I Am SO Sorry For the Delay! Krainian MRE is Up For Review
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck it's been a few weeks
Greetings y’all. Not the normal “Droogs and Droogettes”… y’all ARE but hey, my haus, and what I call you? My call… in this case, y’all can call me “late to fucking dinner” or “that asshole ain’t poasted shit lately.”
Either way, I beg forgiveness.
I’m usually militant about getting my ‘shit handled’ but as of late? OMFG.
Tired, then the Father in Law’s medical issues, then the Mother in Laws fucking mental issues… love her but she’s a “few fries short a Happy Meal” at this point and refuses to deal with and/or acknowledge it…then completely unexpected medical issues for me (eyeballz), Wife Issues (occasionally Gretchen can be a stone beee-atch, you men know where from which this comes)
So, like assholes, I got a million excuses.
Not one of the ones listed is that it took me a week plus to eat this fucking giant ass retardedly oversized meal. No Bullshit… the Krainian six kilo field ration?
Ok… using the ‘generic pic’ as my UMRE (which is how we’re going to refer to it for brevity, as I’m too tired/full/buzzed to deal with anything else…
Anyways
The UMRE I have, which has been seen in -numerous- Russian vidyas when they overrun/overwhelm the Krainian positions, you see a HUGE number of the ration envelopes left behind:
Not exactly ‘tactical’ are they?
So… the Menus offered are as follows:
MENU 1 Borsch with beef meat Rice porridge with chicken meat Braised potatoes with vegetables and pork meat Barley porridge with pork meat
MENU 2 Pea soup with pork meat Buckwheat porridge with beef meat Beans with vegetables and chicken meat Pearl barley porridge with pork meat
MENU 3 Rice soup with chicken meat Peas with vegetables and pork meat Wheat porridge with beef Braised potatoes with vegetables and chicken meat
MENU 4 Buckwheat soup with pork meat Beans with vegetables and beef meat Barley porridge with chicken meat Rice porridge with pork meat
MENU 5 Borsch with beef meat Buckwheat porridge with chicken meat Beans with vegetables and chicken meat Barley porridge with beef meat
MENU 6 Buckwheat soup with pork meat Peas with vegetables and beef Barley porridge with beef meat Braised potatoes with vegetables and pork meat
MENU 7 Pea soup with pork meat Wheat porridge with chicken meat Buckwheat porridge with beef meat Rice porridge with pork meat
Each ration also has these toofus-breaking Biscuits (3) Wheat crackers… like a hardtack, also inedible (1) Bread Rusks from rye flour completely inedible (1) a packet of Instant coffee, Black tea (the Ivans across the board are like the Brits) Sugar, Honey, an Apple jam and Pepper Salt and spoons. The spoons are cheap AF and break like nothing.
Now, the BIG bag is broken down into 3 smaller bags, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. No flameless heaters in this one, as I have heard they NOW have them. Guess the US DotMil showed them how to make them. The “Best Before” date on this one was April 2022. It was still good, but no heater as it was made back in 2020. Not sure how long it’d actually last, as US DotMil MREs can and have been eaten years after the best by date(s).
So, the Menu on this one -I think- was Menu #6. Pretty sure of it.
That’s the Buckwheat soup with pork meat, Peas with vegetables and beef, Barley porridge with beef meat, and Braised potatoes with vegetables and pork meat
Couldn’t tell which was which, BUT I took the smallest pouch and called it breakfast. Opening it gave me this:
One pack of Crackers, Toofus Breaking, Type One Each, 4 per Pack. One packet coffee, with sugar and a small packet of salt. The obligatory spoon and napkin, and the meal in a heavy retort pouch. Oh, and a hand-wet-nappie (above the crackers. Lemon scented but dry AF when I opened it after the meal. Needed water to get it to work. Now, the ‘breakfast’ was again, I think the Braised potatoes with vegetables and pork meat:
I put it in a bowl to microwave it. I’m getting too old for cold foreign field chow.
Surprisingly good actually. Pretty good amount of meat, however you could tell it was the ‘lips and assholes’ that went into it… just like all world DotMils, they use the cheapest most available meat in a meal. The taters and veggies were not soft or goopy like an American MRE usually is:
Honestly, pretty tasty.
Now, the “Crackers of Doom”:
Stella the Sausage Princess, who eats raw fish heads, bones etc had trouble with these. She choked one down and was like “No thanks Daddy!” when I offered a second one. I didn’t even try to finish or swallow it… probably for the best as the poor doggo was sooooooooo constipated later…taking a big ole grumpy in the yard, straining oh so hard and looking at me “YOU! You did this to me!”
Any harder and I might have to send them to Matt at Demolition Ranch for a test to see how bulletproof they are.
The rusks weren’t much better:
Now I know that rusks are supposed to be hard and dry. I actually eat them as part of my diet. Few of them helps fill me up. These fucking things? Again, dry AF, harder than hard but crumbly. Whereas the hardtack crackers wouldn’t break/shear/crack these things broke into powder so fine I started watching for Krainfeld and Hunter Biden ‘cos they’d probably try and snort it up.
