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Fun Fact! Soldiers during the Civil War often boiled their hard tack in their morning coffee, both to soften it (as it was often hard as wood), and to boil out the worms and weevils that worked their way in! How lovely!
If you let hardtack sit long enough, it naturally takes on more protein. It was a time of great innovation, that way.
Tasting History with Max Miller on YouTube has a video where he recreates a US Civil War soldier’s meal, and it was basically a pan fry of some sort with bacon grease and hard tack (he also has a video where he makes hard tack, and he uses some in the CW video).
Hard tack wasn’t really meant to be eaten like bread, you were supposed to wet/cook it down to soften it and make it more palatable (and, well, to kill the bugs).
clack clack
At least they had coffee.
That’s a fantastic writeup there!
I can’t even read that word in text anymore without imagining Max Miller clinking two pieces of it together.
I love that he puts that clip in every time he mentions hard tack lmao
clack clack
I mentally do click-click every time I hear it. Oh and his little clip he does each time :D
He has conditioned us
And I bet it’s just as edible today as it was back then
Oh cool a protein bar.
Carb bar.
Edit: dammit, I forgot the worms! Need some coffee with my hardtack.
Steve1989MREinfo has entered the chat
I was privileged enough to taste this stuff at a civil war reenactment! It’s not bad! I’m sure it would get old having to live off of it, but as a random snack it was pretty edifying.
Dawg, that’s Snack Bread, Wheat.
Second only to Vegetable Crackers, which pair nicely as a crumble with a vegetarian MRE.
Great share as always, Pug!
lmao, I have relatives who were in the military in the 90s and they swear to me that the crackers in the MREs back then tasted exactly like attic dust, and there’s no proof that they weren’t made of just that
Ok and so wtf does “attic dust” supposed to taste like?
Go up to your attic and see.
MRE crackers
So nothing then? Just saying nothing instead of making up nonsense.
Could you hand me another slice of worm castle please?
Let’s get this out onto a tray… Nice!
So is that piece in the display still edible? Is it snack time?
As edible as it originally was, quite likely - that is to say, if you are a masochist. XD
I’m sure the worms had somewhere better to be at this point.
