I’m still on a walkabout. I’m still blogging with a pen. Who knows when it’ll get digitized? Time is less important at the moment. As with all things, it’ll be done when it’s done.
Not a minute before.
In the meantime, I’ve got a bit of Wi-Fi and a basic happy thought.
The future is now: Dehydrated camping food no longer sucks.
Sure, it’s not perfect. Sure, you can bitch about it. Sure, you’d rather have a nicely grilled salmon steak served on bone china with a glass of wine and fresh bread on the side. But… for what it is… it’s at least OK.
In my opinion, backpacking food has leveled up. Most of it is entirely palatable. It’s easier to prepare. Relatively speaking, it’s cheaper than it once was. It’s light to carry. It’s easy to clean up the mess afterwards. It’s a matured and all around superior product.
None of it tastes like the revolting constipation machine of a 1990’s MRE.
I for one am grateful for it. If I’ve got to live through a smart-phone addled, inflation ridden, backwards sliding, commie-ific, science fiction dystopic madhouse of domestic spying and faulty logic… at least I can appreciated the handy backpacking food. Yum!
Stay sane. Observe rule#32!
Now for a bit of nostalgia. TV Dinners, as originally created, tasted like shit but the one thing they had was promise! We all wanted them to live up to their potential. The little tinfoil compartments for individual components… who didn’t love that? It was so damn classy! By comparison, spooning food from the ziplock pouch of a modern Mountain House seems a mite uncouth. That said, the old stuff tasted like industrial by-products and the new stuff ‘aint half bad. It took decades but they finally made it work!
Swanson TV dinners. Who didn’t love ’em? In retrospect, they were awful.
I’ve eaten 17-year-old MREs that were mostly edible. Barely.
Things could be worse- we could be eating freeze-dried stuff because that’s all the UN is air-dropping to us.
I had some MREs that were mostly shot through age. I also went elk hunting with MREs that were labeled “Humanitarian Daily Ration”. For those, I wondered if my lunch was meant to go to some starving Ethiopian kid. The MRE self heaters work a lot better now. That’s their only advantage over Mountain House (which tastes a lot better). You can’t get much more convenient than “toss in half a cup of water and wait 10 minutes”. That’s pretty sci fi to me.
Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. Ha!
The trouble with #10 cans of MH is too much food all at once for little ole me.
Standing in line at (redacted) checkout and I strike up a conversation with the guy in mil-camo in front of me. He starts telling me to save up my MRE heaters to make a hydrogen gas bomb. Says they put several in a closed-up car. When the gas ignited, it blew out the windows. Good times.
Always talk to the guys in mil-camo. 🙂
Ask me about acetylene gas someday after the statute of limitation has run out…
What. No links to this ambrosia.
It was a short period of wifi. Maybe later.
Good to know since I have two years in stock for the zombie apocalypse!
Don’t be afraid to use ’em just for convenience from time to time. I make a point of cycling my MREs. They last a long time but not that long. Mountain House, my go-to dehydrated backpacking food, lasts a very long time… but it’s plenty useful for camping too.
Some things get used more often than others. It is all #10 cans, so once opened you are eating it all. A can of chili mac can last two people a long time. Too long, sometimes. On the other hand cornmeal isn’t a problem.
The funny thing is I *liked* MRE’s. Now granted, growing up on a farm with hogs and cattle we ate the best meat to be found anywhere, but for the rest of the meal, well, we’re Norwegians, and apparently consider salt a spice, casserole a banquet, jello a dessert, and anything that had been canned last fall a mandatory addition to the table so we could free up the Mason jars for this fall. MRE’s were, to me, like that forbidden can of Spaghetti O’s in the back of the pantry, or that frozen chicken pot pie in the freezer. They were quick, reasonably tasty, and of course forbidden so long as there was still canned zucchini and eggplant available to use up. And did you know if you mix the sugar packets and the non-dairy creamer packets you can make a perfectly acceptable smoke bomb that will melt an aluminum can? Can’t do that with eggplant, I’m here to tell you.
Max D:
Proportions 1:1? Recommended ignition method? Hydrogen gas bombs and smoke/incendiary devices along with a meal. Who knew MREs were so versatile?