So then, the next day we went to the lunch pouch:
Now this one had the tea and honey so I’m not sure if this was breakfast or lunch. Truthfully the whole menu is pure Slav… beef/chicken, taters/veggies barley. Not bad, but just not what the average ‘Murican is used to. Again, the heavy retort pouch, shit-spoon and Doom Crackers. And again, I did the “dump and mike” to heat it:
A bit on the dry side and definitely the rice porridge with beef. Stuff was -seriously- packed into the retort pouch. It was aight. Stunk when I heated it up ‘cos ‘lips and assholes’ again. Gretch asked me what sort of roadkill I was cooking up. Not a lot of beef, and I actually had to take a day off or two after eating it. It had the same reaction on the digestive system as eating half-a-bag of kwikrete.
Anywhoo. Not bad, but man, in the field I’d be eating it cold, as to heat it up? You’d give your position away by a mile.
The honey packet was good. Really small:
But very sweet. I believe it was raw honey as it had that ‘grit’ you get from the real-real honey out of a comb. Very tasty. I shitcanned the Crackers of Doom, as well as the other stuff. The tea is tea man, nothing to see here. The sugar I added to the bowl in the kitchen.
Lastly, we came to the BIG HONKING Dinner bag. This had the Buckwheat soup with pork meat and the Peas with vegetables and beef.
Now this had a LOT of ‘stuff’ in it:
Two Retort Pouches. One of them really large n liquidy. That was the soup. The other was the Peas and Beef. Major difference here was this one had pepper as well as the salt, tea, sugar rusks (or should I call them husks?) with the Apple Jam and wet-nappie.
I started with the Peas and beef:
Like the rice n beef, it was pretty dry. I had to add a bit of water to get it to ‘mash up’ in the bowl. Taste was good, however seriously lacking in the “beef” side of things. Like one or two itty-bitty pieces. The peas were also a bit weird… maybe Krainian Peas? They were more like a mashed up kidney bean… like in a chili. Stick-to-your-ribs thiccness. Filled me up so again, another day of waiting.
Once I had room to eat again, the last one was the best one. The Buckwheat soup was GREAT. Like really really good man.
Thick, lots of taters, pretty sizeable amount of porks too.
The pork made it a bit on the greasy side but gave it a good Smokey flavor. 10/10 would eat again.
Now not really sure why there was only one pepper packet. I found that a bit odd. Not sure if black pepper is expensive there? Either way. Not for nothing, very much like the Russian Field Chow I reviewed back on Ye Olde Blog on Wordpress (may it rest in peace) this, as well as the Russian rations are waaay better than the MREs that the US makes. Problem with them is the logevity that I can tell. a two year shelf life ain’t long. In fact a couple of videos of some of the grunts in the Borscht Reich bitching about rotten MREs… like seriously expired chow…
Problem there is ALL grunts bitch about the quality of the field chow. Ask any grunt from the 90’s about the “Five Fingers of Death in Spooge Sauce”, the ever-hated “Omelet with Ham” and “Captain Country Chicken”… you may not believe me but me?
I loved the Omelet… PROVIDED I could prepare it ‘correctly’. Because I was “Mech Infantry” i.e. rode in a Gun Truck, I had a nice 40mm Ammo Can of pogie-bait/’stuff’ to cook with. First time I rolled out my crew thought I was insane, but On a cold November morning, when I mixed up some of that instant Aunt Jemima Pancake mix, a cooked up me a nice pair o’flapjacks, piping hot (on my mini-Coleman Peak One stove) in my itty-bitty pan (8in) and ate ‘em while hitting the bottle of Vermont Maid syrup?
Yeah. The can had all my ‘fixins’ Mrs. Dash (all flavors) 3 types of tabasco, salt, pepper, the pancake fixins, some other ‘stuff’… after that, I ended up being a short-order cook I swear. My recipe for the Omelet was to crush it up in the bag, make a ramen noodle in the canteen cup. When the noodles were ready, dump in the eggs and ham mash. Add the escalloped potatoes, the cheese pack and the garlic Mrs. Dash. Mix well. Good Eating.
And ‘cos I did this I always had one of my favorite meals available as no one would eat that sucker on a bet. So anyways. Appreciate all the Support and I’ll get better on doing my poasts.
More Later
Big Country
The shingles are supposed to be soaked to make them edible. As for the traffic jam, the whole idea is to bind you up so that a bowel movement occurs but once a week, notified in advance by ominous cramps, and extruded with malice aforethought. If you're not religious, this will be an introduction into an ecstatic experience. You also end up with an apfsds projectile.
Try and get the Aussie 24hr ration. Avoid the menu with Ham & Beans, because they aren't food for any terrestrial creature. See if you can get the Patrol Ration too. You will notice the very compact nature of all these packs. Highlights are the sweetened condensed milk in a tube, plum jam, wrigley's gum, and the waterproof matches. The toiletpaper can also be used to smooth out bullet gouges in armour plate prior to repainting....byo, your freckle will thank you.
I was in from 1981 to 2013. You can imagine I saw it all when it comes to the development of the MRE rations. Some good, some terrible, but they all would make a turd. When I was a HHT commander in the CAV, (I chose that command) I had a mess section that could really cook. The squadron loved them and they loved the men. Funny half of them could not qualify with their weapons, and the other half could not make weight. Weird how they all were retained while I was the Troop Commander.
Good write up BC.
Saber 7