A culinary tour of 14 combat dining packages served to soldiers in Afghanistan

[FrankH]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...ilbertson.html

[nkosi]

Very interesting. Thanks Frank.

[Maml]

Saffer guys would've probably have got a braai-pack including biltong & Beer powder...hehe, 'just add water'?

[Blunderbuss]

Considering the locality of the deployment, the preponderance of pork product is interesting. Is that to minimize resale on the black market?

[Whena]

PUK this is serious chow.Not like our ratpacks from the 80's.Although I do not want to last for a day on some of these-looks a bit min.Wonder what the SANDF ratpack looks like now? Pap and gravy?

[spiggs]

if i had to choose i'd go with italian or ozzie lol, the only thing missing with the italian is a nice Chianti

[ady]

PUK this is serious chow.Not like our ratpacks from the 80's.Although I do not want to last for a day on some of these-looks a bit min.Wonder what the SANDF ratpack looks like now? Pap and gravy?

A SAPS commander got some SANDF rat packs for the voting stations in the queenstwon area some years back, my g/f used to work for him. The SAPS members at the voting stations didn't want them, they wanted kentucky, needless to say i smiled, but the point of my long story is. They weren't like the old SADF rat packs, they were ok, but not the same, lots of little goodies missing.

I just love it when old threads re-surface.

[Logan Bruwer]

Old topic but interesting. I was in service when the menu changed for rat packs. First thing was that everything had to be Halal. The format stayed the same but the individual items changed flavours and definately quality. My favourite used to be the different flavours of breakfast porridge. That was chucked out and replaced with morvite. I don't care how healthy it is supposed to be, it still makes me want to vomit. There was some interesting additions, like pap in can, only problem was 3 year old pap in can is not tasty. Bullybeef was replaced with some generic brand corned beef. Lots of canned pilchards and sardines were also added. All in all it was sufficient and did the job, I just really missed that old porridge.

[ady]

Morvite still tastes crap so nothing has changed and you aren't missing out on anything either.