Monday, September 15, 2014

MRE improv


IMPROV MRE

We’ve done this before, improvised Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.  Now, I went into the Army at a time when a lot of old standby WWII, Korea and Vietnam War or older era items were being phased out because they worked too well and the military had too many of them and the only way to ensure continued officer advancement in many different fields was to mimic activity as needed change.  This was probably my first brush with this corporate activity and I must admit to being taken aback.  Who gets rid of perfectly good stuff just because it isn’t shiny anymore?  I imagine there was a bit of a euphoria and excitement about getting rid of anything that might have been construed as a Draft Era, mechanical army as a new wave of professionalism and computer chips replaced the old.  Of course, when you slap a new layer of lipstick on a pig, it is still swine underneath.  If you go back and look at old pictures of American G.I.s in comparison to the European armies or even the Soviets in field uniforms, we are a wrinkled slovenly looking bunch.  We truly embraced quantity over quality as a reigning philosophy in our rush to fight for FDR The Bankers Whore’s global empire.  And when the new camouflage Battle Dress Uniforms replaced the old OD fatigues, the one’s which looked so bad compared to everyone else, they made the OD’s look clean and neat in comparison.  Which is how embarrassing they were.

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The sturdy reliable Jeep being replaced by the mechanical nightmare of the Hummer, the world famous and treasured 45 being replaced by

the faggot 9mm ( I have less issues with 9’s as civilian weapons, being able to use better ammo.  With FMJ ammo, you need a real round rather than a Nazi pop gun ).  I could go on.  The one thing that was actually improved by a replacement was the old C-rations.  I ate those decades old food substitutes in Basic Training and once at my duty station in the field we had MRE’s.  Same food, but lighter packages.  But I still hate MRE’s in civilian/survivalists hands.  Number one, if you had seen the turd I had to try to pass after a week of MRE’s, you’d hate them too.  But more importantly, number two ( I put turds #1 so there would be no #2 jokes ), they are extremely expensive.  For half the price of an MRE, a jar of peanut butter will give you over twice the calories.  And it can’t give you any worse of a case of constipation.  For variety, you throw in a few Top Ramen packs ( you can munch uncooked, with or without the seasoning ).  If you can’t eat peanut butter, a small can of condensed sweetened milk ( usually in the bakery isle- this is the stuff fudge is made from.  And again, please, no #2 jokes ) is about the same cost ( you’ll need two cans to equal one jar peanut butter calorie wise ).  One can milk and two Ramen packs are about two thousand calories and not much over $2.

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35 comments:

  1. while not as filling,a home made trail mix can provide all the nutrients needed.Chex mix,nuts and raisins,pretzels,anything dry and crunchy.Vacuum sealed in mylar.

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    1. The trail mixes are not as filling to me as they used to be.

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  2. something like those lipton pasta pouches would be great,with or without meat even.Hamburger helper,gravy mixes.Most are a buck or 2,and make a lot more than 1 mre.Dehydrated veggies mixed with ramen.I agree,anything that is sold as survival anything is way overpriced.

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    1. There are a lot of ways to have quick meals at home cheaply, but I was going for cookless/instant.

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  3. MREs are low fiber to reduce the need to poop during combat. However, a steady diet of that is not a good idea -as you well know.

    My niece ran out of food and we set her up with stuff from our stored food. To complicate things she's a Vegan. Rice, black eyed peas, quinoa, TVP, olive oil, mixed bean soups, and a bunch of other stuff. There was food for about 2 weeks and we out maybe 10 bucks. (bought in bulk and from discontinued store items) Covered her until the checks from her new job came in.

    Much better than eating MREs, if one is willing to cook.

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    1. You shop awesome- I've never seen prices on your listed items so cheap.

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  4. I qualified as an Expert with the 45 in the army and own one now. I have also owned a Beretta 92FS Inox for the past 15 years and there is no comparison. Fit, form, reliability, engineering, and everything you can throw at it the Beretta outclasses the 45 across the board. But what do I know, I've only put 20,000 rounds down range with each.

    I make my own MRE, as it were, and I use Auguson's dehydrated products to do so. Carefully measured out in single serve portions, (meat, vegetable, starch, spices) packed in small paper envelopes and labled, then stored in quanities of 10 in zip locked plastic bags. Currently I have over 100 of those bags - enough food for a few years. Tear open, pour into my 1 liter titanium cup sitting on the pocket rocket butane stove, pour in a cup of water, boil, then let sit for 15 minutes, dig in.

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    1. My point was the ammunition more than the gun. Your MRE's sound ingenious and tasty.

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    2. True, the 9 will never be the 45. In this case size doesn't matter, it's the motion of the ocean, if you will.

      The most important part of shooting is getting the lead where it needs to be. This done mainly through practice but the comfort of the gun is paramount in achieving this. I'll submit, and I've studied this at length, the 92FS is a much more comfortable gun to shoot than the 1911 for a majority of people.

