After posting a link on the Rat pack question thread, I decided to buy one of these ration packs just for fun... http://apple.clickandbuild.com/cnb/...ucts-null&prodCategoryID=1&title=RATION+PACKS
It arrived very quickly and very neatly packaged and was an interestingly similar yet different approach to the same issue. The same breakfast and evening meal ideas, but noodles for lunch (which is probably not as convenient and you couldnt eat them cold
) and dried fruit and Muesli Bar instead of chocolate. It includes a pan scrub which is handy and an odd little salt/pepper/spices key ring thing which is a bit silly IMHO. But it looked like a nice change to the run of the mill pack.
However, on closer inspection, one small items best before date ran out in a couple of days and a few only had a month left. I emailed Far Side commenting on it. I received an almost immediate reply apologising in a very nice way and saying more or less that it was a cock up and could they have more info. To cut a boring story to a medium length, they replaced a few items that were about to go out of date, but thought that it wasnt a problem that the majority of the contents only had about a years shelf life (some of the usual rat pack content biscuits brown being made in 2005).
Part of the reason for going to a manufacturer, and paying more than usual, was to get the maximum shelf life I could. All in all, very nice people, very good service, sadly not great product but only on my experience.
AJB
It arrived very quickly and very neatly packaged and was an interestingly similar yet different approach to the same issue. The same breakfast and evening meal ideas, but noodles for lunch (which is probably not as convenient and you couldnt eat them cold

However, on closer inspection, one small items best before date ran out in a couple of days and a few only had a month left. I emailed Far Side commenting on it. I received an almost immediate reply apologising in a very nice way and saying more or less that it was a cock up and could they have more info. To cut a boring story to a medium length, they replaced a few items that were about to go out of date, but thought that it wasnt a problem that the majority of the contents only had about a years shelf life (some of the usual rat pack content biscuits brown being made in 2005).
Part of the reason for going to a manufacturer, and paying more than usual, was to get the maximum shelf life I could. All in all, very nice people, very good service, sadly not great product but only on my experience.
AJB