Feasting In A War Zone (Reheat)

Ahead of Veterans Day, we're recognizing our American troops. A lot of them will spend the holidays far from their families — but hopefully not far from a good meal. Of course, if you’re in a war zone, finding that good meal gets a lot harder.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  As someone who has been lucky enough to go to Napa Valley, I can tell you, it's everything people say it is. Beautiful scenery, quaint, beautiful towns, and phenomenal food and drink everywhere you go. I don't even know that much about wine, but I know that every glass of wine I had in Napa Valley was excellent. I mean, there's no bad glass of wine and no bad meal. Choose between hundreds of wineries, tasting rooms, and chef-led restaurants from a low-key lunch on a vineyard terrace to a full tasting menu paired by the winemaker. Plan your trip at visitnapavalley.com. Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola, bars,

• 0:45Dan Pashman?

  and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar, and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker. Available at a store near you.

• 1:08Dan Pashman?

  It's Dan here, and Veterans Day is just around the corner. So today, we are reheating a classic Sporkful episode to mark the occasion. And this one started, I was chatting with my buddy Quill Lawrence, who's a reporter for NPR, who had worked in war zones, been embedded with troops, and he was telling me all about MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. These are the field rations that many troops have with them. And I had heard of them, but he started telling me about the strategies that the troops have for making them better, the bartering that can go on, because the soldiers know maybe some MREs are better than others. And so I started looking into that, and we ended up with an episode that's about so much more, with some really powerful stories about eating in combat zones. So I think you're gonna really appreciate this one. Remember, as always, if there's an episode of the Sporkful you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat, we take requests.

• 1:51Dan Pashman?

  Drop me a voice note or email to [email protected]. Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want to hear, and why. I hope you enjoy this episode, and thank you so much to all the veterans out there.

• 2:08Dan Pashman?

  The military is not exactly known as a place to find a good meal, but the people who serve there are trained to overcome any obstacle. Gabe DeMayo was on a ship during the first Gulf War.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  One of the sailors on the ship said, "Listen, take a piece of bread with you." You know, as we're going through the chow line, "Take a piece of bread with you." And I'm like, "Why would I need a piece?" He goes, "Trust me, take a piece of bread and watch what I do." So we go through the chow line and watch what he's doing. He took a piece of bread and put it under his tray. So the rocking of the ship, so a lot of the guys, when the ship moved, all their trays slid off the tables and onto the floor. My tray never slid off the table, and I was able to enjoy a meal.

• 2:51Dan Pashman?

  A while back, we put out the call for your tales of eating in combat, and you responded. From stories of meals that came at just the right moment- Ah, it was probably the best prime rib and steak I'd ever had. To the extreme things people in the military do for a decent dinner-

• 3:06Speaker 01

  You know, these 50-gallon oil drums, they'd cut it in half and weld a barbecue.

• 3:12Dan Pashman?

  To, yes, grenades deployed in service of a good meal. All while dealing with the reality that, no matter how good the food is-

• 3:20Speaker 01

  You know, you have guys with artillery pointed at yourself.

• 3:24Dan Pashman?

  We've got some amazing stories for you. Stick around.

• 3:41Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Before we get into this week's show, the end is nigh, you guys. The end of the year, I mean, of course. And that means it's time for that year-end tradition that we do here on the Sporkful, where we feature your New Year's food resolutions. So what's yours gonna be? Record a voice memo on your cell phone. Tell me your name, first name's fine. Tell me where you're from, and then tell me, what food do you resolve to eat more of in the New Year, and why? Send that voice memo to us at [email protected], and you could hear yourself in our year-end spectacular episode.

• 4:24Dan Pashman?

  All right. While we are not doing a Thanksgiving special for reasons previously discussed, the holiday is on our minds. And one of the many things we're thankful for is our men and women in uniform, many of whom will be spending this holiday far from their families, far from home, but hopefully not far from a good meal. Of course, if you're in a war zone, finding that good meal gets a lot harder. That was the situation for Charles Hedrick. He was a Marine Corporal during the first Gulf War in Operation Desert Storm.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  I was young and looking for action, and the commanding officer was talking about setting up volleyball tournaments with neighboring units and things like that. And I just said, "No, this is not what I signed up for." The commander came back and said, "Hey, we've got an opportunity. We need some people to go up north," which would have been closer to where things were happening. I said, "Great, send me." I didn't really care what I was gonna be doing. I just wanted to go.

• 5:19Dan Pashman?

  And what were you hoping for?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Something with some action.

• 5:23Dan Pashman?

