But when he arrived at the armory, Maj. Pete Adams wasn't there.

"So this one guy said, 'you know, he'll be back in 20 minutes - you're a chef, right? You should make a meal for him.' "

Talcot quickly took stock of what was available. One soldier offered some nachos and processed cheese spread. Another had some ramen.

"That wasn't a good start," Talcot remembered. "But you know, they had some MREs. It's an armory, so you know they have MREs."

Taking the entree from a beef stew meal, Talcot pushed the meat into a small lid "to form a perfectly round mound of beef." He cut two crackers at an angle for garnish and scattered finely crushed dried fruit on the beef.

And then for dessert: Talcot mashed up a slice of pound cake, mixed it with a package of chocolate drink mix and added just a little bit of water, to create a "mock chocolate bread pudding." He topped it all off with a rose, crafted from a Tootsie Roll.

"He ate it," Talcot recalled. "It blew my mind. He said, 'wow, that was the best MRE I ever had.' "

When the American Culinary Federation holds its western regional conference in Salt Lake City next month, the festivities will include a salute to the oft-maligned military chef - and a competition between the top chefs from each of the five military service branches.

Talcot, who is helping to organize the event, said he's hoping to give his military peers an opportunity to showcase the same kind of inventiveness and creativity he showed his commanding officer years back - albeit with a better selection of ingredients.

"We're going to do it Iron Chef style," said Talcot, "but instead of Kitchen Stadium, we've got Kitchen Pentagon."

The event is April 18 to 22 at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center.