The other morning a friend asked me how long could I survive with the food I had in my kitchen if we had a manmade or a natural disaster? My answer was, “Until One O’clock.” I don’t think that’s the answer he was looking for. He wanted something that showed I had an emergency supply of canned food, bottled water and things like MREs (the Army’s Meals Ready-to-Eat). Have you ever eaten MREs? When I was the first journalist to drive and fire the Army’s M1 tank, I spent three days with soldiers who would do almost anything to trade their canned stew for a John Wayne bar: a hard, dry, chocolate peanut bar that required an Act of Congress in order to swallow it. Tell me that doesn’t speak volumes about the stew.
But now that recurring kidney stones are on my radar, and I can no longer eat chocolate, we can scratch John Wayne bars off my emergency list.