  But like, am I correct, speaking here as a civilian who does not have any experience in the military, all these words you're using are basically euphemisms for, like, you wanted to be closer to where things were blowing up?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, I wanted to get into combat. That was what I wanted.

• 5:44Dan Pashman?

  Charles didn't know what he was volunteering for, but he didn't care. He knew it was closer to combat. His good friends Rob and Scott joined him. They were driven to a spot in the desert, along with a giant metal box. Picture one of those shipping containers you see on a freight boat, or the back of an 18-wheeler without the wheels. They called it the Conex Box. It had no electricity, no running water, no communication, just some cots and a bunch of prepackaged meals. And they were left there, in the desert, just them and the box.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  They dropped us off. They told us that there was another Marine unit that was about a mile away from us, and that they had water, and that we would get our water from them. And we were to await further instructions.

• 6:31Dan Pashman?

  Literally, the vision, like, I'm picturing this like the scene in Star Wars, when they're walking through the desert, and there's just nothing. There's nothing in any direction but sand.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yes. That's, yeah, that's exactly right. Except, there was more terrain in that desert, in the fictional desert. This was just flat, like a basketball court that ran from horizon to horizon, made out of sand.

• 6:54Dan Pashman?

  What were you thinking?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Well, I was, I was young. I wasn't thinking about it too deeply. I knew that I was getting closer to the action. The air war had kicked off by then, so there was lots of bombing going on that we could hear, and you could see lots of aircraft flying overhead on their way to bombing Iraqi targets. And that was it. That was, that was good for me.

• 7:24Dan Pashman?

  Pretty soon, they settled into a routine: walking to the unit a mile away for water, taking turns standing guard at night while the others slept, and talking about home.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  I missed my grandmother's Sicilian cooking. I missed the local flavors of New Mexico. I missed the comfort of sitting down and having a plate and a glass. Everything associated with, with food, from the processes of sitting down to a meal, to the associations with family and things like that. I missed all of it.

• 8:05Dan Pashman?

  After a couple weeks, Charles and his friends heard a rumor from some of the guys at the base where they were getting water.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  There were some civilians nearby that liked Americans, and they were set up to do laundry, and that we could go up there and potentially do some laundry. Rob, of course, wanted to go. He was kind of a swashbuckling kind of guy. Scott was game with that. I was a little bit more hesitant. The idea of marching off into the sand, not knowing where we were going, and not knowing what we were gonna find, was not terribly appealing.

• 8:41Dan Pashman?

  Why not? I mean, I can sort of understand, but like, can you, can you explain it to me? Like, what, what exactly were you thinking?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  It felt vaguely against the rules, as well as just going off into the unknown. So we loaded up our backpacks with dirty laundry, got our helmets and body armor and weapons and ammo and all that.

• 9:02Dan Pashman?

  And, but just, just to be clear that I understand, you're in the middle of, you're living in a metal box in the middle of the desert, where, and in all directions, you can see nothing but just sand going up, flat sand to the horizon.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:15Dan Pashman?

  And using only a compass and a rumor-

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:19Dan Pashman?

  You just started walking.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Must have been a pretty good rumor.

• 9:26Dan Pashman?

  The thought must have crossed your mind, like, this could get me killed.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Right. But I was, I was, I was young and didn't have, you know, didn't have a wife and kids, and didn't have all of that. So-

• 9:42Dan Pashman?

  You didn't feel like you had a lot to lose?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  No. Right. Exactly. This was the experience that I had signed up for. I was gonna let it take me where it would.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Out of the sort of wind-blown haze, we saw some buildings and they were like double-wide trailers, mobile homes. Once we saw it, we all kind of came to the conclusion, well, this must be it.

• 10:13Dan Pashman?

  Did it occur to you that it could be a mirage?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I always had imagined mirages as being something more pleasant.

• 10:24Dan Pashman?

  Than a trailer?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:25Dan Pashman?

  Well, when you're coming from a metal box, Charles.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 10:30Dan Pashman?

  A trailer seems pretty extravagant.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  But it was by no means welcoming. There were the windows that faced us were blocked off or had foil on the inside of them. So it just was not a welcome-looking place.

• 10:46Dan Pashman?

  So you get up to this trailer, this double-wide trailer. Can you see inside at all?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:53Dan Pashman?

  You can't see inside? And are there, and are there any people out in front of it?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:57Dan Pashman?

  Do you hear anything?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  No, just the wind. And there's this building. And there was a door.

• 11:04Dan Pashman?

  Was there a part of you that considered the possibility that maybe the people, if there are people inside this trailer, they might not be your friends?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Well, that was, there was that context too, in that we were Americans in a foreign country.

