Dining Options

OK, so since we can't really leave the compound to eat at Kabul restaurants unless we have a really good, plausible excuse, there aren't dining options per se - the DFACs ("dining facilities" - did I mention the military occasionally uses acronyms?) are the same on either side of the Embassy compound.  But you can choose which item to select from the cafeteria line.  I guess you could also choose not to eat.  Theoretically you can choose to cook, if you don't live in a hooch, but since access to ingredients like meat is not easy, that's similar to choosing not to eat.  But back to the DFAC choices.
Breakfast is pretty good.  You can gets eggs made to order; available nearly every day are either grits or oatmeal, sausage (with a little smiling pig label that says 'Include Pork' if it's not made from turkey) or bacon, scrambled eggs, and on an erratic basis fresh fruit, though depending on supply interruptions, not always so fresh, and often canned.  Speaking of supply interruptions, we are currently experiencing one of the most dire kinds of supply interdiction - no wine, no alcohol of any kind, and no prospects for it for at least a week!  Anyway, we don't usually have that with breakfast anyway, so that's not germane.  There is stale bread, usually bagels or muffins, occasionally danishes (almost never Danes, though you do see them in Helmand; their part of the base is called Camp Viking), and cereal, especially Lucky Charms.  There's also banana milk; I'm not sure how it tastes or what it's made of.
Lunch and dinner items are always designated green, yellow or red.  This is supposed to indicate the relative healthiness of the food.  It doesn't seem that reliable - you'll find heavily fried foods occasionally listed as green.  But it's probably right when it has things like cordon bleu (red, or better said, rouge); chili (red), broiled chicken breast (green), fried chicken (red, but without question the most delicious item available), overcooked pasta, tacos, etc.  There is a "Fresh Grill" which, depending on the day, offers hamburgers, turkey burgers, grilled sausages, onion rings or grilled cheese.  Maybe every other week, usually for dinner, there are enormous glazed doughnuts that would make Krispy Kreme envious.  Those probably aren't labeled green. There's an ice cream bar with chocolate shavings, maraschino cherries, and nuts.  On Friday evenings there is surf and turf.  It consists without exception of a tasteless ribeye with a really strange spongelike texture, and some seafood item, rotating among very fishy-tasting fish things, crab legs, breaded shrimp, or more fish things.  This is the stuff we eat, and this is the stuff everyone complains about having to eat.  One of the joys of the R&R trips is that you get to eat whatever you want.  We get to do this in just over two weeks.