Troop-Issue Subsistence Activity supply technician Richard Meier breaks into some of the raw material that will soon become a delectable Unitized Group Ration, A Option: frozen omelets. Meant for quick preparation by the small kitchens at the Hohenfels training area, the A Option meals are much preferred by soldiers over a typical Meals, Ready to Eat, troops said. (Ben Murray / S&S)
HOHENFELS, Germany — Going by just the name, it sounds about as appealing as eating your beret.
But staring down at steaming mounds of the Unitized Group Ration in a tiny dining facility at the Hohenfels training area this week, soldiers from the 1st Armored Division hardly seemed turned off.
“These are 10 times better than MREs,” Sgt. 1st Class Yolanda Lawson from the 1st AD’s headquarters company said, comparing her lunch to the Army’s Meals, Ready to Eat. She and others in her unit were in Hohenfels for a monthlong exercise.
Served up by the staff at the Troop-Issue Subsistence Activity office — a name equally appetite-killing — UGRs are the Army’s midway point between vacuum-packed MREs made for soldiers on the move, and its dining facility entrees.
Doled out in mass quantities at Hohenfels (about $1.5 million is spent monthly on UGRs at the base), the food is an intrinsic part of the training experience. Soldiers rarely receive UGRs anywhere but at a training area, activity officials said, although a few have been served in Kuwait.
A little bit DFAC quality, a little bit MRE functionality, UGR meals come in seven breakfast options and 14 dinner choices, mostly in heat-and-serve packets that are ready in about an hour.
The meals — including veggie lasagna, pork tamales and the mouthwatering “creamed ground beef” (a breakfast option) — are meant to be prepared in the small, sometimes mobile, kitchens that cater to troops in training.
But the heat-and-serves are often eclipsed by the “A Option” versions of the UGR, which are packaged the same way but prepared individually. They include salmon, rotisserie chicken, and Canadian bacon with your biscuits, said 1st AD food adviser Chief Warrant Officer Ted Marcus.
The crème de la crème is steak and shrimp, which the Hohenfels kitchens are scheduled to serve on Easter Sunday, said Spc. Curtis Butler, a cook from the 2nd Battalion, 501st Aviation Regiment.
“They’ll probably give me a gold star,” Butler said, predicting praise from the troops for the food he would conjure up on the holiday.
The UGRs, which also include a hodgepodge of fresh fruits, boxed juice drinks, condiments and desserts, received medium to high marks from soldiers supping at Hohenfels this week.
“I think the ribs aren’t bad,” said Capt. Tor Lenoir, also from the 1st AD’s headquarters company.
Lenoir said that, in general, many soldiers have been pleased with the UGR food since arriving in early March.
“Troops look forward to going to chow here,” he said.
But not everything can be a heaping pile of hominy grits with creamed sausage and jalepeño ketchup (all available on A Option breakfast menu 1). One complaint in recent memory recalled by TSA supply manager Sandra Gillespie-Bernecker was about the eggs.
The offending ovulates were also the one item defined as unsavory by Lawson’s dining partner, Spc. Stephanie Lumpkin, whose face contorted when thinking about the breakfast selection.
“I think it’s the vegetables in there,” she said. “It doesn’t taste good.”
But one soldier’s poultry gravy is another trooper’s “beef chunks with noodles” (heat-and-serve menus 10 and 11), Gillespie-Bernecker said, and options shunned by some are often carted away in disposable bowls by others.
By rotating the menu options, food service managers shoot to provide diversity, said TSA supply technician Richard Meier.
“Some units are crazy for the chili. Some units say, ‘Don’t give me the chili,’” he said. “We give ’em a variety.”
