MRE Menu 12: Elbow Macaroni in Tomato Sauce

Let's have a look at another MRE, this time Menu 12: Elbow Macaroni in Tomato Sauce.

What's elbow macaroni? It's macaroni that's bent slightly. Menu 12 is one of four vegetarian MRE options. In the last post I had a look at Menu 11, vegetable crumbles in taco sauce, and it was pretty good, or at least the main meal was pretty good. Let's see what the macaroni is like.

MREs are military meals created by the armed forces of the United States. They replaced canned C-rations in the early 1980s. Early MREs were apparently not much cop, but modern MREs are generally fine, although after eating them non-stop for a few weeks you'd get sick of them.

Each MRE is a single meal, rather than a day's worth of food. As a civilian foodstuff they don't make a lot of sense - they're too bulky for camping, too expensive to eat as a regular meal - so they're basically a novelty, but life would be dull without novelty.

Each MRE comes with a bunch of stuff, which is one of the reasons they're appealing. It's like a big grab-bag of stuff. Menu 12 has cheese spread, snack bread, a chocolate drink, Skittles, an accessory packet with coffee + creamer + sugar, and hot sauce, gum, and of course the main meal. There are fewer things than menu 11 but the meal as a whole is more coherent. You get a main meal with a side dish and a pudding, instead of a main dish and several puddings.

This one came with coffee, instant, type III. I've read about coffee, instant. All the MREs I've tried so far had branded coffee, but I know from Steve1989's popular Youtube videos that MREs also have official-sounding coffee, instant, type I / II / III, of which types I and II are the best. What's it like?

Disappointingly it was indistinguishable from the Genial-brand coffee I have tried before. Hard rather than smooth; not harsh, but manly, a bit bland. Whenever I drink this type of coffee I have a mental image of a room with tatty-looking school desks, where the walls are breezeblocks painted white, and there's a noticeboard with instructions for booking leave and outdated equality and diversity posters. It could be an army headquarters or a local government office or a social club. That is my vision.

As always I wonder why they only include one sachet of coffee, given that coffee is a space-efficient means of sustenance. Perhaps the authorities prefer it if the soldiers drink plain water, or perhaps there's an assumption that soldiers already have access to coffee. I don't know. Let's heat up the main meal.

I've had duff heaters before but this one was rageous. You're supposed to rest the packet on a rock (or something) but I find that laying it down flat works just as well. While the main meal cooks let's try out the bread.

My first impressions were positive. I was half-expecting the kind of crispy breakfast bread that's popular in Europe, but this was moist and had a yeasty, bready smell. Tastewise it's actually a cross between bread and cake. It's denser and more sugary than bread. Let's deploy the cheese spread:

I think you're supposed to knead the spread. I didn't. It tastes like a thicker version of the cheapest cheese triangles you can get in a petrol station. The resulting sandwich was edible but sugary. There's a popular stereotype that Americans don't understand cheese, and MRE cheese spread does nothing to dispel that. On the other hand cheese goes off harder and faster than other foods so it must be difficult engineering a form of cheese that can survive for five years on a shelf.

Have you ever read a book called Man Plus? It's by Frederick Pohl and was published in 1976. It's a sci-fi novel in which scientists try to surgically enhance a human being so he can survive on the surface of Mars. It has a fascinating central premise although I can barely remember the plot. I thought about it whilst eating the MRE cheese. At what point does cheese cease to be cheese? If all of the components of cheese are replaced with artificial substitutes, is it still cheese? Does it matter if only the idea of cheese survives?

Let's wash that down with the chocolate drink. Some MREs have powdered fruit juice; this one has a milkshake-type drink. MRE drinks are designed to mask the taste of purified water, but they taste surprisingly good. I would buy them if they were available on the commercial market.

You're supposed to pour in some water, seal up the bag, then swoosh it around. I put in some slightly warm water - let's pretend that the milk came fresh from the udder - and swooshed it for a minute or so, but obviously that wasn't enough:

It looked bad but tasted fine. It was essentially milkshake powder. I have no idea if the protein did me any good. At this point the main meal has finished cooking. Let's get it out onto a plate:

The pepper sauce was OTT. It just gave the meal a slight kick. Was the meal any good? Surprisingly so. The sauce was thick; there was a distinct tomato flavour; nice mouthfeel etc. The only problem is that it was relatively bland. It would have been better if there were little bits of meat, or meat substitute, but it's just macaroni. It's thicker and tastier than canned macaroni. Perhaps I could have put the cheese spread in it and mopped it up with the bread.

As always the main meal is surprisingly small, and if I was making a commercial MRE I would double the size of the main meal, get rid of the accessory packet, get rid of the side dish, and just slim it down to a meal plus a snack. In this case the pudding was fruit, which as before was okay but very insubstantial:

It took just a few seconds to finish it off. In the last-but-one MRE I tried the fruit juice had an odd metallic-petrol taste, but that must have been a one-off.

What about the accessory packet?

Massive packet of salt. The toilet paper is useless as toilet paper unless you're Taylor Swift. Perhaps you can douse it in petrol and use it as a signal. It's no good as toilet paper.

I don't know if the matches work; I am frightened of fire. The gum has a minty flavour that doesn't last. The moist towelette is just a wet wipe. What about the Skittles?

They were addictive, and also very sugary. After finishing them off I felt as I could climb a mountain single-handedly, which is fair enough for a military meal. My teeth probably wept tears of frustration, but it has been a long time since I listened to my teeth.

