ones I have were packed around 15 years ago. MREs don’t really have an expiration date, but I think 15 years is pushing it. From what I’ve heard, the current ones are better tasting anyway.

Here’s some linkage on how to buy the real ones, not the civilian ones.


Sounds like fun! I need to take some time to get back into the shooting hobby.

C Ration Can Opener: P-38 ("John Wayne"'s new too me.

It's been a long time, but not long enough, to recall the look, feel and taste of C Ration "Pork & Eggs".

Really old guys, Cub/Boy Scouts in the years after WWII, will recall the lemonade Powder from the old "K Rations" (or the "Old Gold" cigarets in C Rats which started many Boy Scouts smoking).

When I see Energy Drinks and Energy bars, I wish more of those who buy them had ever known the original K Ration's example of an Energy Bar.

My Uncle claims that the WWII German Army Black Bread was a bit heavy, but better than most deli-bakeries can turn out.

The flameless heat source only gets hot when it's warm outside. I ate MRE's when I was stationed in Germany. Germany is cold when we went to the field (didn't matter what month it was, it snowed). Best case was that it might get slightly warmer than frozen.

The cheese will make you regular. You can almost set a clock to it.

I miss the Ham Slice. It came with noodles and the cheese, you mix em all up and you've got a pretty decent cassarole.

The cans for C's had some uses. Add a few pebbles and hang from the barbed wire for an intrusion alarm. The little can openers were called P-38. I never heard John Wayne. The cans would also fit a grenade. Pull the pin, slip into a can in a tippy position and instant booby trap. The can held the arming lever down.

I gained weight on a diet of C's. I hate to think of the calories. The tropical grade choclate had so much wax it'd burn. The rations had been packed 15 years before I got them in 1965. The cigs were so old they'd burn like a firecracker. You could heat the cans on the exhaust manifold of a jeep, or with a little of the cut charge propellant from a four-deuce mortar round.

Everyone discarded the ham-egg entree. Not even the VC would eat it.

Lest you think I wax nostalgic, I thank the gods that my sons were too old for the Bush wars.