• 11:20Dan Pashman?

  Well, and you're also carrying giant guns.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:22Dan Pashman?

  I just can imagine 100 different things, 100 different ways that this interaction could go wrong. And it could end up going really wrong.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  I was feeling all of those different frequencies of apprehension at that time. Is this it? This doesn't look right. Or, yeah, it could be kind of that back and forth. So we decided that Rob was going to be our spokesman and that he should go ahead and knock at the door, which he did. And there was a long enough pause that I thought, well, all right, that's enough. Let's, nobody own, let's get, turn around and go back to the Conex box. But then the door opened and there was a gentleman in there, kind of an older man. And he looked at us like, who the hell are you?

• 12:16Dan Pashman?

  If that were me, I'd be high-tailing it back to my metal box in the sand. But that's not what Charles and his friends did. Stick around.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Time to cook up some advertisements.

• 12:46Dan Pashman?

  You put a lot of love into the things you send during the holidays. It's baked with love, carefully packed with love, or shipped with love right from home. Because what you're sending isn't just what's inside the box. It's the time, thought, and care you put into it. And this holiday season, the United States Postal Service is delivering your love to more addresses in America than anyone else. So send it with love. Send it with USPS. The United States Postal Service. Learn more at USPS.com/holiday. As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf,

• 13:30Dan Pashman?

  whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean. Whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit LLBean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola, bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar, and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker. Available at a store near you.

• 14:18Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of times, people want to ask me like, oh, what are you cooking? What restaurants are you going to? They ask Emma and Andres and the whole Sporkful team the same questions. Well, it turns out, we provide a listener service to you that includes that information. It's our newsletter. We don't send it out all the time. We're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you useful information, recipes, restaurant information, links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're watching. And guess what else? You'll be automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell you about like, special sales happening on this Folini website by discounts on pasta and stuff. So there are a lot of benefits and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sporkful.com/newsletter to sign up today. Again,

• 15:02Dan Pashman?

  that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, let's get back to the story of Charles Hedrick. To recap, Charles and his friends, Rob and Scott, are standing outside a trailer in the middle of the desert in a war zone. They had heard a rumor that the people in the trailer were friendly to Americans and would let them do laundry. But it was starting to look like maybe going there had been a huge mistake. The guy who answered the door did not seem happy to see them.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Rob is trying to communicate with this guy. It's not going really well. The guy is looking at us with a furrowed brow and kind of shaking his head. And eventually closes the door on us. Immediately, there's a fast discussion between the three of us. Okay, what's going on? What's he doing? I think he's telling us, no, no, I think he's saying, wait here. And so we're going back and forth with this. Then the door opened back up. And there was a man in there. He looked, I would guess, to be about 40 years old. So between 15 and 20 years older than we were at the time. He looked to be a very fit, military-looking guy, short hair. And

• 16:14Speaker 02

  door flies open. He looks out at us and takes us in with a glance and then immediately smiles and says hello. And he's speaking with a very thick British accent. I mean, there was some relief, but there was a lot of residual doubt, like, okay, what is this guy doing here? Why is there a British guy here? Why is this structure here?

• 16:38Dan Pashman?

  Charles, Rob, and Scott went into the trailer. The British man explained that the people working there were former Royal Navy guys. They were working for a company that services offshore drilling rigs. He said Charles and his friends were welcome there. They could do their laundry, whatever they wanted. But Charles was still nervous. He and the guys took turns showering and guarding each other's guns. Then the British guy took them on a tour of the complex.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  We saw their big lounge with lots of recliners. And then we walked by their mess hall. Immediately, I smelled wonderful food, Indian spices, curries, things like that. I was immediately focused on, on the food part. I really couldn't wait to sit down and eat some proper food because it had been a long time since I'd had a decent meal.

• 17:28Dan Pashman?

  And do you remember, I mean, I mean, that first plate of food, you bring it to the table, you sit down, what were those first couple of bites like?

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Well, the, one of the best meals I've ever had in my life. There was pans of curried chicken thighs, or chunks of chicken potatoes and some kind of a tomatoey and curried sauce with peas in there. Then they also had these giant fried potato wedges that our hosts called chips. I thought it was kind of incongruous, these fried potatoes with this Indian food. And they said, well, we like our chips with, with every meal. So there was the eating of this wonderful food, but then also the relaxation that was coming with it, withdrawal of the anxiety. It was excellent.

• 18:21Dan Pashman?

