Feeeeeeed Me, Seymour!

If you have read my previous blog on R&R, you may realize that I love food. Almost to the point of obsession, and almost to the point of hatred for making me want food so bad. Yes, love/hate relationship. Love eating it/Hate wearing it underneath my skin in the form of adipose tissue. But I've learned to accept some adiposity (I may have made up this word) for a lot of YUMMY!

Getting back to Iraq was not so exciting in the food department. I saw the same standard menus as before I had left and I felt the pull back to monotony. It really is predictable here. After about a week back at the base, I was sent a short distance away to another base that was much much smaller to cover for a physician's assistant who was going on his R&R...and much much more monotonous with the food.

And by tiny, I mean tiny. I could see all four walls from wherever I stood and measured 0.185 miles from one end to the next in the long direction. My regular base was at least 2-3 miles in diameter and I heard a 9 mile circumference. This place definitely was not big enough for any contractors to go work at. Instead they had 3 Army cooks who worked daily to provide meals. And by 'cook' I mean heat up massive versions of Meals, Ready-To-Eat (http://www.mreinfo.com/). This was done twice a day. Brunch often had the reconstituted powder eggs, hash browns, biscuits, and, if lucky, pizza pockets! I wish I would've taken a picture of the ham because I wanted to vomit each time a saw it. But the ham seemed pretty popular with the guys. Dinner would often be some kind of mass produced meats, mashed potatoes, and very bland peas/carrots mix. They served out of this little tent like structure. It was so hot outside, I felt bad these guys were outside sweating their butts off...then I realized, they are sweating their butts off over our food! The first three days I dropped three pounds as I was not too excited about eating. Then I got hungry. So hungry I woke up in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep. I had to hit up a real Meal, Ready-To-Eat (as you recall, I lived off MREs, chips, and chocolate muffins for a week at FOB Rustamiyah just prior to closure). After this, I realized, I needed to just suck it up and eat the food. From then on, weight stayed stable and I learned that Paco green hot sauce is my best friend during meal time.

MREs are very interesting. In each bag, there is a total of about 1100 to 1500 calories and contain items such as a drink mix, crackers, peanut butter or freaky cheese spread, a thick pound cake that has shiny crystals in it, and a meal to be heated up with the enclosed heater bag. I should really have taken picture after picture of one of these amazing feasts, but I just took my two favorite things to look at. But you can see pictures at the above website.

First is the heater bag. I talked about it in my Nanananan, hey hey hey goodbye blog, but here are the last few instructions. Put the food pouch in the bag, fill to line with water, insert into cardboard box, then place on "ROCK OR SOMETHING". There are plenty of rocks, but the something was usually my boot. This evening, the food already was warm from just being outside, but I heated up more anyway.

My MOST favorite part of an MRE is opening the crystallized pound cake or brownie and finding this stuck to it! hahahahahahaha Look at that face. I just can't help but to love it!

I did develop an interesting somewhat Pavlov's dog-type response. It did not matter if I had just already eaten, but if I thought or heard about any other type of food, I would start salivating.

Now on to beverages. We were very lucky in that we had refrigerators on the base and as long as the generators were functioning, we had cold drinks. We also had bottles on top of bottles of water stored outside.

All you needed was a 110+ degree Iraqi day and you had water to make hot tea and coffee (French press style). I always try to think back to what the soldiers would've been doing or experiencing towards the start of the war..no A/C, no refrigerators, sometimes no tents. I then received a tip from my friend Josh. All you need is a wet sock. Put a warm can of soda in the sock and allow to evaporate.....TADAA! Not steaming hot soda! :) Thanks, Josh!

This then takes me to packages. Fortunately during my stay, I received a couple packages with some tasty snacks. Sabrina sent me some dried cuttlefish. I love this stuff! I offered them to my medics as well. Each of the three tried some, then each of the three said how disgusting they thought it was. I kept the bag in the aid station anyway and ever time I reached for the bag, it was a given that I would start hearing "Ewwwww!" in the background.

I also got a package from Kelly Monk which included more tasty Asian snacks. I was enjoying a bag of crab chips when I noticed a worrisome warning...

So as you can see, I could not resist putting the chip out in the direct Iraqi sunlight for about 4 hours (of course, not bothering to stop munching on the chips...they were good). Four hours later...

...no change. I was really hoping for some spontaneous combustion or melting into goo. Oh well. Maybe next time.