This is my first post; hope it is helpful. By way of introduction I live in southern Manhattan with my wife and 2 small children in an apartment with no outdoor space. While I would love to believe we can bug-out in the event of another terrorist attack, hurricane, regional power-outage etc, I have decided to - for once - be prepared for events foreseen and otherwise. I am not an outdoorsman and have not camped or done anything similar in around 25 years. I would consider myself and my wife to be "foodies" in that - while it does not have to be expensive or fancy necessarily - my wife and I quite enjoy good meals either cooked my ourselves or enjoyed out. The vessel; I decided to get the Mountain House Oven Kit which has enough bits to prepare 5 pouches of meals. The kit consists of a re-useable and resealable bag, 1 water bottle, 5 salt tablets and 5 heating pads which I believe contain iron. Thru the magic of chemistry you fill the water bottle to the fill line, add the salt tablet, give it a shake and pour the now salt water onto the heating pad which you have placed at the bottom of the oven bag to get the party started. Following the directions the only "issue" - and it wasn't an issue per se - was that the salt tablet took quite a while to dissolve. Using anything but the ice cold water from the tap would have helped this but I figured this is the kit I would have to use during a crisis situation and as such I am not going to have hot water to add to the bottle to make the salt water solution. In any case, after 10 or so mins of shaking the salt pill was 90% or so dissolved and myself, being out of patience, dumped the contents of the provided bottle onto the heating pad. In the future I will probably crush the salt pill before adding it to the water bottle. I assume it would be more expensive but a tiny pack of salt would be slightly more convenient. To my surprise - and glee - also immediately upon dumping my salt water mix onto the heating pad I was greeted with steam and heat. I scrambled to put my package of beef stroganoff with noodles into the oven bag and seal it. As per the directions I had added 2 cups of room temp water to the entree. I waited the 20 mins as specified and tried the food. The steam coming out of the holes in the oven bag had stopped at this point but the whole kit was still quite hot. Per the manufacturer this gives you 2.5 cups of food with 250 cals per cup of which 90 cals are from fat. We can argue all day that the fat and salt content of these things is high by - lets face it - if your in deep you are going to want as much cals, fat, and salt to replace what you have lost as possible. To me it seemed as if this pouch would feed two adults or an adult and 2 or so kids. I'm a big guy but I would estimate I got about 1/2 of it down and that was plenty for me. Taste. I have never had this type of food before so my expectations were quite low; the beef, the noodles, and the sauce all - to me - were all quite good. I'm a quite picky eater but I would honestly say I would be thrilled to eat this during an emergency and would even fire up a pouch if I were feeling lazy one night and the family were not around. Consistency. Neither too hard nor too soft. I followed the directions to a "T" despite my natural inclination to add less water and let it cook longer. The food was pleasantly warm which I think adds to the experience. The beef, noodles, and sauce all seemed - to me at least - to be quite normal in texture. As my 20 mins of cook time were coming up I scrambled to find a strainer thinking I would need to rid the mixture of some of the liquid but this was not necessary. Granted I only ate 1/2 the package but it was about the consistency of what beef stroganoff should be and it was - thankfully - beef soupenoff. Overall quite impressed by the oven kit as well as the entree. I would caution people that - despite some of what I read on the internet - the chemical reaction that creates the heat/steam is quite intense - to the point I need a dish towel to seal up the oven. In the future I will probably add water to the entree, place it - sealed - into the oven bag, add the water and - as quickly as possible - seal up the oven bag. My only change from the protocol will probably be to crush the salt pill before I introduce it to the water in the bottle and to quick seal-up the oven bag after pouring the water over the heating pad. As state above I have virtually no experience with camping type food but - especially considering how picky I am - I would have to say that these products exceeded my expectations in every way. I have no affiliation to Mountain House. Will post other reviews of the entree I received in my "best sellers kit" as I fire them.