MRE's

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odysseus

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Anyone have advice on where best online or off to purchase and what type of MREs are best? Want to stock up for mobility.

Thanks.
 
If you do a bit of research on the freeze-dried camping chow, like Mountain House, you might find a better alternative to the G.I. MRE.

http://www.mountainhouse.com/

The grocery store carries several close copies of MRE components. The Dinty Moore Microwave Bowls are essentially MRE food in a plastic bowl instead of a pouch. The tuna-in-a-pouch is pure MRE spin-off.

Crackers are pretty much crackers.

My local Wal-Mart and a few other stores carry plastic pouches of freeze dried fruit.


The nice thing about the grocery store items is you can afford to eat them, so you will tend to naturally rotate through your stock. Most folks I know with MRE stockpiles tend to horde them until they are out-of-date. That gets expensive, and winding up on SHTF day with a bunch of out-of-date chow is probably not a cool thing.
 
Friend of mine was in Somalia with the Marines in '93. The only thing they had to eat when they first got there was some of the ORIGINAL MREs (I'm talking late '80s vintage) which had been in the embassy(?) basement and were so past date the "chiclet" gum (the famous diarrhea producer) had turned into powder........

There being nothing else handy, they heated them up and ate them. Nobody died. They had to be at least 2-3 years past date.....

So don't worry overmuch if your MREs are a few months over.
 
Ok, no one seems to be ready to review the taste issue, so I'll take a shot at it.

My personal favorite is the Chili Mac.

In fact, that's the only one I will eat lately. I sort through the cases and dig them out. No one seems to care. That's a hint.

The veggie burrito one isn't bad. Use the tabasco.

I hear that the Thai Chicken is good, but have no personal reference. The guy who likes that eats them cold, and has had many repeats of all of them. Obviously not a pogue, and has been in country as long as anyone I know. He doesn't care for the beef stew.

That's the main courses. On the goodies and extras. The Jalapeno cheese stuff is good on the crackers. The plain cheese stuff I put in with the chili mac with some red pepper after the thing is hot.

The oatmeal cookies are good. Don't care for the chocolate mint stuff, but it's edible. It seems hard to come across the ones with M&M's, for some reason. Maybe they put them in the sucky ones to make up for the bad main. The bread stuff is kind of funky, but I eat it with the Jalapeno cheese too.

In fact, just about everything in them is edible. But the calorie count is high, especially on the winter versions. Remember, this stuff is for people in the field who are busy. If you are sitting in your kitchen munching out on them, hope you are on some kind of serious exercise plan.

Dont forget to mix the stuff up after heating thoroghly. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!. Too much water is a bad thing in the heater. Takes a while to heat them up fully, but you can blow off the heater and just chow down cold if you are pressed for time, or hungry, or just don't feel like fooling with the heat.

Hope this helps.
 
I use MREs quite a bit when on backpacking trips. Why these over freeze dried?

They heat with water. Some of the areas I go into have severe fire restrictions, making heating freeze-dried illegal.

Doing this off and on keeps my body used to the different type of food. If you don't "test" you emergency supplies occasionally, you can end up with unpleasant suprises.

I just buy them at my local army-navy store.
 
Echo those last sentiments about severe fire restrictions while backpacking. I moved from the store bought freeze dried stuff and went with MRE's for the last few months or so. When I go out for a day and dont want to pack a stove and fuel, I grab an MRE and a heater and toss into my daypack. Taste to me is better than the freeze dried stuff and in the long run a bit cheaper.

I also keep 3 of them in my BOB in my truck and my wife's SUV. Lots of calories in a pinch. Nice taht the components can be seperated when you dont want or need the whole thing.

jpthegeek
 
Couple more good points:

If you buy complete MREs, they usually come with a pack of water resistant matches. So if you forgot yours for some reason, you're covered.

They usually come with "picnic ware" as well.

The water you use for heating doesn't have to be pottable either. It ends up being sanitary after being chemically boiled/steamed. Note I said sanitarynot drinkable here, as the chemical reaction makes it not so good to drink. This has bailed me out more than once.
 
When I was doing security for the Olympics here in Utah, I worked the graveyard shift, 11pm to 7am, that was loads of fun. But, we were given these damn pb&j sandwiches which were made like 12 hours before they were given to us, so we hated them. And the same thing day in and day out was just disgusting. After a few days of complaining we ran into a group of the arny guys up there who were complaining about their MRE's. Well Cheese Ravioli sounded better than PB&J on wheat, so we traded. We did this for the rest of our shifts. And I had some of the best meals of my life.

I like the non-meat meals the best. Especially the pasta ones, like Ravioli, Speghetti, fetuccini, some of them are really good.


Funny story. We go into the mess tent one night and hear that a group of the guys on patrol want to trade up food. But they are going be on post for the rest of the night. The directions we get to find them was something like ".5 miles up like ski run, turn right at the largest tree, go 40 paces into the woods, go north ten paces, etc..." We thought these guys were foolin with us, but we decided what the hell we got nothing else to do. So me and 2 other guys follow these directions to this spot just off one the course of one of the large ski runs (my patrol was Dear Valley). We get to this spot, and look around. There is NOTHING around us, some trees, lots of snow, NOTHING. My friend said "heeeelloooo, mr. army guys, we bring fooood" just like that. Without so much as a crunching noise from the snow 3 guys show up beside us, in full snow camo, M16's night goggles, the works. it became a government drug deal "what you got?" "We got PB&J, what you got" "we got steak, sweet&sour chicken, etc..." "deal, here's the bags" And our stuff was on the ground, and in less than a minute, they were gone. It;s funny looking back, but we were a little freaked at the time.
 
The army is investing big money in R&D for bread that can stay good for years to be packaged as an MRE. They have bread that can go 3 years without going stale or moldy now. Their intent, no kidding, is to create a military grade PB&J sandwich. Bread MRE's are going to be released in 2004.
 
gryphons post reminded me that last week Major was doing a three-for-the-price-of-two deal on cases of entrees only. It was a little hard to find, but it was there. Don't know if it's still available. I bought MREs from them once, zero problems.
 
Three lies in one...

Remember - if you won't eat it normally, you won't rotate it out, and it's money down the drain. If you want to stock up for "bad times," stock up on stuff you'll eat normally, so you can keep it rotated.
 
The only MRE's I've had were some of the original ones and they were shi##y. We called them Meals Rejected by Etiopians. C rations were a lot better. I hope, for our troops sake, MRE's have improved.
 
The only MRE's I've had were some of the original ones and they were shi##y. We called them Meals Rejected by Etiopians. C rations were a lot better. I hope, for our troops sake, MRE's have improved.
Click to expand...

Mmmmmm C-Rats! My favorite was the "Green Eggs and Ham"

I always heard that "MRE" stood for "Meals Requiring Enema"
 
MarkDido, you heard wrong buddy. The ones I've had bad luck with were because the enema was included.

Tis is why I said to eat them occasionally when you don't need to. No "suprises" when you have to use them.
 
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