Posts Tagged ‘Cheese’

My day job as a photographer occasionally has me interacting with folks from Joint Base Lewis-McChord.  While I’m on these adventures with our fighting men and women, I’m frequently exposed to their prepackaged meals, which are known as “Meal, Ready to Eat” or MREs. These prepackaged, almost completely self-contained food packets are loaded with goodies ranging from commercially available candies, like M&Ms and Skittles, to generic snack foods like “Hoo-ah Bars” and “Patriotic Sugar Cookies.” For the most part, the snacks included with MREs are actually pretty good. In fact, I’ve been exposed to MREs since the early 1990s (when they came in dark brown bags) and I am happy to report that the whole of MREs has improved greatly, although I miss those cubed potatoes in the potatoes au gratin, mystery white sauce of the chicken stew, and those freeze dried fruit cube things that you were supposed to add water to.

Our first review covers an older package of the dreaded Cheese Omelet with Veggies and Hashbrowns with Bacon. I was given this MRE while out on a MOUT training event after I explained the purpose of Clearance Cuisine to the folks I was with. I was familiar with the poor reputation of the Cheese Omelet with Veggies so I passed over the more palatable fare of beef patty, ravioli, and chicken fajitas. From what I’ve been told, and what I’ve been able to piece together from my work, the preservation of the cheese omelet leaves it completely devoid of anything resembling flavor. Instead, its supposed to be a tasteless log of gooey brown stuff.

The package containing Menu No. 4, Cheese Omelet with Veggies, also contained a package of Hashbrowns with Bacon which until recently I didn’t even know existed. I separated the extras out because I had no need for a cinnamon toaster pastry, strawberry jam, or cookies and stuffed them in my bag, just in case the event went long and needed a little pick me up. Now there’s a little variation in the items for Menu No. 4 but that’s not what we’re hear to study. No, we’re here to talk about food so on to the review!

Note: For this review I totally screwed up and I didn’t pack enough water for my MRE heater and to keep myself hydrated for the day so I consumed both of these meals cold. As such, the flavor profile for both the Hashbrowns with Bacon and the Cheese & Veggie Omelet may have been a little different than what they’re intended to be. 

Cheese and Veggie Omelet Brick

There’s something kind of neat about tearing through the brown cardboard packaging of an MRE component. It has a unique scratchy feel that you just don’t get from commercial food products. I’m sure the novelty wears off if you’ve been eating the same prepackaged homogenized food packets for months while living out of a tank but for someone like me who doesn’t make a living out of wearing body armor, shooting guns, and jumping out of helicopters/armored vehicles it’s all pretty dang neat. Even after all of the years of eating these things growing up after my dad came home from a field exercise. In fact there’s a bit of nostalgia every time I pop one open.

Once you’re through the cardboard box and into the heavy plastic packaging of the omelet you’re greeted by a very smooth formed tan lump of what I can only hope is egg and cheese. It’s actually quite gross to look at (see left) since it’s almost perfectly smooth and it squeezes quite readily out of it’s packaging. When you go to break it up with your government issued brown plastic biodegradable spoon it doesn’t break off smoothly like a desert gelatin. No. It comes off in hunks. Jagged yellow hunks of slimy tan stuff.

Now I’m used to gross looking foods tasting pretty okay, so I wasn’t too worried about the flavor. I mean,  you wouldn’t look so good if you were cooked, pureed, loaded with preservatives, filled full of nitrogen, and then exposed to an active gamma radiation source so I can’t really expect to much of the egg’s appearance. What was hoping for was a little bit of taste. Any taste. Preferably a cheesy taste, but any good taste will do. Instead my mouth was greeted with a cold, slimy nothing. There wasn’t ANY flavor at all. I mean, at least it didn’t taste like mud, but that’s about all it has going for it. Adding a little Tabasco to the mix just makes the entire package taste like Tabasco and nothing else. Its really a flavor fail.

In spite of its lack of flavor the eggs were actually quite filling and sat well in my stomach even a couple hours of running with body armor and a face shield on. I’m hoping that heating the eggs releases secret flavor crystals, and the next time I get a chance I’ll give it a go, but for now I cannot recommend eating these unless you absolutely need food.

Hash browns with …. Bacon? 

I see bacon. I don't taste bacon.

There isn’t much to say about the cold hash browns and bacon. They’re moist. They’re bland, and I just couldn’t find the bacon. You can definitely see the bacon chunks mixed in with the potatoes but there’s no smokey flavor imparted with the potatoes. Heck, you can even smell the bacon in the package if you stick your nose in there but my tongue said that it was all a figment of my imagination.

I really don’t know how I can elaborate anymore on these since the potatoes were bland and mushy. Other reviewers reported they were salty but after assaulting my mouth with Tabasco Sauce and cold gamma irradiated eggs I didn’t notice any strong salty hints. At least no more salty than the stuff you would get at Denny’s. Unlike the stuff you get at Denny’s these aren’t crunchy, or gooey. Just wet. Wet, bland and starchy.

Adding Tabasco seemed to help with the bland flavor. It was a much better combination than Tabasco and egg brick, perhaps due to the inability of the egg brick and Tabasco sauce to mix. Whatever the cause, Tabasco was a major improvement to the base product.  I’d bet money that a little jalapeno cheese spread mixed in with this after heating would be really dang tasty. Although, adding jalapeno cheese spread to anything seems to be an improvement.

Honestly, the hash browns weren’t the greatest but they’re definitely an improvement over the egg log called a cheese and veggie omelet. I can see why folks would avoid the main components of Menu No. 4. There just isn’t any flavor in there. Both of these aren’t worth paying good money for, but they do deliver calorie and energy. I ended up not having to eat any of my snack components and made it another 6 hours before my next meal.