      I'm not initiating a gun porn debate (that can never be won by anyone) but rather giving an opinion from a vast amount of experience and study.

      BTW, nice 'do.

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    3. In my experience, the military never gave us the amount of practice needed to get a little bitty piece of lead in a vital area. So it was nice to have a larger piece of lead that would do serious damage as it sloppily hit all over the map.

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    4. 1/2 cup instant rice
      1/4 cup dehydrated chicken
      1/4 cup dehydrated mixed vegetable
      1 chicken bullion cube
      1/2 tsp salt
      1/2 tsp pepper
      1/2 tsp oregano
      1/2 tsp dehydrated chives
      Place all in a small paper envelope from the office supply, label and date, store in multiples in a zip lock plastic bag.

      1 cup water brought to boil, dump the envelope in and stir, continue to boil for 1 minute then cut the heat, install the lid, and wait 5 minutes.

      I order the Augason Farms stuff online for free home delivery from Walmart http://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng.do?ic=32_0&tab_value=all&search_query=augason+food&max_price=50&min_price=0&search_sort=4&ss=true&

      Using the "meat, starch, vegetable, spices" metric you can alter the mix continuously to thwart boredom while maintaining the ease of putting it all together. And the stuff is small and lightweight too, as I can have a 21 pack of meals (1 weeks worth) in a ziplock in my ALICE pack and barely notice it's there, until meal time, and there is no waste, burn the envelopes, bring the ziplock back home for re-use. These meals can be cooked on a small wood fire with an Esbit type stove just as easily as the pocket rocket and have less stuff to carry though smoke could be a problem.

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    5. Frank Sinatra said "It's not the song, it's the singer". That applies to firearms as well. Practice enough and I'll take a .45 any day over a 9mm. I also qualified with the .45 expert. I like all calibers because a pistol always beats four aces.

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  5. Calories empty of most nutrition are still amazingly cheap in todays industrial society- even in compact portable format.
    Personally I like O2 Mylar packed nuts and dried fruit or sweetened jerky for the portable calories. But those do cost more than a simple jar of peanut butter (BTW I just finished consuming a 6 year old OPENED jar of all organic 'almond butter' -like peanut butter but made from almonds- . It was just fine- it did spend much of its time in a fridge and was tightly closed, but it went through at least 3 multi day moves without refrigeration...)
    Plastic, Insulation, Metal, Glass, and Cheap calories - gifts of the industrial age, far, far, cheaper now than they will ever be again. Stock up and cache it well...

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    1. We are already seeing much higher metal costs. Calories way up as corn increases. Don't wait much longer for the glass and insulation.

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    2. Those too have gone up in the past 5 years. Actually they have never really come back down much from their heights during the housing bubble.
      Since I am trying to build as much like "traditional" as the budget and practicality will allow I am very tuned into such things. And scavenging such things in the boondocks is quite hard.

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    3. I priced Home Despot windows and was wondering if they contained gold flakes inside them like that German liquor. I do remember the increase in rigid board insulation.

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    4. We're having Home Depot install 784 sf of Owen Corning R30 faced batt insulation under our first floor joists (crawl space) this coming Monday and the price was very good. $1433. installed. The insulation alone was just over $600, and there's no way in hell I'd crawl under there and do it for less than $2k cash, up front! LOL

      Having said that, it hasn't been done yet and I'm always leery of counting the chickens before they're hatched.

      We had them do corian countertops in our kitchen 2 years ago and we are very happy with the price and installation, that's why we called them for the insulation.

      Normally I do this sort of thing but a few years ago I suddenly turned into an old fuk and can't do all the stuff I used to. However, I can still hit the headboard 3 times a week. :-)

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    5. Old bastard getting more action than me.

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  6. Right on with the peanut butter.
    The little squeeze packets are handy, even if it is wasteful packaging.

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    1. Screw the extra packaging, those bastards are a lot more $

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    2. Pack the peanut butter into cleaned prescription bottles for easy "over the river and through the woods" carry. Do breakfast at IHOP and clean out their jelly reserves, same with Taco Bell hot sauces. Date that stuff and use it within a year or else. Wendy's take out has the best throw away plastic utensils.

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    3. But did u ever haul around a jar in a backpack?

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  7. I've noticed a huge price increase in the top ramen noodles over the last few years. It probably wasn't more than about 5 years back that you could always get certain flavours for a nickel a pack, or 20 for a dollar. Flash forward a few years and now they are 12 for $3.25!

    Wayne

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    1. Crap, look at the insane $1 a pound pasta now. Damn corn ethanol program sonsabitches.

