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Grand Fromage posted:And not every country treats its soldiers well. I had friends who did their service in the South Korean army and it's the worst. Forty guys in one barracks room sleeping on unheated bare concrete, the food is practically nonexistent and rarely anything more than a too-small portion of white rice and some seaweed floating in water as "soup". It's survivable so that's good enough for the ROK. That's sad and hosed up. Why is it like that?
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# ? Dec 20, 2015 03:49 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 08:05 |
Conscripts also get peanuts for pay. As of January 2015, a conscripted private gets the equivalent of about $121.20 per month.
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# ? Dec 20, 2015 03:56 |
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hogmartin posted:That's kind of surprising since the ROK is a pretty prosperous country that seems to understand the deterrent value of its military. Did it seem to be a systemic disregard, or more of an old NCO 'gently caress those conscripts, it was good enough for me when I was a private' kind of thing? Both. The guys have no choice in being there so what's the motivation to make them happy? If they leave they go to prison so who cares. And they really don't value their military--all the US guys I knew who were stationed there have stories about how much of a joke the ROK army is. Mostly because it's run the same way everything in Korea is run so nothing works. It's so bad people kill themselves or flee the country to not have to do their service. I've been told conditions are somewhat better if you actually sign up rather than being one of the conscripts. The plum jobs are the translators who get to live on US bases and are treated like US military personnel.
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# ? Dec 20, 2015 06:02 |
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hogmartin posted:I do: http://www.quartermaster.army.mil/jccoe/publications/recipes/section_q/Q06000.pdf My grandmother used to make a pretty similar thing, I think she got her recipe from a WWII soldiers wives cookbook or something of the likes.
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# ? Dec 20, 2015 06:49 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Both. The guys have no choice in being there so what's the motivation to make them happy? If they leave they go to prison so who cares. And they really don't value their military--all the US guys I knew who were stationed there have stories about how much of a joke the ROK army is. Mostly because it's run the same way everything in Korea is run so nothing works. One of my former coworker told me her brother deliberately damaged his ACL so as to get out of military service. I have no idea if that's true, because she was crazy, but it doesn't sound too far-fetched.
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# ? Dec 20, 2015 07:54 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Both. The guys have no choice in being there so what's the motivation to make them happy? If they leave they go to prison so who cares. And they really don't value their military--all the US guys I knew who were stationed there have stories about how much of a joke the ROK army is. Mostly because it's run the same way everything in Korea is run so nothing works. I had a Korean friend who was assigned to KATUSA and was stationed at the US base in Yongsan. The normal Korean military stint (which is mandatory for all Korean males above the age of 21 or something, iirc) was 2 and a half years at any number of bases in bumfuck nowhere, with all the terrible conditions described in this thread and a ton of hazing and such (especially in the bases that are farther from Seoul and North Korea), with almost no leave. In contrast, my friend would pop out of Yongsan (which is in the heart of Seoul) every Saturday morning, go home, play some video games and enjoy home cooking, generally lazy around and then go back in Sunday night. The conditions at the base were much better as well since they used the same facilities that the US troops did. The contrast between him and my other friend who'd been stationed way up near the South/North Korean border was hilarious and sad.
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# ? Dec 20, 2015 09:35 |
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Just finished the intro chapter of "Tea, Rum, and Fags: Sustaining Tommy 1914-18" and it's pretty good so far. It seems rather short and expensive ($16US) for a Kindle title, and it has a bibliography but no in-line footnotes or citations for those who care about that. It's got delectable chapter titles like "Bully Beef and Hard Biscuits", "Cookers", "Rations", "Food and Drink During the Big Offensives", "Canteens" and so on. http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B006ZNECWI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1 fake edit: loving hell, physical copies are like $5. I should have just gotten that and waited instead of the Kindle copy :-/ another fake edit: also loving hell; it looks like half the text is available as a preview on Google Books :-/ https://books.google.com/books?id=7lE7AwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA8&ots=lMJWAd3YC7&dq=tea%20rum%20and%20fags%20chapters&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false I DON'T KNOW HOW TO BOOK
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 00:28 |
hogmartin posted:Just finished the intro chapter of "Tea, Rum, and Fags: Sustaining Tommy 1914-18" and it's pretty good so far. It seems rather short and expensive ($16US) for a Kindle title, and it has a bibliography but no in-line footnotes or citations for those who care about that. It's got delectable chapter titles like "Bully Beef and Hard Biscuits", "Cookers", "Rations", "Food and Drink During the Big Offensives", "Canteens" and so on. The thing about canteens reminds me, I also have an interest in military water canteens and bottles. I've got a decent starter collection myself (I believe 2 American plastic canteens, 1 American 2-quart canteen, 1 Lithuanian, 2 Soviet and 1 Ukrainian flyashka, 1 Swiss metal canteen, 1 old aluminum Israeli, 1 East German, and 1 Yugoslavian combined canteen/mess set). Much like with mess kits, the style of canteen is a good indicator of the style of the army itself. For instance, the old Swiss canteen only holds about half a liter of water and no carrier or pouch was ever made for it, as it was meant to be carried in a soldier's breadbag. It's also made with classic Swiss precision, as it fits so perfectly in the cup that it's very easy to slide in or remove but won't fall out accidentally no matter how hard you shake. This is only possible with a force using expensive equipment with high tolerances, and isn't expected to be engaged in heavy fighting or even away from the home front (as the soldier can simply stuff their water bottle in a bag instead of carrying it close at hand, and it only holds a small amount of water). Soviet canteens, the flyashka, are still used today by Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European nations despite dating back to before World War II. These same nations often use old equipment in general, and not necessarily due to a lack of something better. Russia has been developing weapons at a constant pace and is clearly capable of building modern and ergonomic equipment, but much of it is just variations and modernizations of things that have been around since the early days of the Cold War. Continuing to use a World War II aluminum canteen (even if the carriers made now by SPOSN and SPLAV are a little better) is more a sign of traditionalism than lack of money or resources.
