I Eat It So You Don't Have To - The Military Food Thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > I Eat It So You Don't Have To - The Military Food Thread

deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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Grand Fromage posted:

That's generic Chinese restaurant chop suey, yeah. This has nothing to do with Chinese food and I had never heard the term American chop suey for it before that Seriouseats post.

American Chop Suey was like a school lunch standard in southern Maine in the late 90s-early 00s, at least. Macaroni elbows, tomato sauce, oregano flakes I think, and archaeological evidence of ground beef.

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deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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Halloween Jack posted:

The first thing I notice about all these meals is that they look like they were tossed onto the plate from 10 feet away.

The NIC estimates that North Korea has rejected somewhere around a quarter of young men for military service in recent years, because malnutrition from the 90s famine was so severe that it left them with mental disabilities disqualifying them for service.

When young men (and some women) are conscripted, their family pulls every possible string to try to get them into a good unit, "good" meaning one that eats. No one wants to be a commando; those units used to be prestigious but now show their patriotism mainly by starving. My understanding is that the North Korean armed forces have to scrounge for food, sometimes stealing from civilians, as a matter of course. (During the famine, military units were getting in armed confrontations with the police in order to seize food.) They have no real ability to project power beyond their borders (not with infantry or mechanized units anyway) so packaged rations would be a waste of resources even if they could afford them.

This is maybe the wrong thread for this, but how serious actually is the North Korean army? I can't help but think of like skeleton-men in oversized uniforms, armed with weapons that are held together by scotch tape and rubber bands. Are they actually a legit threat?

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 18:21

deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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Halloween Jack posted:

I honestly wonder where I can get shelf-stable condensed milk tubes for when I forget to bring fresh half-and-half to the office.

I'd be curious how long they last after the seal is broken. That tube looked like too much for one coffee, unless you're craving candy that day.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2016 16:17

deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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One time I rode my bike past a bunch of geese and they got spooked and one of them like flew into a moving car :ohdear:

# ¿ Jul 28, 2017 20:28

deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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Cumslut1895 posted:

modern humans are kind of enormous pussies

This is what always makes me laugh about the Paleo diet.

"To be healthy, you have to eat what you're evolutionarily adapted to eat!"
And then, it's like an avacado and chicken burrito with lettuce instead of a tortilla, instead of like, a frog that you picked up directly from the ground and probably killed before unceremoniously eating it whole.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2017 16:06

deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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This thread broke me. I saw somebody had typed "a rock, or something" in some other thread and internally did ":iamafag:"

# ¿ Jan 29, 2018 21:22

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Gnoman posted:

A bottom-barrel supermarket chain that cuts prices to the bone by paying their workers like crap and never cleaning the store.

Man you have some hosed-up Aldi's where you're at. The ones here are in high demand for retail worker types because they pay the like 3 people who work there a lot better than, for example, Target. They do this by cutting costs in other areas, like you have to bring your own bags, and there's a machine out front where you have to put in a 25-cent deposit if you want to use a shopping cart.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2018 15:47

deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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MikeCrotch posted:

One thing this thread has got me hooked on is the US Military Recipe Cards, which are fascinating to me on a number of levels but not least because as a Brit I can play the game of Is This Dish:

1. A weird regional US thing
2. A weird US military thing

So stuff like Beef Porcupines, Congo Bars or Pineapple Marshmallow Coleslaw - what the gently caress do these taste like, and would anyone not in the military make them? Are these weird relic recipes from the 40's or just there in case Army cooks are in some situation where they've not been resupplied for a while and have to use whatever weird poo poo they've got? It's interesting!

One other thing I have learned from this as a Brit is holy poo poo imperial measurements are so loving bad. There is a multiple page section in the General Information pages covering how to scale up or down recipes (all recipe cards are for 100 portions) becuase it turns out if you have measurements like "2 quarts 1-1/4 cups beef broth" or "1-7/8 oz salt" if you need to scale that back by, say, a third, that's not actually very easy, at all. The guidelines even give instructions on how to convert something like 7/8 oz into lbs (0.0547 for reference) so you can multiply it by 2 or 0.5 or whatever, and my immediate thought it...why not just write the recipes like that in the first place? Or even better, just use metric?

I've had to use a spreadsheet to convert everything into metric so I can scale it easier because as it turns out I don't really need to make 100 portions of Chicken Cacciatore (Cooked Chicken, Diced) at a time.

The pineapple marshmallow cole slaw is almost definitely a weird relic recipe/regional US thing. A dish called "ambrosia" is commonly served at big family dinners like Easter or Thanksgiving as a side, which consists of marshmallows, pineapple, and sometimes like canned fruit salad, mixed together with whipped cream. Sometimes there's a bit of sour cream in there, too.

I think it's nasty, but it's like a midwestern dinner party staple.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 15:35

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deadly_pudding: May 13, 2009; who the fuck is scraeming
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Hell, move to the suburbs. There's a Trader Joes in the same strip mall as the Wegmans I shop at.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2018 14:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > I Eat It So You Don't Have To - The Military Food Thread