You’ve got to be kidding, LA Times. Today’s article - Fattening menus for troops in Iraq - leaves me shaking my head. Where, oh, where to start with this one? Well, the only way to get started is to say that not everyone in Iraq lives on a large Forward Operating Base (FOB).

On the humorous side, and I’ll willing to laugh after living in a tent for most of a year, my Military Transition Team (MiTT) leader flew to a conference on a large FOB. While waiting in line at the gigantic KBR (Kellogg Brown Root) chow hall, he overheard two airmen who were clearly posted on this FOB talking to each other. One moaned to the other, “Not steak again!”

Fast forward to Sinjar. At first, we had a mostly outdoor dining area. Yes, outdoor like when you wait for a table outside on a nice summer day. Except this was Iraq. Three meals a day, lots of Gatorade, Burn, and juice. Yum! Units swapped out and eventually we hit our low point… 12 hot meals a week. That would be six hot dinners and six breakfasts - if you count reconstituted eggs and cereal as a hot meal. Then, MREs and junk food for the rest of the week.

Or, for a real meal… with fresh vegetables, soup, bakery fresh bread, and hot tea… we headed over to eat with our Iraqi Army (IA) counterparts. No doubt about it, the IA ate better than us late in our year. We once invited an IA officer over to our chow hall. Funny that neither he nor ANY other IA officer ever asked to eat in our chow hall again.

Then we got to even lower points when some genius decided that it was too logistically challenging to truck us bottled Gatorade. Hmmm… MREs with water and powdered Gatorade.

We did drive to larger FOBs for some missions. I ate more Baskin Robbins ice cream in Iraq than in my entire life. I’ve got to say… for us troops on the remote FOBs, we enjoyed the healthy made-to-order chicken or beef stir fry and LONG, LONG, LONG salad bars with fresh fruits and vegetables… kiwis, watermelons, apples, orages, grapes, olives, pickles, peppers, and the list goes on. I guess - beyond the ice cream - the healthy stuff tastes darn good when you’re eating a very limited diet otherwise.

Our Sunday BBQs were a treat. We trucked over an hour to fill our UAH’s trailer full of steaks and chicken wings - and ice up to the ceiling of the trailer. Gotta live a bit!

We heard that US troops typically gain 10-15 pounds in Iraq. We didn’t have that problem except from working out to pass the time and keep us sane.

More ice cream, please, LA Times!