Saturday, July 08, 2006

Do they serve it with a side of Tenille's Potatoes?

Kevin Drum has a pretty odd item from the other day: it seems that in the armed forces, a particular MRE (Meal Ready-to-Eat) has plunged in popularity because, well, it apparently "make you gay".

Uh...OK then. I found a recipe for the dish the MRE is supposed to emulate here; it's called "Country Captain Chicken". Perusing the recipe, I can't really see anything in there that'll give a person a case of "teh gay", so I'm at a loss here.

Maybe it's just too "gourmet-sounding" for the military guys? Having never served in the military at all, I'm pretty much talking out of my ass here, but "Country Captain Chicken" just sounds kind of non-John Wayneish, if you take my meaning. So maybe it's not the dish that's the problem, but rather the name of the dish. I don't know about you, but I want the guys protecting my freedom to be subsisting on stuff called things like "Pig Slop" and "Shit on a Shingle".

Joking aside, I found this article on MREs pretty interesting. It includes a list of the MREs that are currently offered, and it's worth nothing that the Country Captain Chicken is the only one that has a name like that: everything else is simply descriptive, like "Chicken with Salsa and Mexican Rice" or "Turkey Breast with Gravy and Potatoes" or "Roast Beef". I'll bet if they just called it "Curried Chicken with Tomato-Currant Sauce", the stuff wouldn't have its apparent reputation.

1 comment:

LC Scotty said...

Fortunately, I served in the submairne fleet, and we really had the best food, relatively speaking.

I don't recall a lot of homophobia, and in fact there were a few gus that were widely believed to be gay. Since they were good at their jobs, nobody ever hassled them about it.