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    2. Corn has nothing to do with the price of pasta. Durum wheat is the primary ingredient, today over 9.50/bushel, twice the price of spring or winter wheat. Ethanol is a viable and economic alternative to gasoline and should not be maligned. All the corn is used, the carbs make the alcohol and the proteins become wet and dry distiller grains, very good feed for pigs, and cattle. About 23% of the corn crop is used while never more than 10% was ever used for humans.
      The price of food is rising because of inflation i.e. your government creating money from thin air.. Production agriculture benefits very little from retail prices. A few pennies per dollar. This at a time when corn is below 4$/bushel, less in many fringe areas. Destroy the Federal Reserve, stop all immigration and we could slow the collapse..... but that ain't gonna happen.

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    3. pasta is wheat you moron

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    4. Farming isn't able to plant more with demand per se. The land bank program ended decades ago. If you want more corn, you plant less wheat. I understand climate concerns. It isn't always applicable. But artificial fertilizers etc. rise in price, you plant to max profits. Some wheat isn't going to get planted. Oil plus inflation plus water shortages plus fertilizer moving overseas plus food to fuel. We are already seeing shortages and triaging ag sector wide. Just in the beginning stages

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    5. John, I have to disagree. Ethanol is the worst thing that ever happened to gasoline. It ruins small engines. Find a mechanic that likes Ethanol. I know folks in the oil refinery business and they don't like it either. Answer this question? If it is so great, why did they have to pass a law to make gas producers use it? My truck says I will void the warranty if I run over 10% ethanol in it. The Government has to subsidize the heck out of it to make it affordable to add to gasoline. That means we are paying for it twice. And yes, it did cause the price of wheat to go up cause all the farmers could make more money growing corn so wheat production drops. Doesn't help the central American afford to eat either. I think Mexico used to import alot of corn from us.

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    6. Sorry it took so long to reply. Wheat does not do well in corn country. The best places to grow wheat in the USA are central California, away from the moisture of the ocean, Montana, Eastern Washington and Oregon, North and South Dakota, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Each of these areas is somewhat restricted to the type of wheat that can be grown. Pasta wheat has to have a high content of Durum because the gluten is what gives it the unique characteristics of pasta. It could never be grown from pure HRS or HRW wheat. The three I's and the rest of the corn belt cannot do as good a job because of Vomitoxin. Wheat needs a dry climate at pollination to control this #1 disease of plants in the USA (3Bil./year in damage). The maximum allowable for human consumption is 1 ppm. Cattle is 10 ppm because ruminant animals tolerate it better. I'm not trying to be arrogant but most people's ignorance about modern agriculture is frightening.
      As far as using ethanol for fuel, I can dispute everything you say Nightshift. Engines designed to run on ethanol do just fine. Bear in mind the petroleum industry spends tens of millions a year propagandizing against Ethanol. There must be a reason
      The law for 10% Ethanol was passed to replace MTBE a known carcinogen and to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The subsidies on oil dwarf all other subsidies passed out by our government except for the bribes they themslves get from the oil companies. Grain sorghum is also used to make Ethanol as is sugar cane and sugar beets. Ethanol (Butanol is where Ethanol is going) is a viable fuel for USA for the foreseeable future. Lastly as far as commodity prices are concerned, they all suck. Corn is sub 4$, wheat is 4-9.5$ depending on variety, soybeans are 9-10$. All below or at the cost of production unless yields go above average.

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    7. If I'm not mistaken, and correct me if I'm wrong because I prefer being disproven early to avoid prolonged ignorance ( short term ignorance is lack of education, long term is lack of learning ), half your preferred wheat states can also grow corn- which was where I was going. And, ethanol does NOT replace foreign oil dependence if all the inputs are imported. Artificial fertilizer, 50% imported. Don't large machines use diesel? Sure, you can soy bean that, unless imported oil derived diesel is cheaper. Machines themselves can be imported. Not trying to nitpick as much as say, hey, ethanol can make smallsteads independent but with mega-ag corps it is neither economic or ecological independence.

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    8. Shop a little harder. Local HEB food stores have 6 packages of same Ramen flavor for $1. But point made - ramen used to be much less costly. I've also noticed a lot more shoppers buying it - people are hurting.

      Ghostsniper - thanks for the tip for peanut butter in prescription bottles. I'd have never thunk of that. I'm going to try mixing a small amount of honey with that peanut butter good way to take a couple high energy snacks with you.

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    9. In Eastern Washington around Spokane, you can grow wheat fairly easy. It is grown on dry land farms along with barley, peas, beans, and lentils. Dry land farming means you do not irrigate. There is enough rain in the spring to get your crop up and running but we have fairly dry summers.

      To grow corn in Eastern Washington, you would need to irrigate. They have a pretty good irrigation set up over in the middle of the state by Moses Lake.

      To sum up, corn takes lots of water. Wheat - not so much.

      Idaho Homesteader

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    10. OK, I was forgetting all the places still NOT irrigating. I'd been pretty focused on that practice due to its decline. Why the corn empires could never migrate too far west.

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