MRE Review: MCW Menu No.7 Beef Stew (Meal, Cold Weather)

Here is the second of two MCWs (Meal, Cold Weather) that were sent to me by xxcorruptionable ( / xxcorruptionable . You can see the first MCW review here: http: // • MRE Review: MCW (Meal,... .
This one is Menu No. 7, Beef Stew and it was packaged in early 2005, making it nine years old. LIke the other one, the main entree is freeze-dried. This one doesn't have a side dish, probably because the beef stew takes 16 ounces of water and makes a LOT of food on its own. Considering the age, this meal held up pretty well. Of course freeze-dried food can last for a long time, so I wasn't too concerned about that. But the other items were fine too. The accessory pack was a little different from a regular MRE one. Standard MRE accessory packs have one drink mix in them (either instant coffee, spiced cider or lemon ice tea), this one had coffee AND two spiced ciders in it. There weren't any drink mixes in the MCW besides the three in the accessory pack. I thought the beef stew was very good. It's not really on par with a ready-to-eat entree from a regular MRE, but of course it's freeze-dried. Considering it's been sitting dry in a vacuum pouch for nine years and was reconstituted with hot water I thought it was more than acceptable.
Sorry for the length and (regular) choppiness of this video. I had to whittle it down from over 26 minutes of raw footage. I tried to keep it as short as possible, but since it was an out-of-the-ordinary ration I wanted to give it extra attention. A lot of the uneven quality of the editing is from trying to trim as many seconds out as possible.
MCW (Meal Cold Weather) Menu No.7 (2005)
-Freeze-Dried Beef Stew
-Pineapple Pound Cake
-Oatmeal Cookie, Chocolate Flavored Coating
-Tootsie Rolls
-Accessory Pack (Spiced Cider (2), Instant Coffee, Creamer, Sugar, Chewing Gum, Matches, Toilet Paper, Moist Towelette)
-Spoon