Some Interesting Military Data

[Timerover51]

I hope the Vargr can read English.

I am not quite sure what you mean by this statement.

 

[aramis]

I do to. The funny thing is, that I like the canned stuff from the grocery store. We have a couple of restaurants that make their own, and some of it is not too bad, but the awful, fat laden, salt gorged, dog food consistency stuff from the can, fried up a little bit crisp, is good times.

I was at one restaurant and order the hash and the waitress said: "Have you ever had our corned beef hash?" "No" "They you'll want to order something else."

I took her at her word and picked something else.

Hash is like Coffee... Way too many ways to make it, and anyone who likes it generally likes only some subset of those; those who don''t can't understand how those who do like it can like it, let alone appreciate the differences in how it's made.
Mine starts with canned corned beef, dehydrated hash browns, olive brine, (real) maple syrup, and some butter. Many like it. many don't.

My most favored form in which to consume corned beef is lupulu - canned corned beef loaded into fresh edible leaves with some coconut cream and steamed for several hours... None of the Hawaiian restaurants here in Corvallis/Albany do any of the other Polynesian foods...

 

[whartung]

None of the Hawaiian restaurants here in Corvallis/Albany do any of the other Polynesian foods

The only Hawaiian restaurants around here are the "grills" of BBQ Chicken and beef. Noted for the "mixed plate" special. Some have assorted SPAM dishes.

Hardly being well versed in Hawaiian cuisine, I will say this. The stuff here locally is identical to the stuff sold at the "famed" Rainbow Drive-In in Honolulu. It's perfect.

I like these dishes, myself, and, specifically, I love their macaroni salad. Dunno what they put in it, probably mayonnaise and MSG, but I love it.

 

[aramis]

The only Hawaiian restaurants around here are the "grills" of BBQ Chicken and beef. Noted for the "mixed plate" special. Some have assorted SPAM dishes.

Hardly being well versed in Hawaiian cuisine, I will say this. The stuff here locally is identical to the stuff sold at the "famed" Rainbow Drive-In in Honolulu. It's perfect.

I like these dishes, myself, and, specifically, I love their macaroni salad. Dunno what they put in it, probably mayonnaise and MSG, but I love it.

Yeah, the Hawaiian style mac salad is pretty awesome.
The one I go to in Corvallis is Local Boyz... the owner served in the military in Hawaii. Judging from the tats, USN.

I've noted a few major ways to get good and authentic foreign food:
1: Foreign refugees and work-caused ex-patriots. Not just immigrants, but the ones who want to eventually go back. They want to keep their culture, and food is a big part. Or, within the US, dragged across the country for work. (EG: a good number of ethnic Samoans in Anchorage, who are behind the mixed polynnesian cuisine of Hula Hands. Or the Sino-Hawaiian chinese of two different Cantonese restaurants in Anchorage.
2: GI's who married locals while elsewhere. This resulted in some very good NY style pizza in Anchorage. And some Thai. The wife teaches the employees the regional cuisine.
3: GIs who fell in love with authentic cuisine overseas... and decided to spend a year or two learning to make it, then go home, and open a shop. Menus tend to be short, but wow!
4: religious group run... religions and ethnicitiies are linked... I've eaten at a particular cult run ethnic place. Awesome food.

 

[whartung]

I've noted a few major ways to get good and authentic foreign food:

Well, to be honest, I do not necessarily consider "good" and "authentic" to be congruent. As I like to say, the worst Mexican food I've ever had was in Ensenada.

It seems that the bulk of modern "Chinese" restaurants popping up are apparently trending towards "authenticity", but look at the menu, none of it looks appealing to me and my gringo taste buds.

Finding what I like in Chinese food has been a real challenge. First, they all seem to race to the bottom. For some reason, Chinese has been permanently associated with "cheap", so the quality races to the bottom with the prices while the volume goes up. Second, there's this trend that everything has to be some derivative of "orange chicken". Consider Pick-Up Stix, a chain. I won't say they don't have any savory dishes, I'll just say that the vast majority of them are very sweet. But even P.F. Changs suffers this.

Finally, nearby there's a Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant. I've seen "Long Way Round." I'm not going .

 

[Grav_Moped]

1: Foreign refugees and work-caused ex-patriots. Not just immigrants, but the ones who want to eventually go back. They want to keep their culture, and food is a big part. Or, within the US, dragged across the country for work. (EG: a good number of ethnic Samoans in Anchorage, who are behind the mixed polynnesian cuisine of Hula Hands. Or the Sino-Hawaiian chinese of two different Cantonese restaurants in Anchorage.

This. If you're somewhere with a legitimate "Chinatown" or "Little Saigon" or [pick an expat community], go there. Find out where those folks go, and go there. Menus that aren't primarily in English are a plus. Be adventurous! You probably won't die.

In fairness, I do live in a large metro area at "...the edge of the world and all of Western Civilization" so I'm fortunate to have the luxury of choice.

ex-patriots

I wholeheartedly endorse the rest of your post there and hate to nitpick, but it's "expatriates".

 

[Grav_Moped]

Finally, nearby there's a Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant. I've seen "Long Way Round." I'm not going .

What? It's just boiling thinly sliced meats, veggies and noodles, do-it-yourself at the table. Korean BBQ with boiling broth rather than a grill.

If you're anxious about it, bring a non-contact infrared thermometer along to make sure the meat's hot enough to have been thoroughly sterilized.

Now I want Korean BBQ, darn it!

 

[BlackBat242]

Our company Christmas dinner was at Rodizio Grill (Brazilian-style place) again (as it was in 2018).

One of our employees is from Minas Gerais, Brazil... he had a lot of fun, and ate almost too much - he says that the food was "just like Home".

 

[aramis]

What? It's just boiling thinly sliced meats, veggies and noodles, do-it-yourself at the table. Korean BBQ with boiling broth rather than a grill.

If you're anxious about it, bring a non-contact infrared thermometer along to make sure the meat's hot enough to have been thoroughly sterilized.

Now I want Korean BBQ, darn it!

I've been wanting lupulu for 4 years now. I'm almost desperate enough to accept laulau instead... frozen, at the oriental supply store. Same one that I get canned curry (just add protein) and got my deck of Joseon cards at. (Joseon decks are the korean hanafuda decks, with 6 extra cards...)

Local Boyz' owner doesn't have room to be able to expand the menu. I've talked to him about it. If he gets to expand the kitchen, he'll add lupulu and laulau... but that's not in the near future. His location is essentially on OSU's campus... and he is slammed weekdays from 1100 to 1700... when OSU is in session. Even now. Most have been takeout. Line's often 10 minutes to order, then 10 to get the foot.

 

[Condottiere]

If you want authentic Chinese cuisine, without having to worry about the ingredients, then South East Asia and Taiwan; Hong Kong is rather too hot pot at the moment.

 

[BlackBat242]

Peking Duck in the top-floor restaurant of the Sheradin Hotel in Singapore in late August 1987 was simply marvelous!

As was the vegetarian meal in the Buddhist monastery on one of the outlying islands of Hong Kong in late November 1987.

One of the perks of an "all expense paid western Pacific/Indian Ocean tour aboard the United States Government's Haze Gray & Underway ship fleet".

 

[Timerover51]

The following quote comes from an account of Commodore Anson's voyages around the World to attack Spanish possessions in the New World, the Pacific, and the Philippine Islands in the years 1740 to 1744. The deaths were primarily due to scurvy, and the losses were those which occurred between September of 1740 and August of 1741, following 3 months of recuperation at Juan Fernandez island, made famous by Alexander Selkirk and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. The author was the chaplain of the H.M.S. Centurion, using materials supplied to him by Commodore Anson. The full account may be found here, and it makes for interesting reading. Of particular interest for Traveller players and Game Masters is what occurred with the ship's crew following the loss of H.M.S, Wager off the coast of Chile in 1741.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11, by Robert Kerr

A General history and collection, vol.11, January 2005.

