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I've already been following this thread (via the AFP thread), but a goon over in the industry thread suggested folks here might like to hear more about chow hall food. My roommate and I both are govt contractors at an Army DFAC. He's a cook, I work KP (the dishpit/cleaning crew), so I can share much behind-the-scenes info. If OP doesn't mind, I'm happy to share about food on base. Also OP, if there's a particular MRE you're on the hunt for, our commissary sells them. I can't buy bc I'm but a lowly contractor, but I got connections. Internet Wizard posted:Oh, and if you went through the main line and got the main entree/side combination for that meal, about 2/3 of your plate would just be starchy carbs like potatoes and pasta. Quality dietary planning for an academic training environment. Haha, oh god this. We have signage all over our DFAC about "Go For Green!" They label the food with green ("optimum food for the soldier athlete"), yellow ("medium performance food, choose in moderation") and red ("low performance food, use sparingly"). And then one whole line, every drat day, nothing but "red" foods like nachos and chili dogs. Also, I was not aware that hot sauce is a "high performance food" until I started this job. Guess that's why they throw those lil' Tabascos in the MREs. And your description of your salad bar makes me sad. Ours looks like a chain restaurant's, with all the fixin's, on one side; the other side will have some pre-mixed salads like tonight's Zesty Rotini pasta salad, Cobb salad, and Bodacious Broccoli (which is pretty much, "poo poo, it's Sunday, we just got slammed by 4 buses of AIT students and we don't have a food truck coming in til tomorrow, so... uh... chopped broccoli, leftover bacon from breakfast, shredded cheese, and some mayo-based dressing? GO!" poo poo was tasty, though, props to the cooks for the last minute improv)
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Nov 16, 2015 04:32
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Crust First posted:All pancakes are good. You have not tried my DFAC's pancakes.
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Nov 24, 2015 04:45
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Love the recipe cards! I can't wait to show my roommate, who's a cook at the DFAC I work for. We always joke about mil-spec peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. This sounded... kinda spooky: chitoryu12 posted:1/4 oz cocoa butter OR canning paraffin (Gulf wax) I never heard of eating paraffin, and just looked it up. quote:The US Food and Drug Administration has approved "food-grade" paraffin, even though it is a derivative of the production of crude oil. Mostly it is used to coat fruits and cheeses. While food-grade paraffin is technically edible, it is not digestible; it passes through the body without being absorbed. Beyond that, after hours of searching, we have not been able to turn up any sources of food-grade paraffin. Do not assume the paraffin for sale (for canning purposes) in your supermarket is food-grade; it is not. Go with the cocoa butter, my friend, unless you want to be poopin' out candles.
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Dec 5, 2015 02:23
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chitoryu12 posted:The galley for an Essex-class aircraft carrier is like a restaurant kitchen quadrupled or quintupled in size (I can post pictures later). The galley was responsible for preparing thousands of meals a day, and consequently had huge storerooms with freezers and refrigerators. Combine that with not being an impromptu setup in the field and rarely under threat of direct attack after World War II, and you've basically got a floating garrison mess hall. Ooo, ooo, please post pics! My DFAC does upwards of 1000 people/meal, but we also get the convenience of a USFoods truck bringing us 3 deliveries a week (plus in a real pinch we've been known to borrow stuff from the other DFAC on base). I'm so curious what a carrier kitchen looks like, they must have walk-ins the size of my house. Also, question for you, OP (or anyone): do they make specialty MREs, like kosher or halal ones? Come to think of it, I can't recall seeing an MRE that had pork in it. ... Y'know, I did a stint in jail, and we were never served anything with pork in it, because it was just easier than meeting individual inmate needs. I'll bet it's the same idea at work. Fake edit: I stand corrected, there is Meal 16, "Pork Rib". I guess if you're in the field and don't do pork, you trade with someone? How does that work?
