The official VM father-in-law-to-be was suggesting various places we could go for lunch today, while the womenfolk are off doing womenfolkly stuff, like looking at dresses for the maid of honor. One of the hangups about getting a meal out here is that so many places closer to the city are closed, and the remaining sites are pretty busy.
We settled on “figuring it out once we’re on the road.”
So I sat out back to read some (it is a vacation for me, remember), when John came out and said, “Y’know, if you want a real treat, we could break out some MREs!”
Yup: The family actually received a couple of boxloads of Meals Ready to Eat after the flood. He said, “You’d be surprised at what they put in those. I tried a jambalaya one a little while ago, and it wasn’t bad! Came with a little bottle of tabasco, too!”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I assumed that MREs were insanely standardized, with carefully quantified ratios of whatever nurtrients their main consumers (the military) are likely to need. I really didn’t expect to hear that they were capable of sealing up an MRE jambalaya. I asked if they were the “local brand” or something.
He said that he didn’t know, but there aren’t any markings indicating that they’re only prepared for a certain region.
My curiosity running wild, I headed over to the garage to check out the MRE stash. There was one open box, with 6 remaining meals. Each one was sealed in a light brown plastic bag with an “entr�e” contents label (but no indication about the ‘extras,’ like tabasco or coffee). They all sounded pretty good:
Vegetable manicotti
Chicken with cavatelli
Beef teriyaki
Chicken with noodles
Chicken tetrazzini
Spaghetti with meat sauce
At least, they sounded better than that Jack Daniel’s marinade-in-a-bag experiment I tried a few months ago. If I try one out this weekend, I’ll photo-blog it.