Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
So, been running around alllll over Hells Half Acre today… Gretchen ‘wanted to spend some “quality time” together’ which meant since she had a gig in Orlando, I was the chauffeur.
On my Birfday itself (today’s the ackchooal day)
On a Friday Afternoon
Back and forth on I-4
Black Friday no less.
3 hours each way due to volume of traffic and “stupid”
Ugh.
So her and Sapper have decided to take me out on their dime to a Chiaroscuro Brazilian Steakhouse. OMG!! Great food! Usually out of my league. Kind of place MomUnit usually likes to spring on me…
But anyways… I did get a giftie in the mail today from Reader ER out of Colorado (MANY MANY Thanks E!!!!):
A “Block One” (1981-1983) MRE Menu #9 Chicken ala King.
Better known as Chicken ala Thing…
It has Accessory Packet ‘A’ which means it’s got the basics… no candy or anything like hot sauce either. A basic-basic MRE. Don’t know if I’ll open it, or save it as it -is- a bit of a collectors item… Not many Brown Wrapper Block Ones are out there… unless they’re in a toxic waste dump that is…
That’s a screen shot from some Aussie dude who actually opened and tried to eat it… only thing that was still edible was of all things, the Fruitcake, which as I recall was not edible even when it was still fresh and new…
So instead of eating/not eating that, I’ll get back with you maybe later after some good food.
More Later
Big Country
Chicken a la king was one of the better ones of that lot. Dehydrated beef and pork patties… Shudder.
Those dehydrated meat patties were the best for cooking up a canteen cup of ramen with some cheese spread. Dosed with some hot sauce and it was downright gourmet.
Back in Jan of 89, I got a Chicken Ala King MRE at AF Basic Range Day. Had the crackers and cheese, but had dehydrated peaches instead of fruit cake.
My first thought was WTF? We were still eating WW2 c rats in 77. Then I did the maths and holy crap! The brown bag is actually older in relative time scale then the stuff we were eating was. The only c rat that I actually liked was the spaghetti and meat ball. I have been thinking about buying some MRE spaghetti to try out. Is it any good?
As long as it’s a new-ish one. Sketties and MB is ALWAYS a up-for-grabs rat… The current (2021) Menu #4 is :
Spaghetti with Beef and Sauce
Chocolate Chip Toaster Pastry
Cheddar Cheese Spread
Italian Bread Sticks
Dried Raisins
Chocolate Hazelnut Protein Drink Powder
Lemonade Beverage Base, Sugar-Free
Accessory Packet B
Got a lot of ground beef-ish stuff in the sauce, no more MB per se, and The ‘toaster pastry’ is a by-God Pop Tart FYI and the cheese spread is this side of Heaven (leastways to this here ole Green Grunt…) The Bread Sticks are so-so… recommend a dash of garlic salt AFTER you shmear ’em with the cheese… Difference between accessory packet A and B is B has matches, which IMO is just fucking weird that they aren’t in ALL MREs as they, despite being cheap and shitty, are useful in a pinch to have YMMV
Well Happy Birthday!
Your a far braver man than I. Driving I-4 on a Black Friday.
No gun to your head, right?
No gun, more like “Beaver Lashed” i.e. Pussy Whipped… fucking purely hated that drive today… had to take a double dose of the percs, a 800mg Tylenol AND the bloody NSAID whatever the fuck they call that blue pill painkiller…naproxen??? No idea….
Yeah, Naproxen. Use it myself at times.
watch how many of them you take per week. as they will hammer the hell out of your kidneys. I know this first hand. they killed my left one a couple of years ago.
sometimes, I think we be a lot better off with just dope or booze to kill the pain.
most OTC shit does a job on your gut, kidneys or liver. or they will burn a hole in your stomach wall. ain’t life grand ?
what I find funny is the VA always tells me if I stop smoking I live another 10 years
like I really want another 10 years of pain.
Ahh…just outside Scorpio, it’s all good.
Went out to Pineland to see Harold the Brain engineer and that backwoods is more awesome than I imagined.
Tore my damn camo puffer coat with the f’in thornbushes everywhere…DOH!
Need some of that camo duct tape, will have to look around.
LSD? Traded a Mötley Crüe Helter Skelter poster for my first Purple Barrel microdot hit in the summer between sixth and seventh grade.
One liquid vial will make entire blotter sheets or fry your brain for good if you do it all.
No partaking in about 30 years though and not planning on anymore.
Trump-Carlson 2024 BABY, Bring America Back Yessir.
I’m glad you like it, however it is a bit newer than 81-83. the bag has the large menu number which puts it 88-95 and the Chicken Ala Thing entree was only 88-92. If I recall correctly I aquired that MRE in 1989.
ER.
i remember those dark brown turd stoppers, that’s when MRE’s first came out. you were better off not eating and sucking it up or just chew on the cardboard box and swallow the paste… i missed the old C rats immediately
I was in the war when LRPs and C-Rats were a thing, pretty much labled the same style. We deployed with the Canucks once, and their rats were commercially labled, e.g. Dinty Moore Beef Stew, Hershey Chocolate, etc. IOW, actual food.
I dunno if MREs were actually an improvement on the older stuff.
When flying from Italy to Germany to jump in for a couple weeks vacation in the woods, you could tell what C Rat the guy sitting across from you ate that morning, as he was usually wearing it from his chin down to his reserve chute. AHH, C Rat spaghetti? Only 4 more hours looking at (and smelling) that before we cold jump.
I’ve got a shitton of early 80’s brown bag mre’s How can I get some to you?
I liked the fruit cake. There was another cake that was even better – orange spice cake, or something with orange in it.
At Ft. Carson, I was digging a fighting position and dug up a couple C-rat cans, unopened. The writing was long gone off them, but they weren’t bulging or leaking, so I opened them up with my Swiss Army Knife. One was tuna fish. It looked all right, but I didn’t want to take the chance on tasting it. The other was a fruit cake. I ate the whole thing. It was pretty tasty.
For inedible MRE entrees (I only ever had 1st generation MRES ’85-’88), ham and chicken loaf wins, hands down. Chicken loaf could sort of be made edible with Tabasco sauce (we had to carry our own for those 1st gen MRES), but nothing could make that ham and chicken loaf edible.
Must be an old soldier thing. I have a Chicken Ala King in brown wrapper as a memento from Camp Merril.
Happy Birthday!