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Dec 9, 2015 03:15
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"God Created the DFAC to Train the Faithful; a Vignette." I'm not sure whether to post this here, in the industry thread, or the PYF Anti Food Porn. I'll go with this since I have the tab open. code:
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Dec 12, 2015 03:12
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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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Aliquid posted:In basic at Ft. Benning i used to trade my Skittles and M&Ms for $20 a bag. I remember liking the beef stews and disliking the chicken and pork packages. Actual meals I really loved, with the forced downing of gatorade, milk and water. Chilimac can get hosed, though Yeah... uh, does AIT also pay those rates? I could finally buy a used car tomorrow with what we threw out today at the DFAC. 
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Mar 21, 2016 02:15
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Cumslut1895 posted:
Of all the things to make me recoil in horror in this thread, it was this. Maybe it's region specific to my part of the US, but "klinkers" are what we always called the crusty, goopy bits that accumulate in the corner of your eye during allergies, colds, or after sleeping (a.k.a eye boogers). chitoryu12 posted:
True story from my job at an Army DFAC: I once witnessed two grown men in uniform nearly getting into a fistfight over the last mini box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You might say breakfast is cere-ous business  I wish more of those comment cards were legible, they're probably funny as hell (at least if you have my job). We have comment cards for the DFAC, but I don't get to see them unless they get left on the table and I happen to be cleaning that section after service. Because I am 12, my favorite is still: Question 3. When not eating at the DFAC, where do you usually eat? A: your mom's house
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Jul 6, 2016 14:47
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hogmartin posted:e: the reason I like Nissin is probably the same reason that sometimes I'd rather have percolator coffee with powdered creamer in a styrofoam cup and fresh-ground coffee with real cream won't satisfy the same craving. Or corned beef from a can on white bread instead of a deli-fresh muffuletta or pastrami on rye. The ersatz versions of things can have their own unique appeal. We are after all reading a thread about appreciating food that is still notionally edible after sitting in a warehouse for a few years. True that. Occasionally we'll get extra field rations delivered to my DFAC, usually snack things like fruit cups and granola bars and the like. While I enjoy a freshly brewed pot of $50/lb Jamaican Blue Mountain as much as the next coffee snob, I'm also insanely fond of the instant cappuccino packets that come in those deliveries (I think chitoryu got one in one of the US MREs posted way back itt). If I see those horrible French toast-flavored cookies out on the line, it means we got another shipment of field rats in, and I go raid the pallet of boxes so I can stuff handfuls of those coffee packets in my apron. Edit: similarly, I've developed a taste for DFAC yakisoba. It's Japanese food as interpreted by a midwestern housewife then copied by aliens who don't understand human cuisine, but I'm first in line to fill a to-go box at the end of shift with the pounds and pounds we throw out. JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jul 14, 2016 |
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Jul 14, 2016 15:59
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ulmont posted:If google is any judge, you aren't the only one. Check the comments on this first recipe (the second is of course the official): Thanks for that top link! I have access to the recipe since my roomie's a cook there (in fact I probably have access to all the recipes, if anyone's looking for something in particular), but that saves me the effort of down-scaling it. Man, that really is Japanese-by-way-of-Minnesota yakisoba, ain't it? No idea what we're serving tonight, as we're closing for the weekend (there's 2 DFACs on base, and we alternate which one gets to close and have the weekend off). This means we'll be purging the walk-ins and warmers and serving leftover surprise, or making stuff from scraps (like yakisoba!). Plus it's the 15th, so we'll be dead anyways; no reason to go all out. If you are eating at my DFAC tonight, I apologize in advance.