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 02:33 |
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I think the US has pretty much retired canteens in favor of hydration packs, for better or worse. I think the MRE and FSR beverage packets are now measured for a camelbak, for instance. I don't know if canteens means 'water flasks' or 'messing facilities' in the context of the book yet but I guess I'll find out. The NAAFI wasn't established until 1921 so a tea and snack shack behind the lines might well be called a canteen at this point.
hogmartin fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Dec 22, 2015 |
# ? Dec 22, 2015 03:09 |
hogmartin posted:I think the US has pretty much retired canteens in favor of hydration packs, for better or worse. I think the MRE and FSR beverage packets are now measured for a camelbak, for instance. I don't know if canteens means 'water flasks' or 'messing facilities' in the context of the book yet but I guess I'll find out. The NAAFI wasn't established until 1921 so a tea and snack shack behind the lines might well be called a canteen at this point. Likely the latter, as it would cover mess halls. The MREs I've gotten have still listed canteen cup measurements and I believe the canteens are issued, but pretty much nobody uses them because of Camelbaks. I still ate an MRE with no extra accessories but a 1 quart canteen and the matching canteen cup and found that it all worked out perfectly.
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 04:18 |
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I could've sworn I read something years ago about how one of the innovations of the FSR was that its beverage powders were measured for camelbaks. Makes sense that canteens would still be issued though. Yeah, so I skipped ahead and it's about tea stands and soup kitchens. It sounds like they were entirely run by relief societies, I don't get the impression that there was any official organization like the modern NAAFI or USO or whatever. Most of the mention is of YMCA kitchens and some religious relief societies and the biggest distinction seems to be whether they're 'wet' or 'dry' canteens. There is a lot of mention of EF (Expeditionary Force?) canteens but it seems like that's just a stand-in for 'any canteen that served the BEF soldiers' rather than anything official. Lord Kitchener actually hated the idea because 'war is not a picnic' and while there was a Field Forces Canteen behind Ypres late in 1914 the ubiquitous relief ones didn't start setting up until 1915.
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 13:27 |
hogmartin posted:I could've sworn I read something years ago about how one of the innovations of the FSR was that its beverage powders were measured for camelbaks. Makes sense that canteens would still be issued though. The US military would have laughed in Kitchener's face, then probably given him a wedgie.
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 17:50 |
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hogmartin posted:I could've sworn I read something years ago about how one of the innovations of the FSR was that its beverage powders were measured for camelbaks. Makes sense that canteens would still be issued though. I assume he had a five course meal with cheese and brandy every night
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# ? Dec 23, 2015 07:08 |
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It certainly clashes with the impression of him as a "soldier's general" I get from everywhere else.
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# ? Dec 23, 2015 16:40 |
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He was a gentleman.
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# ? Dec 23, 2015 21:06 |
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:He was a gentleman. He WAS a gentleman he was sir, back in the Sudan he was. Why I remember when we was fighting the fuzzy-wuzzies sir back in the Sudan he was the perfect gentleman sir. I remember one time...
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# ? Dec 23, 2015 21:15 |
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I had tied an onion in my belt, as was the style at the time.
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# ? Dec 23, 2015 21:43 |
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I guess we have Nicolas Appert the "father of canning" to thank for this thread. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Appert quote:In 1795 the French military offered a cash prize of 12,000 francs for a new method to preserve food. After some 14 or 15 years of experiment, Appert submitted his invention and won the prize in January 1810 So, what were some of the meals Appert would have made for Napolion's army?