www.gutenberg.org

I shall therefore now sum up the whole of our loss since our departure from England, the better to convey some idea of our past sufferings and our then remaining strength. In the Centurion, since leaving St Helens, we had buried 292 men, and had 214 remaining. This will doubtless appear a most extraordinary mortality, yet that in the Gloucester had been much greater; as, out of a much smaller crew than ours, she had lost the same number, and had only 82 remaining alive. It might have been expected that the mortality would have been the most terrible in the Tryal, as her decks were almost constantly knee deep in water: But it happened otherwise, for she escaped more favourably than the other two, having only buried 42, and had 39 remaining alive. The havoc of this cruel disease had fallen still more severely on the invalids and marines, than on the sailors. For, in the Centurion, out of 50 invalids and 79 marines, there only remained four invalids, including officers, and 11 marines. In the Gloucester every invalid perished; and of 48 marines, only two escaped. It appears from this account, that the three ships departed from England with 961 men on board, of whom 626 were dead, and 335 men and boys only remained alive; a number greatly insufficient for manning the Centurion alone, and barely capable of navigating all the three with the utmost exertion of their strength and vigour.

 

[BlackBat242]

I've noted a few major ways to get good and authentic foreign food:

4: religious group run... religions and ethnicitiies are linked... I've eaten at a particular cult run ethnic place. Awesome food.

Here in the US I have (in the 1990s) visited the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, Utah for their free Sunday afternoon vegetarian dinner. It was worth sitting through a half-hour of meditative chanting and such.

I even bought their cookbook Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The art of Indian vegetarian cooking- which is well-written (in American-English), and has all sorts of useful features... like what US-common ingredients can be effectively substituted for the listed "Indian subcontinent-origin" ingredients... as well as sections for the culinarily untaught (like myself) on subjects like just what "caramelizing" is and how to do it, and other such things that most cookbooks assume you already know (but many of us don't).

That makes it a large book - 824 pages (8.5"x11") with over 500 recipes.


{Food-based religions are fun... I myself am a Pastafarian.}

 

[Timerover51]

One thing about the U.S. Civil War is that because it was fought in the U.S., the families of the soldiers were never that far away from the hospitals and battlefields. The following account is from a book written in 1867 of a woman's experiences while serving as a volunteer in the hospitals of the Army of the Potomac from shortly after the Battle of Antietam to the end of the war. The book can be found here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70170
The full title is Three years in field hospitals of the Army of the Potomac, Author: Anna Holstein

Among these was a young wife, whose frantic grief I can never forget. She came hurriedly, as soon as she knew her husband was in the battle, only to find him dead and buried two days before her arrival. Unwilling to believe the fact that strangers told her—how in the early morning they had laid him beside his comrades in the orchard, she still insisted upon seeing him. Accompanying some friends to the spot, she could not wait the slow process of removing the body, but, in her agonizing grief, clutched the earth by handfuls where it lay upon the quiet sleeper’s form. And when at length the slight covering was removed, and the blanket thrown from off the face, she needed but one glance to assure her it was all too true. Then, passive and quiet beneath the stern reality of this crushing sorrow, she came back to our room. The preparations for taking the body to Philadelphia were all made for her, and with his remains she left for her now desolate home.

This is not the only story like this in the book. At times, the book makes for grim reading.

 

[Timerover51]

Here is some interesting data on feeding US troops in World War One. The US military has consistently been the best-fed military on the planet. The data comes from Benedict Crowell's book America's Munitions 1917-1918, which can be found on Project Gutenberg. Crowell served as the Assistant Secretary of War Director of Munitions, and his book is one of the standard references for US Army supply in World War One, showing how the munitions industry was built up. I highly recommend reading it for an idea on what it takes to build a munitions industry and supply an army.

The cost of food rates high among the war costs of 1917 and 1918. Back in 1897 the average meal in the Army cost about 4 cents, and the daily three meals 13 cents. At the end of 1918 the cost of the ration was approximately 48 cents. The advance was not all due to the advance in living costs. Much of it was on account of the improved standards of the ration. In 1916 Congress appropriated $10,000,000 to feed the Army; the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1918, brought an appropriation of $830,000,000 for the same purpose.

