Welcome!
With the global COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures affecting us all to some degree, the world can be an uncertain place. And when uncertainty strikes on a global scale, there's only one thing to do:
Get out into nature, scream at the top of your lungs, "Life is so unfair!"—then go kick the largest rock you can find. (You wouldn't want some poor bunny rabbit or other cute woodland creature taking the brunt of your anxiety and frustrations, right?)
After that, while you're convalescing your right big toe (or left big toe—no discrimination here), the very next thing you might do is scrounge around for some smoking food deals.
Because, you know, even during the direst of apocalyptic times, Grandpa Gotta Eat !
But There Is A Free Breakfast
We've all heard the well-worn phrase, There's no such thing as a free lunch.
While that might be true, I'm here to tell you, there is such a thing as a free breakfast. Which isn't exactly the same thing as a free lunch, even if breakfast isn't only for breakfast anymore.
Eat the dang breakfast for lunch, okay?
It just so happens that in the area where we live there's at least one freeze dry packing plant. Every once in a while, they give out freebies to other businesses for their employees to try. My wife works in housekeeping for the local hospital, and was given three pouches of what they call a freeze dried breakfast skillet to try.
Have you ever eaten freeze dried food? Results can vary drastically. Taste and texture can be issues. While it's a pretty simple process to 'cook'—open the pouch, add in the prescribed amount of boiling water, seal pouch, wait the prescribed amount of time for the meal to reconstitute—a lot can go wrong.
And even after that, you can wonder what you actually ate.
We have several dozen large cans of freeze dried foods as part of our food storage. Every once in a while, we'll crack one open to try. While edible, and life sustaining, very rarely are the meals a culinary work of art. Never has anyone in our family ever said, "We need to eat more of that!"
It will come to no surprise when I tell you, then, that the free breakfast skillet pouches sat around for a few weeks because we were all, essentially, wrinkling our collective noses at it.
Okay, mainly my son, who in his late 20s is still pretty much a garbage disposal. He just draws the line at freeze dried foods.
Until his dad took the plunge and decided to try one.
I don't typically eat breakfast. The most important meal of the day for quite a while now leaves me sluggish or feeling meh. I don't know why. However, I still get hungry in the morning, and so having something quick and easy to fix that isn't cold cereal (because I might be turning lactose intolerant, or maybe it's just something to do with Kirkland (Costco) milk), would be a good idea.
Thus, after eyeing the breakfast skillet pouches in the pantry every morning, I finally decided I'd be the guinea pig.
No guts, no glory.
Mountain Home is the name of this particular brand, but it's made by Oregon Freeze Dry. I think the pouches are mostly prevalent among campers, and maybe single folk who don't want to eat an entire can of anything for the next 12 days. It's just more expensive per meal to buy the pouch because they are single serving size.
As I wrote earlier, nothing could be easier to prepare short of someone else doing it for you.
You trim away the excess packaging up top, then open the pouch.
Prior to that, it's best to get the water boiling so you have it ready when the pouch is opened.
In this case, I only needed three-fourths of a cup of water, which I measured out.
In goes the water. For those who are faint of heart and don't like looking at wet egg, it's best not to stare too long at the image.
Then, you simply reseal the package so the contents can 'cook'. Oh, stirring before you close it up is a good idea. You can also stir about halfway through if you choose, or just leave it closed for the eight to nine minutes it says to wait, then stir it. I did the latter.
When you open it up, it looks like this. Not much different, other than the water has pretty much been absorbed.
Then you can eat it, right out of the pouch. If you use a plastic spoon, everything can go into the trash when your done. No muss, no fuss. It doesn't get much simpler to prepare food than that.
The Taste Test
Now this breakfast skillet pouch had scrambled eggs, bits of pork sausage patties, onions, red and green bell peppers, and hash browns. Had I known going in there were hash browns, I might not have tried it. I'm not a big fan. However, after the tantalizing whiff of bell pepper that hit my olfactory senses first (amazing!), the next thing was a taste of the hash browns.
Best. Hash. Browns. Ever.
If all hash browns were like that, I'd weigh five hundred pounds.
The bell peppers were not soft and squishy, but firm and flavorful, the sausage was good, but the eggs didn't taste like much. They weren't bad, they just weren't the dominant flavor.
My son asked me how the food tasted. I told him I couldn't really recommend it yet, but I would take one for the team and try another pouch. That was all he needed to try one himself.
He was pleasantly surprised. He's a fan of hash browns, which he particularly liked.
Seeing that the two of us were now eating the pouches, my wife wanted to try one. In fact, she wasn't happy that we were eating them, since they were hers. That is, until she tried one. I don't know if she followed the instructions or not. All she would say was she didn't like it because it looked like "vomit."
It's not like normal scrambled eggs can't have that effect, but she loves those. I think it was eating them out of the pouch, and I'm guessing she didn't wait long enough for all the water to absorb before she reopened the pouch.
All in all, I would eat the freeze dried breakfast skillet again. Especially, if it's free.
The best thing, in my opinion, about this kind of food is, you can store them for up to 30 years, and they will taste the same as if you opened them the day you bought it. Which may not be saying much, but still, having food that's as old as my oldest son and still edible is just plain cool.
Vomit-like qualities aside, of course.
And on that glorious note...
May you find your own free food to eat during these times of peril and doom.
Until next time...
...Enjoy!
All images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen