Rations from Natick center have familiar quality

The peelable seal on the top of the tan plastic bag is so difficult to open that I decide to use scissors. Inside are a half-dozen smaller bags, some containing multiple items, including salt. This military-issue Meal, Ready- to-Eat, Individual -- known as an MRE -- has chicken fajitas as its entree. One pouch holds the sauce, studded with chicken and bell peppers; another, two soft wheat tortillas .

A typical MRE is a starchy affair, intended for "war fighters," as the people who develop the meals at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center call men and women in the field. Teams of experts and medical personnel work on new MREs every year, using ratings from the people who have to eat them. In the 27 years that these packages have been sent to fighting zones (and regions hit by natural disasters ), they've been dropped from planes, stored on ships, and subjected to the kind of manhandling you would never want your own groceries to go through. They are reevaluated constantly, and a new group appears annually, with some items voted off the battlefield, others added by popular demand. The production cost of each meal is about $6.25 to $7.25 and includes food from dozens of vendors. The folks at the Natick labs know all the nicknames fighters use to describe MREs; one of the kindest is "Meals Rejected by Everybody."

My nephew, a Marine, returned from Iraq recently with stories about the rations. As he describes , mealtimes have a grammar school quality. But instead of "Want two Oreos for a handful of chips?" it's "I'll trade you cheese spread for peanut butter." The Natick labs encourage trading. "They've always done that, as long as they've been providing rations to troops," says spokesman Jeremiah Whitaker. "Cheese spread with jalapenos is like gold out there." Older military personnel prefer coffee (in the meals, it's Taster's Choice instant with powdered nondairy creamer); younger ones like cocoa and other sweetened drinks.

An MRE might be consumed at room temperature in a place that's neither safe nor comfortable. Before a fighter goes out, he picks from the MRE exactly what he knows he will eat. "They don't want to carry any extra weight than they have to -- even an extra ounce," says Whitaker.

MREs, says Stephen Moody, Natick's team leader for the Individual Combat Ration Team, are meant for times when a group can't sit down and eat a meal together. Ideally, people should be eating as a unit. "There's an intangible morale factor that's involved in the group setting."

One day, when a box of MREs arrived on my doorstep, courtesy of my nephew, Billy, I decided to dig in.

Today's MREs are wrapped in retort packing, a heavy-duty plastic that keeps out air, water, and vermin. That's one reason they're hard to open. In tasting the food, we decide against reheating it, though a clever heating device, known as a flameless ration heater, comes in each pouch. The FRH is 12 by 5 1/2 inches, made from a kind of clear green plastic. A diner inserts his entree, still in the pouch, into the FRH with a small amount of water. The water activates a sachet that heats the food 100 degrees in 10 minutes. If necessary, an FRH, filled with food, can be carried in a pocket while it's heating.

At room temperature, the fajita filling is slightly spicy and surprisingly good -- a moist mixture of diced chicken (think canned chicken, if you've ever had that) in a thick tomato-based sauce. I'm surprised how soft the wheat tortillas are. They're folded in half and when I open them, the rounds split along the fold lines. They taste slightly sweet in a Wonder Bread way. An MRE is designed to be shelf stable for three years at 80 degrees; six months at 100 degrees. The meals I'm trying are on the 2006 distribution list; I forgot to ask Billy where he thought they had been. Even broken, the tortillas make fine tools for scooping the thick fajita filling. A spoon with a long handle, in every pack, is designed so you can reach deep into the pouch without making a mess.

A mixture of yellow and wild rice is less successful, mushy, with that precooked rice texture and an overwhelming taste of preservatives. Cheddar spread (no jalapenos) is like Cheez Whiz, which I happen to like and haven't tasted since my last cheese steak in Philly. A nut-raisin mixture is crunchy and sweet in all the right places; none of the nuts are rancid, a common problem when they're stored. The "ACC Pkt C," an accessory packet, contains apple cider, with a nice, warming cinnamon taste; chewing gum that is still soft and tastes faintly fruity; matches with an olive green cover ("designed especially for damp climates," it reads); a moist towelette; and tissues. Also in the meal is a hot beverage bag. I didn't see the initials HBB anywhere, but what you do is put the powdered drink and some water into the HBB, seal it and slip it into the FRH, and sip this with your MRE.

In another meal, I find pasta in tomato sauce; the pasta is tender but not falling apart, the sauce dense and sweet, similar to many commercial sauces. Potato sticks, like the ones in a can that are so dependably salty and crisp, are in another of the meals. These have been taken out, explains Moody . They must not have been popular enough. I also find a pouch of good peanut butter, which you can squeeze out of its plastic, but no jelly. From now on, says Moody, "all meals that have peanut butter will also have jelly." To go with them, there will be crackers or something called "wheat snack bread," which is tender and sweet, like flattened, underbaked Pillsbury biscuits -- what I imagine, in certain circumstances, passes for comfort food.

Which is the point of the meals. Nobody wants a culinary challenge on the battlefield. They want what they already know. So, much of this food is deeply familiar. It's like what you find in frozen entrees; you know some of the tastes from canned soups and chain restaurant dishes, or from the items in multiethnic food courts at the mall.

The tissues are a nice touch. Eating like this is messy, and the Army, I decide, has second-guessed all eventualities. When Natick's Whitaker sends me a detailed Department of Defense list of what's included in each MRE, it turns out that they have indeed thought of everything. What I mistook for facial tissues is listed clearly as toilet tissues.

On the battlefield, of course, they're also interchangeable.

This is the first in a monthly series on what people are eating, what vendors are selling, and what restaurants are adding to their menus. To see a video on MREs in Sheryl Julian’s kitchen, go to boston.com/food.