There’s a strange dynamic with the availability of “Hot A’s” in the field. We want them, but we are guaranteed to complain about them.

“Hot A’s” means hot, cooked meals, basically, “real food” as opposed to stuff that comes out of a brown plastic bag (ie, MRE’s). I always try to defend the cooks because they have to work within tight constraints when it comes to cooking chow for hundreds of troops under austere conditions and limited resources, but I can’t help but notice that sometimes the results… well, let’s just say there’s a reason why chow is some of the low-hanging fruit of military humor.

Still, after a long day it is nice to come up to your camp site/bivouac site and see that preparations have been made for hot meals. Hot, prepared food is always better than prepackaged stuff from foil-wrapped packets. It also means that, at least on some level, the higher-ups are making an attempt to look out for the welfare of the troops.

Not exactly “comfort food”, but the effort is appreciated.