{"id":695,"date":"2005-10-14T13:16:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-14T17:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=695"},"modified":"2007-01-20T16:50:02","modified_gmt":"2007-01-20T21:50:02","slug":"something-i-never-thought-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/something-i-never-thought-about","title":{"rendered":"Something I never thought about"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

We settled on “figuring it out once we’re on the road.”<\/p>\n

So I sat out back to read some (it is<\/em> a vacation for me, remember), when John came out and said, “Y’know, if you want a real<\/em> treat, we could break out some MREs!”<\/p>\n

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!”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He said that he didn’t know, but there aren’t any markings indicating that they’re only prepared for a certain region.<\/p>\n

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\u00c3\u00af\u00c2\u00bf\u00c2\u00bde” contents label (but no indication about the ‘extras,’ like tabasco or coffee). They all sounded pretty good:<\/p>\n

Vegetable manicotti<\/p>\n

Chicken with cavatelli<\/p>\n

Beef teriyaki<\/p>\n

Chicken with noodles<\/p>\n

Chicken tetrazzini<\/p>\n

Spaghetti with meat sauce<\/p>\n

At least, they sounded better than that Jack Daniel’s marinade-in-a-bag experiment<\/a> I tried a few months ago. If I try one out this weekend, I’ll photo-blog it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Something I never thought about”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-bd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":195,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/interpreter-of-maladies","url_meta":{"origin":695,"position":0},"title":"Interpreter of Maladies","author":"Gil","date":"April 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this DoD briefing, where Donald Rumsfeld offers a comment on the practice of using mosques as firebases:There are two ways, I suppose, one could inform readers of the Geneva Convention stipulation against using places of worship to conduct military attacks. One might be to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1800,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-30-2007","url_meta":{"origin":695,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 30, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"November 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Lookin' for links in all the right places? Just click \"more\"! Chip Kidd (briefly) on the impact of Amazon's new e-reader. * * * Morrissey: putting the FU back in Manchester. * * * Designers get their Mad Mix on! * * * Tay Zonday scores some cash for Chocolate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2250,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/georgia-rules","url_meta":{"origin":695,"position":2},"title":"Georgia Rules","author":"Gil","date":"August 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't written anything about the war in Georgia because I don't know enough about the circumstances and history, and I figure there are plenty of other places you could go for uninformed ranting. Over at Reason's Hit & Run blog, there's a good piece by Matt Welch on how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":930,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/because-they-can","url_meta":{"origin":695,"position":3},"title":"Because they can","author":"Gil","date":"April 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Kagan has a longish column at the Washington Post today about why Russia & China support other dictatorships (instead of supporting liberal reform the way U.S. & Europe sorta do): An irony that Europeans should appreciate is that China and Russia are faithfully upholding one cardinal principle of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8152,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/a-dream","url_meta":{"origin":695,"position":4},"title":"A Dream","author":"Gil","date":"August 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night I dreamed that I died. I wasn't old, sick or wounded in the dream, but my wife and I both knew I would die soon. When I died, I was happy to discover that I could still walk around and that I wasn't consigned to some sort of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2147,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-july-25-2008","url_meta":{"origin":695,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: July 25, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"July 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"That's the sound of the men, working on the link gang. . . I wasn't sure if this qualifies for another installment of F*** You, You Whining F***, because I think she's actually right. Still, a 20-year-old complaining that \"I'm leaving the NYC literary scene for Paris\" borders on Whining\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}