MREs

Just a few more observations from Ike. We got our power back last Monday night after 10+ days but there are still folks in the area waiting for the lights to come back on (16 days and counting). In spite of the massive effort by the utility company (CenterPoint) and all of the extra crews they brought in from all over the country, it has been a monumental task/effort. Crews working 16+ hour days without a break to restore power to 2.4 million customer (the number varies depending upon what news you are listening to). I am grateful for their efforts, but, honestly, at day 10, I was not the most patient person. I tried to play Boy Scout and tough it out by using daylight for most activities, using flashlights sparingly, cooking outdoors on the grill and keeping our food in ice chests. It's interesting to note what you can truely live without with push comes to shove.

With no power, there was no TV, radio, internet. Missed keeping up with the travails of my favorite bloggers and keeping up with the news, but we read a lot and played board games. Spent a lot of time outdoors and went to bed early. At least the weather was unseasonably cooler (for this area) and we could open our windows at night. Was great to keep the house cooler, but the constant droning of generators in the neighborhood made it sound like a construction site. I was hoping to hold out until we had power, but a friend spotted our lack of lights and offered up their generator for our refrigerator and some lights (they had power back on after only 4 days).

And that brings me to today's point. While we were not really hurting for food and supplies, we did go through ice like, well, ice. Saturday, my neighbor told me the city was handing out ice & water up at city hall and I headed up for a bag or two. Very great bunch of volunteers handing out several bags of ice, cases of water, and MREs (Meals, ReEady to Eat). Was not really looking for the food, but they were so anxious to help out and would not take no for an answer. So I wound up with a couple of meals to try consume. Now, just to give you some background intel, in one of my former lives, I was an officer in the US Army stationed in West Germany in the early 80's. Spend quite a few months in the field and ate more than my fair share of c-rations (some of which were pretty ugly), so the prospect of eating MREs did not really scare me off and I wanted to taste what uncle Sam had created for the military. So, my bride and I sat down to a candle lit dinner over a pair of MREs. She took the BBQ pork ribs and I settled on the grilled chicken dinner. Give my expectations with c-rats, I was pleasantly surprise over the quality and taste of the meals. They were actually quite edible (better than your average fast food venue) and showed some imagination.

To heat the meals is an interesting experiment. You have a heating bag that you open and then add about 2 tbs of water to a heating element/pack. You then slide in the entree and seal up the bag and let it warm up for 2 minutes. BTW - when the bag cautions you about being hot, take it as gospel. Being a pessimist, I expressed some disbelief on how this little bit of water in a bag would heat up the meal and promptly scalded the hell out of my fingers. The meal had plenty of food to satisfy most appetites and we were not having to gag it down. Of course, most troops are highly innovative and will find ways to supplement the meals and even get creative with the menus. You'd be surprised on what you can concoct in the field given the right motivation.

All in all, MREs weren't too bad. Wish I had them when I was a tanker.