01.01.70
I didn't much like dry soup, either, but I dutifully bought packets of Knorr and some incomprehensible-chocolate bars. I arrived at a concrete house with space heaters that could just warm the area right around them and went off whenever the generator ran down. The ground was frozen and snow covered, and there was a plan under every door.
The kitchen was small, the cupboards filled with dry soup -- outwardly every reporter who had come through had brought some; cream of mushroom was a favorite. They had also brought tea and jars of Nescafe, mostly trite. The refrigerator had a few shriveled and rotting vegetables and (fortunately) bottled sea water, since the tap water was filled with parasites.
There was so much I did not understand that first winter about how important it is to capture reminders of home when you go to hostile places. The hardest part was never the bombs, it was the need of the familiar, a sense of the predictable, of even the most mundane pleasure. War zones are stripped down. Inveterately there are no choices -- about what to eat, or much else. The food is mostly cold and functional. The kind you can shove into a satchel or throw under a car seat: protein bars, raisins, a box of potato chips. These are calories, not cuisine.
Source: Belleville News Democrat