The American fighting man of 1917-18 was a good feeder. He ate nearly three-quarters of a ton of food each year, or over ten times his own weight. Without counting any transportation costs or the expense of handling at all, each man's yearly supply of food cost more than $165. In spite of the most rigid and painstaking economies in the purchase of this subsistence the American people were paying at the peak of Army expansion more than $2,500,000 per day to feed the troops.

The demands of the overseas forces for meat during the summer of 1918 were so heavy that they created a shortage of beef in the United States. Beef is the mainstay of the soldier's diet. The Army allows 456 pounds of beef per year for each soldier. This does not mean that the soldier actually eats that much beef, beef being simply the Army's meat standard. Pork, usually in the form of bacon, is substituted for 30 per cent of this quantity of beef, 12 ounces of bacon being considered the equivalent of 20 ounces of beef. The major portion of the American Expeditionary Forces' beef was fresh beef shipped frozen all the way from the packing plants in the United States to the company kitchens at the front, through an elaborate system of cold-storage warehouses and refrigerator cars and ships.

The Food Administration asked that the people substitute corn meal, rye flour, and other grain flour for 20 per cent of the wheat flour ordinarily used in making bread. The troops in the United States complied with this ruling and saved 1,000,000 barrels of flour. The use of substitutes in France was not insisted upon, as bread making in the field is more difficult. Field bakeries are not adapted to experimenting with doughs and yeasts, as is required when substitutes for flour are used. The Army allowance of flour for a year for one man is 410 pounds. Flour was usually issued in the form of bread, 1 pound of bread being allowed for each man each day. Other yearly allowances are 56 pounds of beans, 27 pounds of prunes, 27 pounds of coffee, 73 pounds of sugar, 11½ pounds of condensed milk, 3½ pounds of vinegar, and 13½ pounds of salt. For variety other items are specified which may be substituted for these foods.

While the kinds of foods have changed to a degree, the quantities have not. Rations weigh about 6 pounds per man per day with packaging. Then water is a minimum of a gallon a day in a temperate climate, 2 gallons a day in a desert. A permanent camp requires between 60 and a 100 gallons a day per man. A hospital requires 50 gallons per day per bed, which does include the water required by medical personnel.

 

[RogerD]

Here is some interesting data on feeding US troops in World War One. The US military has consistently been the best-fed military on the planet. The data comes from Benedict Crowell's book America's Munitions 1917-1918, which can be found on Project Gutenberg. Crowell served as the Assistant Secretary of War Director of Munitions, and his book is one of the standard references for US Army supply in World War One, showing how the munitions industry was built up. I highly recommend reading it for an idea on what it takes to build a munitions industry and supply an army.

One of my favorite books from my military history classes was "Supplying War", by Martin van Creveld. Worth a read if you are interested in this topic.

 

[Timerover51]

One of my favorite books from my military history classes was "Supplying War", by Martin van Creveld. Worth a read if you are interested in this topic.

I have had that for maybe 20 years, and I have reread it several times. I was a supply officer in the U.S. Army. I have a thing about logistics.

 

[MThompson016]

Interesting information about what my great-grandfathers got to eat.

On a 726 class submarine, the forward escape trunk, when removed in port, can take a system for lowering wheeled shelving units for food stores. The interior wall is built to be removed (non-Water Tight), and the units are craned aboard, rolled into place, and secured to the deck. Frozen and refrigerated stores could be loaded the same way, but would have to be removed from the units to be loaded. It was easier to have a chain of stevedores move the boxes into the frozen stores

In the shipyard, the dry stores space was empty, and was larger than the crew's mess.

 

[Timerover51]

Here is what the fragment pattern looks like for a 75mm high-explosive round and an 81mm mortar round.

 

[BlackBat242]

Very interesting... so if someone fired a 75mm shell at you it is best to be directly in front of a low-angle impact!