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Jul 15, 2016 12:56
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They Ate It So You Don't Have To : The Horribly Poisoned Ancestors Food Thread (seriously digging this derail though)
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Aug 2, 2017 02:51
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm under the impression that some Caribbean cultures still have this sort of salt fish kicking around. Any bodega or Latino market worth its salt ( ) has bacalao. Big name-brand Goya often has it in the freezer section of "regular" supermarkets. I buy it to make brandade, which is a puree of (soaked) salt cod and olive oil, sometimes thickened with potatoes. It's a salty, inoffensively fishy, rich creamy dip, that seems like it should have dairy in it but it doesn't --- great for lactose intolerant folks. You dip some crusty bread in it and oh gently caress you thread now I gotta make brandade
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Aug 2, 2017 21:42
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All this coffee substitute chat reminded me of Postum, which I haven't thought about in years --- and the last time I was reminded of it, it was reading Roger Ebert's lament that it was no longer being made. So it was a case of: "Hey remember this thing?" "Holy poo poo, yeah, boy could I go for----" "Well it's no longer made, sucks to be you." "gently caress." ...all in the span of one sentence I decided to look it up, to see just what exactly Postum was made from*, and oh holky gently caress, they started making it again  Postum was made by CW Post at the turn of the century as a healthy alternative to coffee, but got real popular during WW2 thanks to rationing. (So, this isn't a total derail!) I guess as folks of my grandpa's generation died off, so did sales, but apparently there are enough Postum lovers to have convinced a company to start making it again. If anyone's in North Carolina by an Ingles Markets, they appear to be the only retailer carrying it. I can order off their website, but just curious if it'd be cheaper to get it goon shipped (a jar comes to $18+, shipped) Anyways, thank you thread, for inadvertently notifying me that Postum lives again. *Roasted wheat bran, wheat and molasses. It tastes nothing like coffee, it's...its own thing.
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Nov 8, 2017 21:58
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chitoryu12 posted:What's the smallest size of Postum for sale? It would be interesting to bring it to work, where we have a coffee maker. Ah, but no coffee maker required, my friend! It's instant, so you can enjoy in the comfort of any dorm, cubicle, or muddy trench. Strangely, their website doesn't say how many ounces it is, just that it's $10.50. Fake edit: Just found some other online retailers, looks to be an 8oz jar. At one teaspoon/8 oz water, makes approximately 75 cups. Also 3rd party vendors want $19.95 shipped, so the Postum website looks like the way to go, for me at least. A HUNGRY MOUTH posted:It sounds like the beverage equivalent of sitting down to a hearty dinner of brown pegboard. It's got a nutty, malty flavor to it (the roasting plus the molasses, I guess?) Kinda like drinking a cup of brown bread, iirc. Though now I see it comes in regular and coffee flavored, and since it's been 20 years, I can't remember which one my college roommate used to buy. Cocoa does sound interesting, too. Hirayuki posted:It's an acquired taste. 
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Nov 8, 2017 22:54
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Suspect Bucket posted:The Supersizers Go Wartime : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF9W4Ye5EZo This was a really fun and informative watch, thanks for the link! I'm about to watch the other one you posted. One thing that struck me as odd: I'd've thought there'd be more fish on the menu as a protein source, what with Britain being surrounded by an ocean and all. Was the fishing industry crippled by the war (would Nazi ships attack fishing vessels? Thanks to US-centric history classes, I really don't know poo poo about things like that), or did the war just massively hinder the logistics of getting to fish to non-coastal cities like London? Also, now I know that marmite is a French word/type of foodstuff/kind of specific earthenware casserole, not just the trademark name of a delicious savory paste that I'm suddenly craving and have no idea where to buy in the city I live in and thanks a lot, Bucket 
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Jan 26, 2018 01:05
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I've never had the Kiwi variety of Marmite, but I'd probably still go ahead and dig in! I'm definitely a bigger fan of (UK) Marmite than Vegemite; which one is closer to the NZ Sanitarium version? Watching the Back in Time for Dinner video, enjoying that as well. I had no idea food shortages and rationing were a thing so long after WW2 across the pond (though duh, that would make sense). Here in the US, we think of the 50's as this golden age of boom economy and June Cleaver types setting down a fat roast in some Norman Rockwell painting, and meanwhile my Brit brethren were still using powdered eggs and getting 5 oz of liver a week six years after the war. fake edit: ah, at 43 minutes, we're getting to fish fingers!
