The thanks of a grateful family - Veterans Day MRE Dinner

Happy Veterans Day from our Military family. Many of those we hold dear - all of my uncles, both of my grandfathers, many close friends, and my dear husband have all answered the nation’s call to serve. We are so proud. Service goes hand in hand with sacrifice. Separation from friends and family, uncertainty, risk to life and and limb, frequent moves, and surrender of control are all standard-issue sacrifices of our military’s men and women.

We are raising our children to honor and appreciate our Veterans and Active Duty Service Members because we know that freedom is not free. One of the ways we are helping our kids understand service and the sacrifices that accompany it is our Veterans Day family MRE challenge dinner.

MRE (Military for Meals, Ready to Eat) are issued as a replacement for actual food when Service Members are in deployed environments without access to kitchens or commissaries. They are shelf-stable, generic, and only semi-palatable (fun fact: my husband likes to watch obscure YouTube MRE review videos…. I don’t know what that’s about).

We thought by serving up MRE’s for dinner it would be a good accessible entry point to talk to our kids about service and help them gain an appreciation (however small) of what our men and women in uniform deal with far from the comforts of home.

It was a fun way to honor our Veterans but we all agreed we wouldn’t want to eat MRE’s on any sort of regular basis, although Clara was pretty into the chicken burrito.

Thank you to all who serve and Happy Veterans Day!