And that's MRE Meal 12: Elbow Macaroni. It's blander but less random than meal 11. The main meal is solid, but unspectacular; the accessories feel a bit rote; the snack bread probably has tonnes of sugar to keep it fresh, and as a consequence it tastes more like a cake than bread. It fills a space but I wish the cheese spread was more savoury.

As an experiment perhaps they could include a sachet of Marmite instead, because Marmite keeps forever. Do Americans have Marmite? It's an acquired taste, but soldiers are trained to obey orders, they can be trained to eat Marmite, the end.

Canon 100mm f/2: Once a Polly-Tito

Snakewise the interfold collectigroan. Frolic all pretty on flowery bosom, but similode its speedy cousin, albutty with slightness, and so she lost in wispy memory sidings. Shipshape but redolent.

I was talking about the Canon EF 100mm f/2, which was launched back in 1991 and apparently remains on sale today. It's a fast-ish telephoto lens for the Canon EOS system.

Despite being around forever it's really obscure. Several other, more desirable lenses overlap it. In that respect it's a bit like the 400mm f/5.6L, or the non-IS version of the 70-200mm f/2.8. Ancient, optically really good, maxilook for miniprice, but there other choices.

In the case of the 100mm f/2 the other choices include the 85mm f/1.8, which is physically almost identical and was launched a year or so later. It's one of Canon's most popular prime lenses. The reviews I have read suggest that it's basically the same as the 100mm f/2 on an optical level, but the focal length is less awkward and it's slightly faster.

There's also the 100mm f/2.8 Macro, which is another one of Canon's most popular prime lenses. It's slower but focuses down to 1:1 and is awesome for photos of plants. If you're really bold, manual focus versions of the famous Nikon 105mm f/2.5 "Afghan Girl" lens are widely available on the used market and will work on a Canon camera with an adapter.

There's also the optically excellent 135mm f/2, which is more expensive but not extravagantly so. It's not 100mm, but it's close. Canon used to sell a 135mm f/2.8 Soft Focus lens, but it's almost as obscure as the 100mm f/2 and seems to be out of production. This is without mentioning Canon's range of 70-200mm zoom lenses. They cover the same focal length and although none of them are f/2 some of them have image stabilisation.

Despite all this someone must be buying the 100mm f/2 because it's still listed on Canon's website. Or perhaps it's really cheap to make. Who knows?

What's it like? Physically it's about the same size as a squashed soft drinks can. It's plastic but feels tough. It has ultrasonic focusing with full-time manual override; it makes a soft swoosh noise when it focuses. On my 5D MkII I have to admit that it hunted a couple of times, which surprised me given that it's a fast lens, but perhaps the narrow depth of field at 100mm f/2 is to blame. It could be the 5D, I don't know. It takes 58mm filters and shares a push-on hood with the 85mm f/1.8.

A few seconds after taking the above picture a squirrel ran along the line! I only managed to catch him from behind just before he reached the other side, viz the following image:

Him, or her. Could be a lady squirrel. I can't tell the difference. Still, look at those muscles.
100mm is an odd focal length, too long for indoors, nowhere near long enough for wildlife or aeroplanes, a bit too long as a general walkabout lens. Essentially it's a dedicated upper-body-and-shoulders portrait lens.

Optically the 100mm f/2 is easy to review. It's essentially sharp in the middle wide open, but everything has a slight glow about it and there's noticeable purple fringing. Here's a 100% crop from the photo near the top of this article, of the distant (and slightly tilted) houses surrounded by trees, shot at f/2:

Here's the same again but put through Photoshop to increase the contrast, add sharpening, and tone down the purple fringing:

As you can see it's perfectly usable wide open. The purple fringing can however be a problem in certain circumstances. In the image below the writing on the plaque is supposed to be black, not purple:

But again Photoshop can fix that:

Corners? Embarrassingly the images I shot to illustrate corner sharpness were no good - I seem to have sneezed as I pressed the shutter button - so you'll have to trust me when I say that the APS-C corners are soft but still good, and the full-frame corners are smeary, but that from f/5.6 onwards the lens is essentially sharp across the frame. With a short telephoto corner sharpness isn't a huge issue because in practice the corners will be out of the plane of focus.

Here's what the vignetting is like, at f/2 (there's a little, but it's not displeasing to the eye) and then f/4 (none):

The following image was shot at f/8, ISO 400, with no sharpening or noise reduction. Just below it there are four 100% crops taken from different parts of the frame illustrating the consistency at f/8:

Geometric distortion? A teeny tiny amount of barrel distortion, and bear in mind that the following image is slightly misleading because the platform edge looks like that in real life:

The bokeh is really nice:

In summary it's a really good lens, although the 85mm f/1.8 is really good too, so you might as well flip a coin. One thing, though - at 100mm f/2 you have to shoot above 125th of a second to ensure consistently sharp results, or 250th if you're in the midst of alcohol withdrawal. It's because the sudden change of chemicals in the brain interferes with your motor functions. It's depressing to think that our personalities are just the result of chemical changes in the brain.

Can you imagine having a conversation with a jar of chemicals? Because whenever you speak with a human being, that's what you're doing. You're having a conversation with a jar of chemicals. A jar with a face, with lips and ears and breasts and hips, but ultimately just a liquid soup poured into a human-shaped leather bag. Whereas with the 85mm f/1.8 you only need shoot at 180th or so, which is slightly easier at f/1.8. There's no image stabilisation. No image stabilisation.

100mm is generally a portrait-type focal length, but it's fine for landscapes as well. The combination of long-but-not-very-long focal length plus the wide aperture allows a certain amount of depth of field separation and something approaching the medium format look, viz the image above, which is otherwise difficult with landscape photography. Is that it? If there are two equally good choices just flip a coin.