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# ? Dec 24, 2015 01:03 |
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Retarded Pimp posted:meals made for Napolion's army? A baguette, carried down the trouser leg. Source
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# ? Dec 24, 2015 02:03 |
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Ooh, ooh, my useless liberal arts doctorate can pay off! A really cool figure in the history of military comestibles is the French chef Alexis Soyer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Soyer He was basically the OG celebrity chef of the early to mid-19th century: famous throughout Europe, served royalty and other bigwigs, etc. However, he also had a major populist streak. He devoted a ton of time developing recipes and cooking technology for various subsets of the population. For example, he wrote cookbooks for British lower class women to be able to eat well on a poverty budget, etc. So, for relevance to the thread, he actually worked with the British and their allies in the Crimean War to improve the quality of cooking and food on the front. He's perhaps most famous for developing a sort of portable gas stove that remained in vogue for quite a long time, supposedly even used to this day (the "Soyer stove" or "magic stove"). This sounds a little apocryphal, but it's likely that there may be some type of stove in use out there that doesn't differ too much from an old design... Teketeketeketeke fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Dec 24, 2015 |
# ? Dec 24, 2015 04:20 |
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Wikipedia has an image of a Soyer stove. edit: digging a little bit reveals a claim that the stove, modernized, was in use with the British army through the first Gulf war. Source is given as Brandon, Ruth. The People's Chef: Alexis Soyer, A Life in Seven Courses. Chichester, West Sussex, John Wiley & Sons, 2004. at page 241. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Dec 24, 2015 |
# ? Dec 24, 2015 08:23 |
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Tea, Rum, and Fags talks about 'Tommy cookers' which sound a lot like Esbit stoves; little aluminum frames to hold a cup over a solid fuel. There are claims of roughly a pint of water taking two hours to boil which sounds completely mad. It also mentions people (mostly officers) buying their own Primus or Baby Primus pressurized stoves. No mention of the Soyer though.
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# ? Dec 24, 2015 16:21 |
hogmartin posted:Tea, Rum, and Fags talks about 'Tommy cookers' which sound a lot like Esbit stoves; little aluminum frames to hold a cup over a solid fuel. There are claims of roughly a pint of water taking two hours to boil which sounds completely mad. It also mentions people (mostly officers) buying their own Primus or Baby Primus pressurized stoves. No mention of the Soyer though. During World War II (and maybe World War I) old "flimsy" gasoline cans were repurposed as "Benghazi Burners". The 4 gallon gas cans were called "flimsies" because they were cheaply made from thin tin plate (there were more expensive 2 gallon ones made of steel, but they were less common). They were regarded as basically disposable because they were so fragile that they would be damaged just from the weight of being stacked in piles. It's estimated that up to 25% of fuel transported in North Africa in these cans was lost due to punctures. This got solved when they copied the German-designed jerrycan. The stoves made from them were unreliable, but still usable. This video describes the Benghazi cooker a little. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbNvCpckXpw
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# ? Dec 24, 2015 21:45 |
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Kiwi Dude's videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?KiwiDudeMRE are awesome and The Boss is adorable as hell. Anybody got a newish ration to break the WWI streak going?
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# ? Dec 24, 2015 22:51 |
hogmartin posted:Kiwi Dude's videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?KiwiDudeMRE are awesome and The Boss is adorable as hell. Anybody got a newish ration to break the WWI streak going? I'm still trying to power through the Russian, which isn't very fun to eat despite being eye-opening. I also have a civilian ration by MRE Star that I need to crack into. In the meantime, I found video of a sort of Iron Chef competition between the US Army and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRThbWKM-7k
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# ? Dec 25, 2015 01:08 |
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chitoryu12 posted:I'm still trying to power through the Russian, which isn't very fun to eat despite being eye-opening. I also have a civilian ration by MRE Star that I need to crack into. I have always been awed by anyone who can cook well in bulk. Hell, cooking DECENTLY in bulk is awesome enough. Scale is a hell of a thing.
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# ? Dec 25, 2015 02:40 |
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chitoryu12 posted:This got solved when they copied the German-designed jerrycan. The stoves made from them were unreliable, but still usable. Suspect Bucket posted:I have always been awed by anyone who can cook well in bulk. Hell, cooking DECENTLY in bulk is awesome enough. Scale is a hell of a thing.
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# ? Dec 25, 2015 02:50 |
Fenrir posted:Didn't those things have a habit of occasionally, y'know, EXPLODING? ...or is it a different stove I'm thinking of? The Benghazi burners could reputedly explode if an overeager brewer saw the fire going out and just dumped more gasoline straight in. I ate one of the remaining flexible cans in the Russian ration. It was....okay. I believe it was barley kasha with beef and what looked kinda like tiny bits of shredded, soft carrots. It wasn't good by any means, but I was actually able to eat the entire thing.
