Minding Your Business: Feeding the Troops
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Not all military operations cost billions, but feeding our troops is no small task. Andy Serwer here to give us an idea of what some of our troops could be eating over the holidays.</s>ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, that's right. Well, you know, all of us across America, of course, are really looking forward to Thanksgiving. The troops in the field might really be looking forward to that because they're eating rations, those in combat situations. We called up in people at the combat feeding program in Natak (ph), Massachusetts, and they sent us a couple of combat meals, they're called MREs -- meal real ready to eat, and this replaced C-rations a few years ago, and let's see what we got here. This is a Country Captain Chicken. So you get all kinds of goodies in these bags. This is the bag -- that's what the meal comes in. Here you got all kinds of other stuff, like a cookie.</s>ZAHN: Cheese spread with jalapeno.</s>SERWER: Cheese spread with jalapeno. Let's mix up a little grape drink here, shall we?</s>ZAHN: Have you tried any of this?</s>SERWER: No, I haven't. We're going to try it right now.</s>ZAHN: Now, I know Bill had a steady diet of this when he was on duty in Afghanistan, right, Bill, for five weeks, he ate MREs.</s>SERWER: We will stir this up.</s>ZAHN: They weren't half bad, were they, Bill.</s>BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: You really come to like them, actually.</s>SERWER: You want to be the first?</s>ZAHN: Yes, I'd love to try it.</s>SERWER: A little grape aid.</s>ZAHN: Tastes like Kool-Aid.</s>SERWER: There you go.</s>ZAHN: It's non-alcoholic, I want to add.</s>SERWER: Like any good cooking show, we prepare these things in advance, Paula. This is what the Country Captain Chicken would come in. You take it out. It comes in a pouch like this, then you get this special cooking pouch here. Now this is a chemical agent. The soldier clips this open, pours water in up to here. The water reacts to this chemical agent and gets superhot, and then you put this pouch inside this other patch. It sits for 10 minutes and gets piping hot -- piping hot.</s>ZAHN: You tried this and it works?</s>SERWER: It works, because we just heated this up over here, and this is the Country Chicken -- the Country Captain Chicken. Let's do it. First, the noodles that goes with it. You only get a spoon, so we got this fork. This is not a realistic combat situation here. ?</s>ZAHN: How is it?</s>SERWER: Not bad. Yes, here we go. You might be looking forward to the turkey.</s>ZAHN: Try the Country Chicken.</s>SERWER: What do you think? It's gotten a little cold, maybe.</s>ZAHN: They don't get anything better in my house. We're really good with things that come in boxes in our house. How was this?</s>SERWER: Oh, look, you can cut it with a spoon -- tender.</s>ZAHN: I think it's fine. As Bill said, when you were out in the field, you come to dream about this stuff.</s>SERWER: If you are near a base, here's a condiment pack here -- if you're near a base, they're going to cook a real turkey dinner for you, and if the Army has its act together, they will send one of these turkey MREs out in the field, a little jalapeno, a little tobasco sauce there, some instant coffee, some chewing gum. I might need some of that maybe. And we have a special treat for you, Paula. It comes in these rations, peanut butter and crackers.</s>ZAHN: My favorite.</s>SERWER: So we're going to get a little bit going for you.</s>ZAHN: You know what, if this is all you have to rely upon, the quality is good.</s>SERWER: No, it's not bad at all, it really isn't. I've had a lot of takeout food in New York City that's a lot worse than this, believe me.</s>ZAHN: And I'm not going to try to eat this and talk right after, so I'm going to save this for the break.</s>SERWER: That's true.</s>ZAHN: Thanks, Andy. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com