Heater Meals

What happens when a company consolidates various edible items from a series of low quality food producers to create a gigantic mass of meal for people on the go? Well, you might get something like HeaterMeals©, the self-heating meal that is perfect for anyone lost in the wilderness, embedded in a war zone, or hopelessly wandering across the charred remains of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

For my birthday, many months ago, I was given a HeaterMeals Plus™ by a co-worker. This may have been because he knows about my penchant for trying strange foods. More likely is that, having just returned from training with the Army Reserves, it was "leftovers" and he thought it would be funny to pass it on. Either way, I was quite grateful to be the recipient of such an odd parcel and, noting the expiration date of nearly a year later, promptly stuck it in the cupboard to be used on some future adventure. Well, the adventure never came and one day I was hungry, curious, and looking to free up some cabinet space and decided this was the day I would put the self-heating meal to the test.

Innotech invented their Flameless Ration Heater technology, TRUETECH™, in 1990 which has been used to heat over 1 Billion Meals for the U.S. Armed Forces.

Using this self-heating technology, Innotech developed, copyrighted, and branded an array of ready-to-eat meal options including:

• HeaterMeals© Self-Heating Meals - "a tasty, nutritious mobile, hot meal"
  


• HeaterMeals Plus™, The Self-Heating Meal, Plus all The Fixings™ - a HeaterMeal with some snacks, condiments, and a drink
  


• HeaterMeals3© - a HeaterMeal© with a 3 year shelf life
  


• HeaterMealsEX (which, curiously, isn't listed with a copyright next to its name... I guess they reached their quota on the number of copyright symbols one can use on a web page and still be standards compliant) - a HeaterMeal© with a 5 year shelf life!
  

Whew, that was a lot of product. Within each of these categories are a variety of meals for carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores alike. Some of the options include:

• Chicken Pasta Italiana


• Green Pepper Steak with Rice


• Homestyle Chicken & Noodles in Gravy


• Mushroom Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, & Beef


• Vegetarian 3 Cheese Lasagna


• Zesty BBQ Sauce & Potatoes with Beef


• Southwest Style Chicken with Rice and Beans


• Pancakes, Real Blueberry Topping and Bacon Slices


• + many, many more!

I had the "Pancakes, Real Apple Topping & Bacon Slices" from the HeaterMealsPlus breakfast series. Weighing in at a whopping 1240 calories, this is one burly breakfast! Included were two little pancakes, some strips of bacon-esque material, trail mix, raisins, apple juice, apple topping, a fruit cup, and the TRUTECH™ heating aparatus itself. There were more raisins and apple products than you could shake a stick at. Were these the fruits harvested towards the end of the season? Dried grapes and mushy apples rendered palatable through desiccation, liquefaction, and juice extraction? Well, it's a better fate than letting them go to waste.

To heat the food you place the appropriate items into the orange heater bag, pour in the provided pouch of water, and fold the bag in half to keep the heat in and prevent resultant chemical reaction from making a mess. At first the steam trickles out slowly but before you know it you're witnessing a violent boil. This thing really does get quite hot so one must take great care when removing the contents for consumption. I'm not a stickler for hot meals and can very well enjoy my food cold or tepid (I actually prefer to not heat up leftovers) but I could absolutely see this being indispensable in a cold environment where lighting a fire is not an option.

Now onto the food itself: basically it tasted like crap. The raisins, fruit cup, juice, and trail mix had enough sugar to kill an entire army of diabetics. The bacon was like fat jerky and, although it didn't taste too bad, it's not something I'd choose to eat again. Although most would disagree with me on this point, the pancakes were quite palatable. They were dry and rubbery but that just tricked me into thinking they were some sort of healthy, whole grain pancakes (is that an oxymoron?). But seriously, taste and enjoyability are not the point of these meals; this is not food you're supposed to choose to eat. You eat HeaterMeals because you have to. Despite my biting criticism about the quality of this product, there's no denying how incredibly essential it could be in a time of need. So while it may not win out in the taste arena (and I must admit, I only tasted one and it could very well be the poorest of the bunch) they certainly do excel in terms of:

• Longevity: 1 - 5 years is a long shelf life for a meal and could mean the difference between life or death.
  


• Nutrition: sure, not the "healthiest" food around but it provides all of the essentials and more for dire situations. The high calorie content could again mean the difference between life and death.
  


• Warmth: because there's no socket for your spot heater out in the wild.
  


• Portability: you can fit a lot of these in a backpack, particularly if you ditched the box and sorted everything out before packing it, and there's no need for extra cooking equipment.
  

If I was roughing it or surviving in a bind then these types of products would be essential. So yeah, they may not taste very nice to the comfortable and well fed but these are the best post-apocalyptic meals money can buy.

Wow, I had planned on just making a bunch of disparaging remarks about this meal, particularly considering I couldn't even finish it (no need for the excess calories) but it appears as though I instead formulated a mini-infomercial. If only my endless drivel made any sense, then I might be able to capitalize on this aimless venture.

