Vietnam Veteran Keeps Vow, Eats 40-Year-Old Cake
 

With all the other stories out there here is a nice one:

Vietnam Veteran Keeps Vow, Eats 40-Year-Old Cake

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534776,00.html

"Moak got the drab olive can as a Marine helicopter pilot off the Vietnamese coast in 1973. He vowed to hang on to it until the day he retired, storing it in a box with other mementos."

A grunt would have kept a can of peaches to go with it.

Wonder if he used a P-38 to opent that can? Ive got a case of C Rats from that same time period. Dont think I'd be bold enough to try them.

Hard to tell what kind of fellow he is, but you have to admire the man's sense of style. Hope he has a good and long retirement. Wonder if he saved the can.

An incomplete meal
 

But without a can of peaches whats the point?:D

P-38
 

The story on CNN.com shows a pic of him opening it, with the P-38. :)

My dad always talks about how what he misses from his time in service is the local food from the Philippines. The real nasty sounding stuff...Balut, fermented fish(he never could think of the name), but his favorite was monkey.

My ex has a taste for 'fish sauce'...once I told him where to find it in DC/Balt..his effing boat smells like fish sauce now.. ewwww..
What can I say, he was once one of 'Uncle Sam's Misguided Children"...
Putting helos into impossible places and getting it out in one piece was his speicalty..

It is truly amazing what people will eat when they are hungry... btw... cans are good as long as they don't have rust or bulge. Open it up, IF the prior criteria is met.. smell if it, smells off... be carefu.. otoh... stuff that smells funny can be due to age or how it was packed.. can still be good..I am not that adventurous though.

I recall reading, back in the 1980's, in the Rocky Mtn News about a cache of canned goods found in what appeared to be a winter camp had canned peaches that were still good..I believe they were dated to the late 1800's.

What a coincidence!

I recently opened some 70s vintage C-Rats and 80s era MREs and offered to share them with my kids.

We tossed anything that had swelled or that seemed off.

The crackers in the B-2 units were stale, but edible. The gum was okay. The John Wayne bar was in pretty bad shape.

The chocolate cookie from the MREs was still edible and not too bad, as was the freeze dried fruit. The Beef Hash was deemed inedible, but it came that way when it was new.

TR

Same way with C-Rats. Four things will last forever: Pound Cake, Beef Hash, Beans and M/F and Cockroaches.

Down here we call it tinabal. Good stuff. :)

He also talks about how he loved a "tomato based SOS". Sound familiar to anyone? If I were to somehow come up with a rough recipe I think I would officially be my dad's favorite son! :D

I bet that cake was a little crunchy after four decades.

I ate quite a few C Rations and remember that they used to constipate me something terrible. They were better than MREs though. At least you felt full after eating them. Being that they were in metal cans they were much easier to heat than MREs.

Does anybody remember peanut butter claymores? He-he!

Good old C rations.....:rolleyes: In the mid 50's we would wrap the cans that had "grease" in them with como wire around the manifold of a jeep to heat them up.....You'd be surprised how much better they tasted,more like gravy and nice and hot.......... ;) I never had MREs until Katrina,then I survived about 5 weeks on them,both Maggie and I, since that was the only food available at that time.......:)

Big Teddy :munchin

Fruit Cake
 

I notice everyone "forgot" to mention Fruit Cake.

You know, that brown looking chunk with bits of rocks in it.

Not as bad as the Chocolate Nut Roll.

You could drop one of those into a five-gallon can of water, and 60 seconds later, it would be empty.

I really learned to hate Eunice King.:D

TR