TR - the Chocolate Nut roll was great for one reason (besides the taste, yummy) you were full for 2 days after eating it....

At my Grandparent's 50th Anniversary party in 1951, we ate some of their original wedding cake. I believe it had been wrapped in waxed paper and stored in a tin box. It was rum cake/fruit and still tasted good....a heck of a lot better than the C-Rat variety!!

All this talk is making me REALLY hungry!!! Hmmm...give me warmed up Ham & Limas or Ham & Eggs Chopped, with some Tabasco and a can of hot Carling Black Label...can't you just taste it?

I still carry one of the P-38s that I got at Camp Mackall in '69!!

No, but I can smell it!!! Beer and egg farts. :eek:

The only use I ever had for the Ham & Limas was to string antenna wire over tree limbs!

Out side of two meals, I liked Cs a lot. BTW, there is a better term of endearment for Ham and ______ (a bean). It was rumor that even Charlie did not like them.

The down side was heat tabs, never saw one in country. The abstinence of heat tabs was the cause for Claymore inspections. The best meal were Long Rats (Marine name) for LURRPS(?) Freeze dried. They were consider a delicacy.

I believe most were made by Mountain House in Albany Oregon.

Back then I was a smoker(quit about 30 years ago) and I remember Lucky Strikes in a green circle,instead of the red one they have now. :rolleyes: When we had C's they were only about 10-15 years old after WW2 so the smokes believe it or not weren't stale!!!:p The cocoa (circular hard powdered bars) were chewed on instead of put in hot water to make the drink.:cool: Any one know when MRE's replaced the C's?

Big Teddy :munchin

Chicken Stew
 

Had the Mountain House Chicken Stew a few months back - Yeap, tasted just like I remembered from the LRRPs. IIRC it was Long Range Ration Patrol.

Got a Beef Stew in the Cabinet - need to fire that puppy up and check it out.

Just don't use canteen water with a lot of iodine in it when you mix up a Scalloped Potatoes meal :eek:

Mid-'80s.

We were in the SFQC in '84 and half the class got MREs for RS, the other half (mine) got the C-Rats.

We were envious, as the weight difference (and meals) were substantial.

TR

The funny thing about Long rats/LRRPs (Thanks that is the name) was it was a court martial offense to eat one during the monsoon. One of the other thing we did not have was any kind of purification tablets. Most grunts preferred the taste of L'eau de Bomb crater over what the Doc's in the rear playing with the water.

We were generally short on rations, I went from 165 pounds to 125 pounds in about 5-6 months. One reason some would say, "We had Long rats, short rats and fat rats."

I still love freeze dried.

In the mid-80's I ate a c-rat that was canned in 1943, and lived. :lifter

And most kids just get mac-n-cheese :) This is why it is cool to have an Army dad. My girls are toddlers, and they already know 100 mile-an-hour tape can fix almost anything. I haven't let them venture into the MRE's yet. I want to wait until the youngest is fully potty trained before we go on that adventure!

Congratulations to Colonel Moak on his retirement.

Heat tabs...no, I don't remember any either. However, we seemed to always have enough C-4, quicker heat up anyway.

Good ole Eunice King's Kitchen in Sherman, TX
 

Eunice King's Kitchen is still in business in Sherman, TX. I visited the factory recently and spoke to a company rep that stil remembered that the Fruit Cake, Pound Cake and assorted Nut Rolls were a mainstay of the company in the 60s through the 80s. They lost the contract in 83 when MREs were brought out.

They still manufacture the fruit cake and it is marketed as Texas Yahoo Cake. I used to trade for the fruit cake because it was the only thing a homesick Texan could identify truly as being from home. The fruit cake was fine if you placed it on an exhaust manifold of a running 10 KW generator. Really good if you added the peaches.

You are a rare individual if you can eat the Fruit Cake, much less enjoy it. That thing should have an FDA warning label on the can.

The Orange Nut Cake sucks pretty badly as well, especially with the big chunks of peel.

The Chocolate Nut Roll is edible, but barely, and only if you have planty of liquid to drink.

The Cinnamon Nut roll would have been better with more sugar, or a glaze, as it is tremendously dry to boot.

The most amazing thing is that a company can bake a true gourmet Pound Cake, and also bake and sell the above atrocities.

TR