"sarge137" wrote

>Amen, brother! Forty-three years ago I was a young, single enlisted
>man living in a barracks at Fort Dix. Too broke to eat at the service
>club or snack bar more than once a week. I remember walking over a
>mile out of my way, sometimes in pretty miserable weather, to eat in a
>consolidated mess hall to avoid the slop served at my unit. Same
>food, same menu, entirely different skill set.

Grin, I remember having an army unit with us on the USS Fort McHenry around
about 2003. Man those guys loved our chow! They'd never seen anything like
it at any mess hall even on 'special' days. Just about everything on a Navy
ship underway is either completely scratch, or 'semi-home made' using canned
sauces, broths and veggies. Ok, so we don't go screaming back to home to
tell'em how great a can of green beans can be, but these guys would add
things even to that to make it quite good.

The main chef on the ship just didnt believe in following any recipe card to
the letter. Oh he'd follow the base design (what main meats were for that
day etc) but he'd fix'em special. Somehow we always had something that was
at least 4 star restraunt quality for each lunch and dinner.

We really shocked'em when we hit some obscure filipeno holiday and they made
whole roasted suckling pigs for dinner (lunch was simple: coldcuts, fresh
made bread, and scratch soups to die for).

It is a middle sized ship in crew number (325 plus upwards of 700 marines if
they are onboard) and at that time, we had our normal crew plus about 500
army guys.