Elvis Sandwich

Edible Oddities is proud to announce the very first episode in an exciting new series called Creating Culinary Abominations! Not really, but this is the first post where we run you through the process of making the disgusting food before consuming it.

Abandoning the sleek figure and sex-symbol status of his young life, Elvis Aaron Presley became a bloated fat man throughout the years leading to his demise and it's no surprise (his fatness or his death) considering what he was eating. One of his favorite foods, a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, appropriately dubbed the Elvis sandwich, has attained a cult status all of its own. As with most cult figures, including the barking fat man himself, there are many different theories and conflicting ideas floating around about this iconic snack. Some claim the sandwich also contained bacon and, instead of being fried in butter on a hot skillet, the left-over bacon grease was used to do the dirty work. So, in the spirit of going that extra mile for an extra disturbing experience, I thought why not try both? Half with bacon and half without for that simultaneously authentic and awful experience.

Here's what you will need for one sandwich:

2 slices of white bread
1 banana
peanut butter
butter
3-5 slices of bacon

Start by toasting your bread. Don't make it too dark since the sandwich is going to be charred a bit more during the frying process.

Cut your banana into relatively thin slices. This will ensure the sandwich fits together tightly and if you want your bananas thick you can always layer them up.

Now, start cooking your bacon. Keep that grease, we can use it to fry the sandwich later.

The toast should be done so, while the bacon is cooking, spread the peanut butter thickly over one piece of the toast. Although the authentic recipe only calls for one piece to be subjected to the peanut butter treatment, you can do both pieces if you'd like. Doing so will probably help the sandwich stick together better.

Once the bacon is done cooking, keep the grease warm while you collect the ingredients and assemble them together. Again, we were doing half of the sandwich with bacon and half without. Whether you use bacon at all is entirely up to your personal preferences and gastrointestinal fortitude.

Grab your assembled sandwich, press firmly, and drop it into the cooking grease. If you find that there isn't enough grease to do a sufficient frying job then butter the outsides of the bread. Once peanut butter starts oozing out of a disgustingly crispy and greasy sandwich then you know you're done. Whip that sandwich out of the frying pan and get yourself excited whilst letting it cool down a bit.

There's nothing truly horrific about the taste of the Elvis sandwich. The bacon fits surprisingly well with the banana/peanut butter mush, which by itself is also quite nice. Overall, the sandwich is pleasantly flavorful albeit in a disturbing way. But with such high levels of fats and carbohydrates you can almost feel yourself going into shock. Sure, as animals we are supposed to be uncontrollably drawn to foods with high calorific content but this is almost too much. A few bites into this beast and you'll be fighting the urge to bring it all back up again.

I couldn't finish the entire sandwich, leaving a large corner of the bread untouched despite still feeling a bit hungry. I can imagine eating a couple of these things and not being satisfied due to the lack of bulk but I felt so disgusting after my one that I didn't want to eat another thing for the entirety of the day. Still, this is something adventurous eaters should definitely try. Once. I can't fathom how anybody can eat more than one of these in a lifetime, much less with any regularity, but there is ample photographic evidence depicting what happens when you do.

Chewable Toothbrush

Breaking form a bit, as this is not technically edible, I'm including this because although there is a notice on the package advising you not to swallow the contents, you'd almost certainly survive the resultant ordeal.

A recent emergency forced me to embark on an overseas trip and anyone familiar with the current state of the aviation industry and travel abroad in general will agree that this is a grueling task indeed. One of the most horrible elements of traveling is the filth your body seems to produce during the endless sitting and waiting. Grease and stenches that ought not be possible from pure sedentary activities.

The mouth is one of the most horrendously effected areas of the body. A vile film covers the insides and the teeth grow a thick pelt of fur. With travel restrictions as they are, you may find yourself without toiletries in such a situation or, not wanting to unpack the entirety of your carry-on luggage in an airport bathroom, they may be effectively inaccessible. But fear not, travelers (to the UK, at least) the Chewable Toothbrush is here to help you.

Depositing a one pound coin gives you two little, translucent-green balls containing an odd looking, plastic venus-fly trap. Directions simply instruct you to open the ball, pop the little plastic jaws in your mouth, chew repeatedly, and spit the contents out when done.

The tiny toothbrush is covered in a refreshing minty baking soda based powder. Funnily enough, it feels as though you're chewing on a little plastic toy you purchased from a gum ball machine. I walked around the airport chewing on this thing until I came dangerously close to drooling on myself and then did the sensible thing: spat it into a nearby garbage receptacle.

So, not really edible (unless you want to brave the sensations of those little jaws scraping through your innards and out the other end) but close enough... and effective too. If you're traveling and in serious need of an oral cleansing, I recommend it if they're available.

Caterpillars

So, I haven't eaten one yet, but if these bastards keep destroying my tomatoes then I'm going to devour each and every last one of them... and hope that they're not toxic. I suppose I'll find out soon enough when I accidentally take a bite out of one lodged firmly in one of my delicious red orbs. I'm typically an insect lover but this pestilent creature has committed a most heinous transgression. This is war.