  It's interesting that you said that you felt relaxation finally sort of set in. I mean, is it possible that in the lead up to going out to find this place and getting in the door and, you know, getting to this point of this meal, maybe you were more on edge than you realize?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah, yeah. I think that, in looking back on it now, as I went through this process of leaving school and going on to active duty and then getting trained up and then deploying overseas, it was like boiling a lobster gradually, right? I mean, the water temperature kept raising and raising with the water temperature being my level of anxiety of sort of ambient stress. So this was an opportunity to shed all that. And food is a very comforting thing. It has powerful emotional

• 19:19Speaker 02

  effects on people. And this was one of those times when food was the catalyst to a much better state of mind.

• 19:31Dan Pashman?

  After that day, Charles, Rob and Scott kept going back to that trailer. They became friends with the British guys. That went on for a few weeks.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  And the war was over. It was time to start retrograde, as they call it, going back down to where we came from and heading back to the States.

• 19:47Dan Pashman?

  And did you leave feeling like you had seen the action you came to see?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Certainly not. Nope. Mm-mm.

• 19:55Dan Pashman?

  Is it fair to say that your encounter outside that trailer, banging on that door, waiting to find out what would happen, was the most intense action you saw?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Let's see. In terms of generating anxiety, personal anxiety, yes, that would have been it.

• 20:16Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Charles has a message for his old friends and fellow Marines.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Time to cook up some advertisements.

• 20:26Dan Pashman?

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• 21:08Dan Pashman?

  of four, two teenagers, we do a lot of laundry, so we have put All Free Clear to the test. It's a powerful clean that you can feel good about. All Free Clear is the number one detergent brand recommended by dermatologists for sensitive skin. When it comes to laundry detergent, the choice is clear: All Free Clear. Pick up a bottle for your next laundry day. As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves, I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch Plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more.

• 21:52Dan Pashman?

  Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola, bars and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker, available at a store near you.

• 22:32Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. Let's return to my conversation with Marine veteran Charles Hedrick.

• 22:52Dan Pashman?

  Charles says in the years since all that happened, he's lost track of Rob and Scott, but he has a slightly belated message for them.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  The Marine Corps birthday is on 10 November. It's a very big deal. It's a time when you tell all Marines happy birthday on that day. So yeah, happy birthday to Scott and Rob out there, wherever they are.

• 23:21Dan Pashman?

  Like I said, we put the call out to those of you who are veterans, asking for your stories of memorable meals in combat. And we got some amazing responses. Clearly, people in the military will go to great lengths to accomplish a goal. And one of the toughest enemies in the fight for deliciousness in combat is MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. They're prepackaged meals that troops take into the field and they last forever. Of course, any food that never goes bad usually doesn't start out being very good. But our brave men and women in uniform will not be denied.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  I found out right away at West Point that I could make a little peanut buttered M&M sandwich out of my cracker, which isn't the healthiest of things, but when you're really hungry, it is delicious.

• 24:04Speaker 06

  Most of the tricks involved mixing menus. So you get like the Thai chicken mixed with peanut butter, so you get sort of the peanut sauce angle.

• 24:13Dan Pashman?

  That was former Army Captain Stephanie Bolio, who served in Iraq in 2003, and Quill Lawrence, who spent about 10 years reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan for NPR. Of course, it's easy to make fun of MREs. It's low hanging fruit, right? But as Stephanie and Quill point out, everything is relative.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  MREs are one of those things that you can't eat on a regular day. You have to be in that situation where it's the only food that you have, and you know that it's the only food that you have, so it just makes it taste a little bit better.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  In northern Iraq, Kurds who were cooperating with US Special Forces in 2003, they thought MREs were just the coolest thing ever. They just couldn't believe that the Americans had figured out this way to get a meal. I mean, they didn't care that it wasn't a very delicious meal, let's say. But you know, for these guys, these guys who'd been rebels for many, many years, their method was to have a big bucket of rice and a big bucket of beans that you'd just shove your hand into and cram some in your mouth. That was if you had time to cook it all.

• 25:14Dan Pashman?

  So let's not throw too much shade on MREs. And don't underestimate the power of any meal when you're in combat. Stephanie says when they opened the first Burger King in Baghdad, she waited in line for two hours, and it was the best burger of her life. And she doesn't even like Burger King. For other troops I heard from, the meals they most remembered were the ones that they cooked themselves. George Handley served in Vietnam. Back then, they had their own ways of scoring good food.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, a couple cases of steak would fall off the truck, if you follow me. And you know these 50 gallon oil drums? They'd cut it in half and weld a barbecue. And we'd go up on the roof of the French villa, if you can picture this. And then we'd scrounge up several cases of beer. And we had a major who, man, he made the best baked beans ever. And so we'd have the steak and the baked beans and the beer. Are you kidding? It was fabulous.

