MRE Meals

You hear a lot about MRE's in most survival writings. They are talking about either the military MRE's or the freeze dried meals sold in camping stores and catalogs. While these are a convenience, I do not hold that they are the best way to go. If you have a lot of extra money and want to put some away that is fine. However, if, like me, you are watching your pennies and want to get the most for your money, there are a lot of ways that are cheaper and will do the job. Let's take a look at one of them.

Let's look at a breakfast that needs little or no preparation. If you want something that you do not even need to heat, put one or two ounces of cold cereal of your choice in a Zip Lock bag. In a smaller bag put enough powdered milk to make one cup of milk. Put the smaller bag inside the large bag with the cereal, zip it shut and seal the closure with sealing wax. Now you have a breakfast cereal in a bag with the milk and all you need to do is add water to the milk powder. Mix the milk in its own bag and pour as much as you need in the cereal. The rest can be used as a drink or to put in your coffee. If you want something that needs heat like instant oatmeal or instant Cream of Wheat, you can do the same only you can vacuum pack it if you want to. You could vacuum the cold cereal but the process crushes the cereal, although things like shredded wheat, Chex, Cheerios and some others could stand up under the vacuum sealing. However, my way calls for more yet.

In another small Zip Lock put enough Tang powder for an eight ounce glass of juice. Another small bag will contain enough instant coffee or tea to make one or two cups, depending on how much you think you will drink. You can skip this if you do not want to heat any of the water. You will also need another small Zip Lock to put some dehydrated fruit (which you have hopefully dried yourself) into, so you will have something extra to eat. In my Breakfast MRE I like to add two slices of Melba Toast. The reason I use Melba Toast is that it will stand the vacuum without crumbling.

Now you put all of these small Zip Locks into a large vacuum bag and vacuum seal the entire meal. So, you have cereal, milk, juice, toast, fruit and if you desire coffee or tea in one bag. Not much different than a commercial MRE only a lot cheaper and fresher. You just need to be careful about what type of cereal you put into the first Zip Lock so you do not wind up with crushed crumbs of cereal. You could easily put in sugar if you desire. Also, if you put everything in a large vacuum bag, you do not need to do the wax sealing on the cereal.

You can vary your meals by using instant hot cereals, different fruits, etc. If you want to do a little cooking there a lot of other choices. There is Spam to use for meat, which can now be gotten in soft packs that could be put into your vacuum bag. You could buy large containers of powdered eggs and have Spam and eggs for one breakfast, that is if you want to cook.

Today's supermarket is a veritable, survivalist's stock-up store. If you look around there are many things that you can do. I just gave you a small idea of what can be done for breakfasts. You should be able to come up with many more ideas. Next entry I will do a lunch MRE and follow that the following time with a main meal dinner. Until then think about ways to do more for yourself to save money and survive in style.

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