http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/dining/31care.html

For Soldiers' Appetites, Reinforcements
By KIM SEVERSON


"EVERY week, Merry Debbrecht pulls about 1,200 cookies out of her
electric range in Rose Hill, Kan. She packs them a dozen at a time in
Ziploc bags, fills a postal box and sends them to war.

Mrs. Debbrecht's care packages, born of a grandmotherly caring for the
young soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, are not much different from the
ones that have long made their way to battlefields. But now, the troops
who receive Mrs. Debbrecht's cookies request them through a Web site
called www.treatthetroops.org , and send her thank-you notes via
e-mail.

Familiar food has long comforted troops fighting wars in foreign
countries. But the modern care package is different because of the
complicated logistics of this war, advancements in technology and the
diverse and sophisticated palates of today's troops.

In Chico, Calif., Terry Westlake, 52, sends batches of homemade organic
granola and Odwalla power bars to her son, Brian, a trained chef who is
a sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division.

"He's really on a health kick," she said. "Anything we send, even the
jerky, has to be organic."

In a latte-swilling nation, it stands to reason that soldiers would
prefer something better than the Civil War-era coffee paste or the
packets of freeze-dried coffee that have been standard issue since
World War II. This month, Crystal White, who works at a Starbucks in
Waterville, Me., organized a shipment of 106 pounds of coffee beans and
a small grinder to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Ms. White got the idea after she watched a holiday television special
broadcast from the base and heard a soldier talk about all the coffee
they drank. "I wanted them to have something they're used to, something
from back home," said Ms. White, whose siblings have served in the
military. "I wanted them to know that there's something they are
fighting for."

Advances in coffee culture have even extended to "meals ready to eat,"
the portable field rations that are a constant source of nutrition in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the newest versions will contain
chocolate-covered espresso beans.

And in a nod to the increasing ethnic diversity of troops, some
M.R.E.'s will soon include snack bread flavored with chipotle, packets
of salsa verde and spice mixes from the New Orleans chef Paul
Prudhomme.

"The culinary expectations of our war-fighters are rising each year and
we want to make sure the palate is well entertained," said Gerald
Darsch, director of the Department of Defense Combat Feeding
Directorate.

Other new field rations include an expanded line of vegetarian dishes,
including lasagna and chicken pesto pasta.

"I recommend a chardonnay with that," Mr. Darsch said.

Of course, alcohol can't be an official part of any care package. But
that doesn't mean people don't try. Ms. Westlake said a friend's son
wanted some vodka, so the family filled some Listerine bottles, added a
little blue food coloring and shipped it over.

Families who pack boxes of food for the troops have to work around
regulations unique to this war. Pork products are forbidden. And unlike
in past wars, where a well-meaning home cook could make a batch of
cookies and send them to "Any Service Member," the threat of anthrax or
other terrorist acts means packages must be addressed to a specific
person.

Well-meaning volunteers who want to send something to the troops but
have no personal connection can turn to America Supports You (
www.americasupportsyou.mil ), a kind of clearinghouse created to solve
the problem.

Allison Barber, a former public relations executive who is now deputy
assistant secretary for public affairs with the Department of Defense,
came up with the idea a year and a half ago.

"I heard from troops overseas who wondered if Americans back home
supported them," she said.

The idea has grown to a network of more than 20 corporations and 200
grass-roots groups that coordinate package shipments and events for
troops. Phone cards, clean socks and cookies have all been shipped
through the organization. Some groups have arranged steak cookouts on
aircraft carriers or shipped cases of Girl Scout cookies. And although
the occasional box of Thin Mints melts into an unappealing blob in the
Iraqi heat, they are gobbled up anyway.

"A taste of home is a taste of home," Ms. Barber said.

Many families send food on their own. Pamela M. Stachler of Athens,
Ohio, might be the champion. She personally spent about $4,000 on 68
care packages to her son, Nick, during his three tours as an Army
Ranger with the 82nd Airborne Division.

"The one thing they long for is mail and food packages," she said. "My
son told me that that's what kept him going."

When her son first went over, at the start of the war in 2003, the
military's internal mail system wasn't set up to handle the sometimes
chaotic and fast-changing nature of troop deployment. As a result, some
of her packages took a month to arrive.

Since then the system has been streamlined. The postal service sells a
flat-rate box a little larger than a briefcase that can be shipped to
any military address for $8.10, no matter what the weight. Care
packages, which can include food and other items like socks and
sunscreen, usually arrive in 10 days to two weeks.

Ms. Stachler, 49, stuffed her packages with the usual suspects -
chips and salsa, canned chicken and little jars of mayonnaise, instant
pasta and an array of crackers, candy and gum. But she managed to get
most of a deer, butchered and turned into stick sausage and jerky, to
her son. Thanks to vacuum packing and lots of cold packs, the meat
arrived intact. "We called it the Baghdad Deer from Lodi Township," she
said.

Sergeant Stachler shared it with buddies, like almost every care
package he received.

"It was good, real good," he said. "That's what you wait for, because
all we eat pretty much are the M.R.E.'s. American food, it just makes
your day."

Of course, the classics are still finding their way overseas. During
World War II, Katz's Deli in Manhattan created the slogan "Send a
salami to your boy in the Army." People still do. The deli ships about
25 dried beef salamis a week.

In Mrs. Debbrecht's book, cookies remain the most comforting food a
soldier can receive. Most are made with chocolate chips, but she
substitutes M & Ms in the summer because they don't melt as easily. Her
lemon cookies are popular, too. "They drink a lot of tea over there and
I think lemon cookies go really good with it," she said.

For Petty Officer Third Class Kimberly Husser, aboard the guided
missile destroyer McFaul, the cookies Mrs. Debbrecht sent were like
little miracles.

"We close our eyes at night with a plan in case of an attack, we sweat
for 16 hours a day in the 140-degree weather, rarely do we get to talk
to our children or loved ones," she wrote in an e-mail. "It relieved a
lot of stress to just sit and eat cookies with the crew you work so
hard with all day. If I had a chance to thank her in person I would
give her the warmest hug and tell her how she brought our crew closer
together with just a single cookie."

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