• 26:13Dan Pashman?

  I got a great email from Frank in upstate New York. His uncle, John Kukase, served in the Pacific Theater in World War II. And Uncle John hated the rations he was given, so he would take a hand grenade and detonate it into a pond. Then the concussive blast would kill some fish, and they'd float to the surface. Then Uncle John would wade out into the water and collect the dead fish and cook them. His supervising officer got a little worried. First, he was worried about Uncle John's health because he wasn't eating the rations, but then he was also concerned about a bunch of missing grenades. Thankfully, when Uncle John explained what was happening, the senior officer was okay with it. And Frank says now that's a classic Uncle John story that the family still talks about to this day.

• 26:58Dan Pashman?

  And so many of you who got in touch talked about the importance of your families back home. One really big way that families support loved ones in combat is with care packages.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  I once received an entire case of Girl Scout cookies from my mom. We were still eating MREs, three meals a day. That was the best present I've ever received in my life. Not only did I have unlimited supply of Thin Mints, but I was able to trade boxes of Girl Scout cookies for things like, hey, here's some money, go stand in the hour long line for me because I need more shampoo.

• 27:32Dan Pashman?

  That's Stephanie Bolio again. And here's Gabe DeMayo. You heard from him at the very start of the show. He was the guy with the slice of bread under his tray.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  I remember getting a box full of oranges from my godfather, if he lived in Florida. So you open up and we hadn't had fresh fruit, you know, we had canned peaches and canned pears for a long time. But to get fresh oranges, it was like, it was like madam from heaven, right? So we had, we had the oranges. And then I got a care package, I remember, from my mother and my grandmother, and that had Italian food, you know, food for my youth. That was everything from, you know, char provolone to sopressata, to salami. You know, it was a taste of home.

• 28:11Dan Pashman?

  Gabe says that taste of home can be especially meaningful around the holidays.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  We had Thanksgiving dinner, and they really did it up for the troops. Everybody got turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.

• 28:23Dan Pashman?

  How did that meal feel in that situation?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it was weird because everybody's sort of in their uniform, sort of relaxed, but you're, you know, you're still, you know, you have guys with artillery pointed at you still. But you know, it's the food that brings you back home.

• 28:42Dan Pashman?

  Peter Gutierrez was in the Army, Navy and Marines. He served in Iraq in 2003, and he remembers spending Christmas there.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  We were one of the lucky battalions to actually get prime rib and steak meal with a baked potato, green beans, all the good fixins. And you know, it was the first solid, real piece of meat that I had had in my mouth for a good six months. It was probably the best prime rib and steak I'd ever had. It makes you miss home in one respect, but also makes you very glad that you are eventually going home to something. It was, it was heavenly. It was divine.

• 29:35Dan Pashman?

  Thank you to all the veterans who shared stories in this week's show, and to all the men and women in uniform out there who are far from home, happy Thanksgiving.

• 29:47Dan Pashman?

  Remember to send me your New Year's food resolution. Record a voice memo on your cell phone, tell me your name, first name's fine, where you're from, and then tell me what food do you resolve to eat more of in the new year and why? Send the recording to me at [email protected], and you might hear yourself in our year end spectacular episode. Again, that's [email protected]. This show is produced by Ann Sannie and me. Aviva DeKornfeld is our assistant producer. Gianna Palmer is our editor. The show is mixed by Dan Dazula. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Radley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  And I'm Matthew Kurtman from On a Road Trip Across America, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 30:48Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer

• 30:57Speaker 06

  Andres O'Hara.

• 30:58Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, if you want to hear new episodes of The Sporkful ad free, subscribe to Sirius XM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit siriusxm.com/podcastsplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  No two businesses run the same, so banking for your business shouldn't be one size fits all. That's why Atlantic Union Bank offers knowledgeable guidance and tailored solutions designed around your goals. Whether you're managing cash flow, moving money, or protecting your business from fraud, we make banking for your business both personal and easy. Call, visit us online at atlanticunionbank.com, or stop by one of our local branches today. Atlantic Union Bank, any way you bank.

• 31:58Speaker 07

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. Start your morning with the $6 McRiddle's Extra Value Meal, featuring your choice of a sausage, egg and cheese McRiddle's or bacon, egg and cheese McRiddle's, plus crispy hash browns and a small premium roast coffee. Sweet, savory, crispy and caffeinated, it's everything your morning ordered, all for just $6. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing at participating McDonald's.