Sh#!% on a Shingle

 SOS

I was in Costco yesterday and from one of the sample stations I took a small cup of Mountain House  beef stroganoff.  Mountain House freeze-dried meals make backpacking easy, and are the perfect food storage--the shelf life is about 10 years, it takes up little space, and the stuff tastes pretty good after you've stumbled into your makeshift camp after a day on the trail.  And let me tell you, I would be glad to have it during times of emergency and disaster.  I just have to be diligent in storing enough water to cook it with!

As I walked away from the sample station another shopper, an older man, tasted his sample and loudly exclaimed for all to hear, "This is the same sh#!% we ate in Vietnam!"   It was a crack-up moment, and then the sample lady came over to me laughing and we talked about what the man said.  I mentioned that my Dad, who was in the Navy during and after WW2, talked once in a while about a very special meal served on board ship which the men called, "shit on a shingle," which I'll call here, SOS.  My Dad did not swear, ever, except when he talked about SOS, and that doesn't really count as swearing. 

The Costco lady chuckled and exclaimed that her Navy veteran Dad also talked about SOS, so we suddenly became BFF, and exchanged e-mail and cell numbers.  Ha, not really, but we marveled at the common experience of our Dads and about what SOS actually is.  She told me it is chipped beef on toast and that her Mom made it once in a while but the kids weren't interested in eating something their Dad dubbed SOS. 

Just now I googled that term, spelled out, and lah-di-dah, there's tons of recipes online for SOS, and some don't look half bad, and one even looks possibly tasty (see above).  However, I nix any food that actually could be mistaken for Sh#!%--see below, yikes!--and that is no doubt what SOS looked like when served on board a Navy ship churning through the vast nothingness of the Pacific Ocean.  Thanks but, no thanks.