Confessions of a gear whore

Monday, September 23, 2013

So here is my new slightly used food dehydrator I found cleaning out my parents garage. SCORE!!
I picked a bunch of chili peppers and I am going to attempt to dry them for later usage, also going to attempt to dry some hibiscus flowers for tea...

Wish me luck!!

Millennium Bars

I went hiking the other day and I am not fond of a huge or big breakfast before I hike, but I do like small power meals while on the go. I picked up some Millennium Bars a while back and found this was a great time to try one out.

First impression when I opened it was,, well another saw dust bar, also reminded me of the oatmeal bar from the MRE packages. Well I was wrong, this is pretty damned tasty!! It is slightly moist and has a very good lemony flavor to it. It didn't require a lot of moisture to chew and the lemon flavor generated enough saliva to help with that. It has a slight oatmeal bar texture to it, but being that it isnt dry i enjoyed it. If you look on the label it shows that it has 400kcals of energy, thats a decent amount for a small bar like this, and if you look at the size of the package you could put a lot of them in your day bag, BOB or hiking pack. figure 3 a day that is 1200kcals, that is just enough to keep you going but it falls into the starvation diet category, but in an emergency situation calories are calories and that's what keeps you going. These bars also come in a variety of flavors so you wont get bored or in case your picky you can find a few flavors you will like.
I give these guys 5 stars!!
You can find them at Cheaper than Dirt, Sparks Fire Arms (in Converse)and also Amazon. I do recommend you try them and add a few to your kit and stores. They have a 5 year life btw! so if you are into caching supplies you can even add them to you cache program!

Homemade MRE's/dehydrated rations

Here is an article on homemade dehydrated rations/MRE's. Its a pretty good idea especially if you have a special needs diet or very picky ones in your house.

http://www.thediyworld.com/blog/?p=102

So,,, I am going to try to take this in a new direction. I do a lot of stuff on FB and friends have been starting to drop it. I also want to kick up my blog some more, I have been spending 5-10 hours a week , reading and culling articles and info. I would like to make this a full time job someday and make it profitable as well. It is something I really and truly enjoy. So there will be additions as well as changes. I want to increase my traffic here and spend more time here where I wont be censored, which has happened of FB already a few times.... So here is to something new...

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Old MREs

Just a quick note. Recently I was cleaning out the garage and some old trunks and containers and found a couple of MREs ,, one I know was dated back from the Gulf War. Well for shits and giggles we opened it and inspected the contents. What we found was interesting. Also had some original issue MRE bread. The MREs were all inedible to include the sides that came with them. I was hoping to score a freeze dried fruit and test its 20 year life.. O well.... The accessories packets were still in good shape, the hard candy in one was edible and the other had a tootsie roll which we tasted and found well pretty good!The cicklets gum was not looking pretty, skipped it and then we found the drink powder still good, hot cocoa still good, the hard tack crackers still good and the peanut butter still good. The Tabasco sauce looked not so good,,,, So if you have old MREs laying around, there is the potential of finding some good calories in them, as well as usable items. The matches will work as long as they were kept dry, the wet napkin in one was dry, the other it was still wet. They had TP which of course has numerous uses. The coffee, sugar and creamer were all decent. So DONT THROW them away,,,, You can still pick through them and find uses for long expired MREs!!!