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Jan 26, 2018 02:21
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Sorry for double post, but... As a woman who cooks for a living in a restaurant staffed mostly by men, I really wanna make a t-shirt based on some of this Women's Land Army art. FOOD COMES FIRST
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Jan 26, 2018 02:35
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angerbeet posted:Health, but at what cost? I was kinda amused/saddened by all the entries for fish that came with notes like "This stuff's rich in nutrients and omegas! Oh, but not if you're pregnant. Also, eels have toxins in their skin mucus." On a weird side-note: I'm currently taking a class to get FDA certified as a canned goods processor. "Canned" means anything that gets processed and hermetically sealed, so that includes cans, jars, pouches, aseptic boxes, etc. Anything shelf stable in your pantry, really. Anyways, I was a bit taken aback to learn that in the US, we only got government regulation on that sort of thing as late as 1971. So that means any MRE (any canned food, really) made before then had absolutely no govt oversight on the processing. I know we think of MREs as being nigh-indestructible, no-expiration forces of foodstuffs, but that poo poo could've been bad the day it went into the pouch. Just be safe if anyone dares to try some vintage stuff like some of those Youtubers, m'kay?  On a more relevant-to-the-thread note: I also learned that the greatx-grandfather of canning was Nicolas Appert, who was tasked by Napoleon to come up with a way to get food to the front without it spoiling. He was the first dude to come up with "hmm, maybe I should boil it in jars, then cork it really quick". Later, Pasteur got on the right track, then Underwood (of the deviled ham company by the same name) figured out shelf stability in 1895. But today, the highest award given to folks in the canning industry is the Appert Award.
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Feb 11, 2018 00:44
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Suspect Bucket posted:Steve1989 once opened a tinned meat that grew noticeable mold over the course of the video, it was amazing.   [what's the barfing smilie?]Mold won't kill you (and of course is key in making many cheeses and sausages), but molds eat acids, and acids are what keeps C. botulinum from becoming botulism. Which can kill you:  Mom didn't can her peas right, served them up at a dinner party, and wiped out nearly the whole family.  If you open any product and it already has mold in it, for the love of god throw that poo poo out.
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Feb 11, 2018 01:09
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Reiterpallasch posted:Old-timey metal rolling technology being what it was, the cans that Appert supplied to the Grand Armee had to be opened with a hammer and chisel, and the process was apparently something of a hazard to soldiers new to mess duty. Really? Not calling you out or anything, just that the gist I got from our brief history overview was that Appert was sticking corks in glass bottles, tin/aluminum cans as we know 'em weren't in the picture for a ways yet.
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Feb 11, 2018 04:01
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Pollyanna posted:Jesus. This is making me super paranoid about eating anything now. Don't fret! As poeticoddity posted, thorough cooking gets rid of the toxic by-product C bot creates. Doesn't kill the C bot, but it's not the bacteria itself what kills ya, it's their poop. And they only do that in specific environments. Everyone reading this has probably ingested some C bot spores today. Botulism is pretty rare, and generally comes from home-canned foods or something like sketchy gas station nachos. The last major (8 people) outbreak from a commercial plant was in 2007. Go forth and eat! I'd just finished my chapter quiz on microorganisms when I posted that, kinda had botulism on the brain. If someone had posted a pic of a slightly dented can today, I probably would've come kramering into the thread warning about the differences between buckled and paneled cans.
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Feb 18, 2018 22:41
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Beef porcupines were definitely a regular item at the army DFAC I worked for a couple years ago. This was a US base that would get in things like lobster tails for the army's birthday or shrimp cocktail on holidays, so it certainly wasn't a matter of limited supplies. Porcupines weren't so bad, really, they're just meatballs with rice that helps pad out the meat --- probably a relic of rationing. 90% of the cooks there had no clue how to season anything, though, so your brain would get ready for a tasty meatball and then your mouth would say, "nnnnope, that's a bland ball of mush".