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# ? Dec 25, 2015 03:21 |
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Suspect Bucket posted:I have always been awed by anyone who can cook well in bulk. Hell, cooking DECENTLY in bulk is awesome enough. Scale is a hell of a thing. Your post makes me comment on two things. 1) ... the gently caress am I looking at in that Youtube screenshot? 2) If anyone's in Virginia, my Army DFAC is doing an Iron Chef vs. the Air Force next month. Come see how we roll in bulk. And heck, lemme just add point number three: this thread is awesome. I've learned quite a bit, even in just the last few posts about how much ROK rations suck and how UK caramel coffee rocks.
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# ? Dec 27, 2015 17:59 |
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That US Army/JSDF cookoff is cool as hell. I think the guy at 0:35 has Global knives which makes me a little jealous.
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# ? Dec 27, 2015 18:48 |
When I get back from a business trip this week I want to try and finish Russia and get that review up.
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# ? Dec 28, 2015 06:01 |
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Suspect Bucket posted:I have always been awed by anyone who can cook well in bulk. Hell, cooking DECENTLY in bulk is awesome enough. Scale is a hell of a thing. This is the kind of stuff we used to do at Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji back when I worked there in the 90's. High end food for sometimes 200+ people at a time, 3 meals a day. We usually served family style but sometimes served individually. All covers ready at the same time for seated kids or adults ready to eat. All with a national theme depending on the site (German, Norwegian, Japanese, Finnish, Spanish, French, etc.) We also only usually ran 3-4 people per shift. It wasn't hard at all if you had your groove on and knew the recipes. I learned most of what I know about "La Technique" from there. Until this day, if you were to ask me for 2 hotel pans of diced onions, I'd ask "how do you want the dice?" If you asked for carrots sliced, I'd ask if you wanted them "on the bias." I was never a head cook, only assistant, but we ran brigade style and it was fun. Probably the best job I ever had. The only problem is that, even 17 years later, I still only know how to cook for large amounts of people. I always make too much food. I also miss my tilt skillet, steam kettle, steamers, bread slicers, bakers, underlings, and the absurd amount of available work surfaces. I loved watching the video and seeing how all of the line cooks rose to the challenge and made great food. Everything looked great on both sides of the Pacific. mostlygray fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Dec 29, 2015 |
# ? Dec 29, 2015 04:10 |
JacquelineDempsey posted:1) ... the gently caress am I looking at in that Youtube screenshot? It looks like raw meat wrapped around sticks, either for cooking or sashimi.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 17:47 |
Tilt skillet owns so hard. Maintenance replaced the safety valve on our steam jacket kettle with one set much to low. Boy was I surprised when that thing blew the valve open and sprayed steam everywhere
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 20:18 |
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What What on earth is this even I can appreciate and understand the little helpful gadgets people use to make soldiers' lives easier, often by including them in ration kits, but that is a cardboard postcard made from an MRE fruit carton. In what world can someone in the field actually post a card, i.e. send it out to the world through official mail, but not acquire any writing material or paper besides an MRE carton? a. I feel like a complete dickhole now for goofing on this MRE carton postcard because I know some sweet old grandmother somewhere in a hair net is stamping them out in a plant in Topeka or something, hoping that she's giving someone's grandsons something to write home on. b. A lot of people are going to get correspondence from me soon on paperboard box sides and they'd better be grateful for them.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 00:16 |
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Holy poo poo, only 100 calories? I'd expect them to try and cram at least 300 kcal of sugar rush in there. OUR TROOPS DESERVE THE FINEST HIGH QUALITY SUGAR SYRUP. Also, I want one of those post cards. That's adorable.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 02:49 |
Suspect Bucket posted:Holy poo poo, only 100 calories? I'd expect them to try and cram at least 300 kcal of sugar rush in there. OUR TROOPS DESERVE THE FINEST HIGH QUALITY SUGAR SYRUP. The MREs are carefully balanced to give calories in a fairly narrow range, presumably to prevent weight gain from overeating. Each individual portion actually has quite a small amount of calories, with even the entrees having only 200-300 calories max. This is what leads to some problems soldiers have with weight loss: they throw out or trade away stuff they don't like, but the MREs are supposed to be eaten in full to actually get enough food.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 02:55 |
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chitoryu12 posted:The MREs are carefully balanced to give calories in a fairly narrow range, presumably to prevent weight gain from overeating. Each individual portion actually has quite a small amount of calories, with even the entrees having only 200-300 calories max. This is what leads to some problems soldiers have with weight loss: they throw out or trade away stuff they don't like, but the MREs are supposed to be eaten in full to actually get enough food. One day they'll just figure out to give packs of just jalapeno cheese, fruit cocktail, and protein powder.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 03:10 |
Suspect Bucket posted:One day they'll just figure out to give packs of just jalapeno cheese, fruit cocktail, and protein powder. Hey now, I like the chocolate shakes!
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 03:34 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 08:05 |
Seriously with our bloated military budget they can't afford jalapeño cheese in every mre?
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 04:52 |