Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! I’m still in sunny (but cold) Afghanistan, but since it’s Arizona’s 102nd birthday, I wanted to share a little AZ-inspired snack I made the other day using ingredients from an MRE.

In case you’re not familiar, MRE stands for Meal Ready to Eat, and they come in plastic bags. Each MRE has tons of little tan packages of food inside, and it is designed to be enough food for an entire day. It also is designed to last forever, so some of the foods tend to be less than appetizing.

I’ve been lucky to be at a large base with a chow hall that has lots of different options prepared every day for every meal — similar to a college dining hall. We’ve also hit up the British chow hall for some delicious curry. But I spent a few days at a small forward operating base in Sangin district earlier this week, and they only have a field mess (smaller chow hall) with hot, prepared food at breakfast and dinner.

For lunch, the Marines eat PB&Js, cereal (one Marine recommended Apple Jacks with chocolate milk, which does sound intriguing), or MREs. And so, I decided to make an MRE cheese crisp.

I also tried some of the other MRE components, which aren’t really bad, just kinda boring. The spiced pound cake was actually pretty good, though, and I think it would be really good with some applesauce on it. So, if you ever find yourself looking at an MRE meal, you may want to try it.

MRE cheese crisp:
MRE tortillas
MRE cheese sauce with jalapeños

Open tortillas and remove stay-fresh packet. Carefully detach the tortillas from one another, if possible.

Spread half of the cheese sauce inside one tortilla (this is more challenging than it sounds) and the other half in the other. Fold tortillas in half (with the cheese on the inside) and heat in a toaster oven (preferred), microwave, or by any method available.

Enjoy warm, and follow with spiced pound cake and applesauce!