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Mar 6, 2018 16:45
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MikeCrotch posted:So far I've found that the recipes are pretty good, as long as you double the seasonings. Otherwise yeah, you are in bland mush city. Cooks at my DFAC were about 50/50 actual enlisted army personnel vs contractors. The former followed recipes to the letter, and put out way under-seasoned stuff. The latter generally put out stuff that could serve as a deer salt lick. A handful of cooks on both sides actually comprehended "season to taste" within reason. So a bit of both, probably! Edit: ^^^ that too
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Mar 6, 2018 18:16
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Now I feel bad for writing a lot of dumb Don't feel bad, this stuff's fascinating! On topic with the conversation, but off topic on the subject of military food (sorry chitoryu!) --- funny how 50s/60s sci fi was all about the food pellets. As an example, one of the first Doctor Who episodes in 1963 had people marveling over a food replicator that dispensed cubes that taste just like bacon and eggs. Makes total sense, it was canned/processed foods taken to an extreme. What a wonderful future we had to look forward to! All the flavor and nutrition, but none of the work! Instead, now it's "the future", and there's this whole trend towards organic, nonGMO, local, etc, foodstuffs. Food blogs sprouting like dandelions. A cult of celebrity chefs. Even goons who live on hot pockets are making fun of Soylent. Processed food = bad food, whereas that was the dream of the future back then. Can anyone confirm/deny what I heard at one point: that Betty Crocker cake mixes used to not need an egg, but housewives of the post-war era felt like they weren't doing their house-wifely job just adding water, so Betty Crocker changed the formula to necessitate adding an egg? Just to make them feel like they were actually cooking something.
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Mar 9, 2018 22:06
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but there it is.
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For about 8 years before we moved, my husband worked at Trader Joes. Anything I wanted, with employee discount, delivered nightly. Now we're about 3 hours from the nearest one. I feel y'alls pain, and then some.
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Mar 28, 2018 23:23
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:We should get an ex-con in here to tell us about prison food and how it holds up against military grub. As someone who not only worked for a US Army DFAC but also spent a couple months in a privatized, for-profit jail, I feel qualified to answer any questions y'all might have! DFAC food beats jail food by miles. Hell, I'd gladly eat the worst US MRE invented as opposed to another tray featuring "star patties" (mystery meat), collards (which I'm still convinced were the grass clippings from inmates mowing the median strips of highways) and stale bread. To quote one fellow inmate: "How in the world do you gently caress up a hot dog so badly?" If nothing else, MREs provide condiments. We had to buy our own salt and pepper, and I don't think Tabasco was even an option. My canteen account was hosed up from the get-go, so I didn't have any money for the first few weeks despite friends chucking money in. Since I'm an artist, I quickly started a business trading drawings (tattoos, greeting cards for their kids birthdays) for anything to add flavor to the "grits", until that matter got settled. (That Mother Jones article was spot on in describing the futility of inmates airing grievances, among 1000 other things.) My spouse saved my letters home, and on re-reading them, one that always makes me sadly chuckle is where, smack in the middle of gushing about how much I love him, his weekly visits mean the world to me, I'm so sorry to be a burden, etc, I just blurt out: "drat, I miss salt."
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Apr 12, 2018 21:58
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:drat the American correctional system is horrid, I'd have to ask a friend of mine who spent time in jail here to see how the food is. At the risk of majorly derailing the thread, I'd love to hear what inmates in other countries eat. Also, my favorite food-in-jail story involves a holiday. I'll post it if folks are curious, but keeping on topic, thinking it about led me to wonder what holiday food is like in the military. Anything special? Do you get extra chow, or special MREs in the field? The DFAC I worked for went all-out the day before a holiday (eg., 12 turkeys and shrimp cocktail and the like on Thanksgiving Wednesday), but then we'd close. Bonus for me was taking home a whole turkey and about 5 pounds of shrimp home one year because we were gonna throw it out. Sigh. Such waste there.
