The mauve napkin ring was the real tip off

Here's a late breaking bulletin from the war on terror: Eating chicken with currants can make you gay!
Most of the military's Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs) have simple, literal names--Hamburger Patty, Beef Stew, Cheese Tortellini. But there is one that is, well, a little different: Country Captain Chicken. One of General George Patton's favorite recipes, the dish features chicken breasts in a tomato sauce flavored with currants. Long after Patton's death, as the story goes, another general told the Natick Soldier Center, which oversees the military's ration program, that it ought to honor the legendary commander by making Country Captain Chicken into an MRE. So MRE-makers cooked up a prototype of the dish and tested it with soldiers. The Joes liked it. At first. "Our war-fighters gave it a thumbs up; it scored very high," Gerald Darsch, the Defense Department's director of combat feeding, told me. "But, within several years, it began to rate on the low end."

What happened? Country Captain Chicken got a reputation. During the initial invasion of Iraq, when I was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, soldiers were fighting over the Hamburger Patty, but they left Country Captain for the reporters. "Country Captain Chicken," a young specialist told me, "will make you gay."
I wonder what they say about the Elton John Bratwurst Surprise?

h/t Kevin Drum
9.7.06 00:14
 


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