Tabasco makes everything better

In my brief and unremarkable time in the reserves, I did manage to learn a few things. How to drive a Vietnam War-era five ton truck, that was a good one. Um, the wonderful world of petroleum supply. Ooh, how to improvise a gasket from a manila folder. Hmm, let's see...oh yeah, that diesel doesn't make a very good paint thinner, but if the paint sucks to begin with it doesn't matter much.

The best, absolutely most useful thing I learned during that time by far was the Miracle of Tabasco. See, sometimes we would be out doing some training and for whatever reason, someone would decide that instead of trucking actual food to the training site we would have MREs. MRE stands for 'Meal Ready to Eat,' but was more like 'Meal Rejected by Everyone.' They weren't completely without merit, because they had little packets of treats. Usually gum, matches, toilet paper (although that must have been a joke, because if you were eating MREs you weren't going to need toilet paper any time soon), and a little, tiny bottle of Tabasco.

Tabasco made Chicken a la King into Chicken a la Awesome. It turned some truly foul, cold, mushy meals into palatable stuff. I'm not saying it was something you'd order at a restaurant, but at least you could eat it. The trick was to collect all the unused bottles you could so you had a stockpile in case you got stuck with something really bad, like Green Eggs and Ham. The Dreaded Green Eggs and Ham. That was the unluckiest pick of the draw, unless you knew the secret way to eat it. I don't even remember what the real name of that bit of nastiness was, but it had something approximating a ham omelette and included two very dry crackers and a packet of 'cheese.' The secret was to mix the cheese and every bottle of Tabasco into the packet of Green Eggs and Ham, then spread it on a cracker. The worst of the MREs was transformed into the best. Tabasco, in sufficient quantities, could overcome the worst that the Army could come up with. That's saying something.

There are other hot sauces that are almost as good, Tapatio for one. But Tabasco will always be the King when it comes to salvaging nasty food.