Variety is the spice of life

(Via the Woodpile Report)

Variety is the spice of life, be it in relationships or food. Cue R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

I can’t argue a thing that was said, save I wouldn’t consider a variety in stored foods, even to the point of keeping freeze-dried ice creme (guilty) and freezing half-off bags of Easter and Halloween candy (also guilty), as “luxuries”. Based on her take on the subject, I’m guessing she doesn’t either. So who’s guilty of that headline?

This bit leads me to a story from my late Dad, who was in the ETO in WW II. The setup from the article:

“We can also research the lunch-dinner breaks of pioneers, old-time (and modern, poverty-stricken) farmhands, and soldiers of manly-man eras for pacing of meals and foods that give us continual boosts through the day, that can be consumed easily regardless of weather, and options that don’t require extra preparation or heating.”

Sometime in 1945 and somewhere in Germany, Dad’s unit was attacking. Dad and a buddy had went across a harvested beet field, scouting the way ahead. As far as anyone could tell, there was going to be no resistance to this movement. Right up until the artillery shells started dropping.

Dad and his buddy took shelter behind a beet bed. (He described this construction as being made of harvested beets.) So, you’re in the middle of a field, under fire and hunkering down until the rest of the unit call in some counter-fire and gets you out of your predicament. What to do, what to do?

They decided that it was time for a snack. Dad pulled a can of something or other out of his field jacket and started to open it up. About that time the German observer called in a fire correction, and the next rounds dropped on the other side of this beet bed.

Dad says they were both tossed some distance and couldn’t hear a thing. They did decide to call off snack time and rescue themselves, sprinting back across the field in apparently record time, uninjured.

Decades later, he seemed more miffed that they hadn’t gotten to eat than that they were nearly killed. I suppose when you’ve been nearly killed often enough, you get a bit blase about it.

At least my Dad did.