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Apr 12, 2018 23:46
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Well, alright, I'm supposed to be working on a grant proposal right now but maybe more writing will get my juices a-flowing. I quickly learned that Wednesday was the best day for food, because it was chicken day. For lunch, we got two real pieces of chicken, usually anemic drumsticks that were probably the garbage cast-offs that some local Virginia poultry farm couldn't sell to Food Lion, but hell, it was real meat that obviously came from a real animal. Wednesdays were a treat. My stint happened to take place during 4th of July (for non-US goons, this is a day we barbecue lots of animals to celebrate declaring our independence), and this year the 4th happened on a Wednesday. A woman in my pod who did laundry had a thing going with a cook (women with privileges could do laundry, only men could cook) and heard a couple days before from him that we were getting fried chicken for the 4th, as a treat. As of the 2nd, we were already drooling over this prospect. Around 0600 on the 4th, we can smell the chicken frying. On no other day (except chicken Wed's and pb&j Saturdays) did we know what was gonna be served, because unlike prisons like that in the MJ article, jails are almost literally airtight. You spend a lot of your time locked in your cell behind a door that has no bars, it's solid metal with a tiny window. Even during free time, the pod is practically hermetically sealed, with multiple "airlocks" between you and the kitchen. So the fact that we can smell fried chicken is driving us insane. We are getting giddy as gently caress over this. Finally lunchtime (around 1045) comes around, and someone yells "TRAYS ROLLING!" which means get out of your cell and start jockeying into position to grab a tray and eat for the whopping 15 minutes they allowed for chow time. I get my tray and it smells heavenly. There's two pieces of battered fried chicken, some mashed potatoes about the consistency of of yogurt (with a pat of margarine, holy poo poo), and a spoonful of watery corn. I immediately grab a leg, sink my teeth in, and... My teeth won't come back out. This chicken has been cooked so long you could build low-income housing out of it. I pick some fry batter off and munch that, and it's like obsidian shards of sheer disappointment in my mouth. I pull some meat off the bone, and as I start chewing this chicken jerky, I begin to wonder if the tears welling up in my eyes might not be used to add seasoning and moisture to it. Soooo, much like this post, it was a whole lot of build up to the biggest let-down ever. I don't recall what we got for dinner, I think that was business as usual. Then just to add the (15 cents a packet) salt to the wound, my jail was literally across the highway from Busch Gardens, and at lights out we got to listen to their spectacular July 4th fireworks display, but not see any of it, because, y'know, no windows. I admit, I cried a lot that night.
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Apr 13, 2018 00:56
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Last Transmission posted:Hey, JD can you share your stories with the awesome The Jail/Prison Thread, too? Didn't know there was one! There used to be one in A/T years ago, I loved posting in there, and folks seemed to appreciate getting a woman's stories (did you know that jail-issued menstrual pads make great scouring sponges to keep your cell clean? #jailhacks) Thanks for the tip, I'll see y'all over there soon! And thanks for the kind words, all, and humoring my little derail. Reading that Mother Jones article dredged up a lot of memories, and it always feels good to tell some with as much humor as I can muster.  Keeping on topic of military food, I think my next post here will be "That Time Some SSGT Thought It Would Be A Good Idea To Make Enough Chitlins For 800 Soldiers".
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Apr 13, 2018 17:39
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I'm afraid to ask what we're looking at here, chito I see everclear, a can of pineapple, and a camera with a boom I'm kinda getting a phantom boner about sitting in a dish drain
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Apr 22, 2018 20:14
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chitoryu12 posted:I didn’t have anywhere else to fit the tripod.
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Apr 22, 2018 20:50
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