For the most part, I prefer to have my diet consist of whole foods and ingredients that I can use to create my own meals.  That’s what I do on a daily basis.  I don’t use a lot of packaged and convenience foods like canned soups, hamburger helper and the like.  I occasionally use frozen meals, especially really challenging stuff like Chinese foods (potstickers!), but even that’s fairly infrequent.

So of course when it comes long term food storage, I don’t want to make the bulk of it from MREs, freeze fried meals and the like.  It’s not the way we eat.  But.  There may be times when being able to rip open a package and est it as is, or only add water, let it sit, and eat are the only real options.  To that end, I have been looking at some of the companies that frequently market to backpackers and for LTS, like mountain house, wise company, Augason farms, and so on.  The problem is, I don’t care to buy big buckets of multiple servings unless I can try it first and see if my family can exist on it in a pinch!

Wise Company kindly sent me a sample, and they chose Creamy Pasta and Vegtable Rotini.

You heat water to boiling, add the contents (I dumped them in a bowl so you could see it), cover and let sit 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After following those directions, the peas were still crunchy in the middle, the zucchini bits very chewy, and the pasta edibly soft, but more al dente than I would like.  The first bite or two were ok.  Not delicious, but ok.  Probably more than acceptable if you are a more common user of processed foods than I. The sauce reminded me of Lipton Cream of Chicken Cup o Soup.  That is, something I only ever have eaten when I’m sick, or the power is out and mom needed an instant meal. But edible.

It cooled off very quickly, and that’s when I couldn’t eat it anymore.  The creamy sauce got quite viscous, almost like it had okra slime in it.  And frankly, well, it looked like gobs of saliva dropping off the spoon.  Yuk yuk yuk.

I think that a tomato based sauced product might be a better option. So I need to find the smallest package options from different companies for my taste tests.