Comments on: Unexpected moments of awesome

By: CT

CT — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:01:54 +0000

The chicken a la king wasn’t the worst thing you could have pulled out of the pouch. Like Iron I offer up the eggs and ham pouch, it had no redeeming qualities.

Another upswing to the chicken pouch…..making little MRE bombs with the hot sauce bottles and a bit of the chemical heater…..or even bigger MRE bombs is you had a private dumb enough to walk too far away from a canteen. Hell, after one bad day on KP we had a running bet on how many heaters it would take to blow up a water buffalo. I just wish we could have scrounged up that many heaters, just to see what would have happened.

By: Adamaeldar

Adamaeldar — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:48:02 +0000

Heh, I could usually gulp down the Chicken ala King (hot sauce helped as mentioned). Whoever thought up Omelet with Ham should be hit with a large blunt object repeatedly. I just remember the smell and texture of it (smelly, oily, but somehow rubbery at the same time). Big-guss, from what I remember, the “chicken” in Chicken ala King closely resembled what my cats eat. And the sauce was somewhat similar. Kind of a creamy – noodly sauce.

Good job on the packaging though. I remember going through ranger school in ’97 and opening up an MRE. I was excited to find a package of M & M’s inside with the Olympic logo. “Cool must be from last year”, I thought to myself. Wrong, it was from the 1988 Olympics. M & M’s (and the rest of the meal) were still good.

As an aside, there was an article recently about some aviation warrant who had saved a can of C-Rat poundcake for his retirement. Apparently it was still good. That actually scares me.

By: Nazric

Nazric — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:43:00 +0000

chicken ala king wasn’t so bad…if you emptied 3 bottles of hotsauce into it!

Not as bad as the potatoes all rotten (au gratin) though!

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:38:58 +0000

Also it seemed that there were two Chicken-ala-kings, to every one of everything else, so you ended up eating it alot. My personal favorites were the Spaghetti, and Corned beef hash.

By: Mannyac

Mannyac — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:06:31 +0000

I’m of the Beanie-Weenie rocked generation!

By: Dirz

Dirz — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:53:11 +0000

Qbigguss The chicken a la king was hella bland- and if you couldnt heat it it was hell on earth0 hence the bottles of tabasco:)

By: Trogius

Trogius — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:16:19 +0000

Pretty cool. I miss the ham slice and beef steak meals. Yeah, they pretty much sucked, but they were I always thought it was the best one to eat cold at breakfast, but maybe that is just me.

By: Bigguss

Bigguss — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:12:35 +0000

Interesting read as usual BBB, I am curious though, Is Chicken A La King really that bad? The name conjours up images of a Chicken in a cream sauce, which to me sounds rather nice. Could you or one of your readers let me know what was actually in the pouch?

By: nitromoose

nitromoose — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:45:12 +0000

The chicken a la king wasn’t the worst thing you could have pulled out of the pouch. Like Iron I offer up the eggs and ham pouch, it had no redeeming qualities.

By: jealouspirate

jealouspirate — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:55:51 +0000

Thanks for the reply BBB!

I’ve never heard anyone “on the inside” talk about these processes before, so that’s very interesting!

If I have the choice to buy something in a can or a pouch, I’ll support you (and the planet) by buying a pouch!