Mine is not really a food blog but now and again I like to revisit the past. In previous posts I took you to the
Berni Inn for prawn cocktail, steak and chips and Black Forest Gateau
and then to Little Chef for an All Day Breakfast
This time we are going back to the early 1970s for Vesta Beef Curry…
At that time I had never eaten a curry or a naan bread, rice was strictly only for puddings, olive oil was for treating earache, spaghetti came in tins and I didn’t try proper pasta until 1976 when I went overseas for the first time to Italy. I went with my dad and he was in such culinary shock that he didn’t eat for the first three days and only gave in when he was on the verge of starvation.
But now we were in the space age, astronauts were going to the moon and eating food from a tube and suddenly we were going through a food revolution when the emphasis was on convenience, no more baking or hours of preparation we just opened a box and boiled up a saucepan. We were never going to have to peel potatoes again because we had Smash Instant Potato, just add water…
We would never need to juice an orange again because we had Kellogg’s Rise & Shine dried instant orange. Just add water…
And we had Vesta Ready Meals, six of them to choose from, Chow Mein (China), Beef Curry (India), Chicken Supreme (France), Paella (Spain), Chicken Curry (India again) and Beef Risotto (Italy), one for everyday of the week except Sunday I guess when you could still do a traditional roast if you really wanted to.
You can still buy Vesta meals but only Chow Mein and Beef Curry, the rest have been discontinued, they are not available in supermarkets but can still be purchased on line. I got mine from Amazon, quite expensive, Kim thought that I must be going crazy mad.
So, we were suddenly all going continental, and because we didn’t have passports and had never been there how were we to know that in India, China and Europe they shopped at the local market and prepared meals with fresh ingredients and food didn’t just come in a box?
Earlier this year I visited India and found the food to be quite wonderful. On the box Vesta claims a link with the city of Agra and the Taj Mahal which we went to visit.
After the tour it was lunch-time and we dined in a splendid restaurant and enjoyed a thali, which is a sort of taster plate with ten or so varieties of food to sample and the really good thing that there were seconds available of those we liked the best. My favourite was the lamb curry as it almost always was everywhere in India that we dined..
Anyway, back now to Vesta ready meal 2024. This is it, two packets, one containing a handful of rice, just regular plain rice not even pilau and another with a rather curious amber coloured powder with some lumpy bits which I assumed were the chopped and shaped beef. Nothing on the box to say suitable for vegetarians or vegans incidentally so I rather reluctantly have to accept that there was some meat hidden away somewhere in the dust.
The bread wasn’t included, that came from ALDI from a range called Taste of India.
Vesta meals are made by Premier Foods who still have a range of dehydrated powders including Angel Delight, Marvel Milk, Cup-a-Soup and the aforementioned Smash Instant Potato.
So I followed the instructions on the box and twenty minutes later I was at the table and except for the snow outside I could easily imagine myself back in India…
Well, actually no I could not because it tasted bloody awful, possibly the worst thing ever that I have tried to eat and I say tried because two spoon fulls was more than enough. It looked bad and it tasted bad. The glass of wine helped a bit but not a lot and the bread was good but I won’t be trying the Chicken Chow Mein anytime soon…
Not even anywhere near as good as the railway curry meal that I had on Indian Railways earlier this year. Actually nowhere near as good. That didn’t look very special I have to say but whilst a lot of my fellow travellers rejected it I did eat it and it tasted a whole lot better than it looked.
Preserved and even dehydrated food isn’t new of course, only a month or so ago I had sun dried fish in Portugal. The wine helped…
And this type of food it is still available and next time I am going to try this from ALDI which is a lot cheaper than blast from the past Vesta Ready Meals from Amazon…
Next culinary post I am going to attempt to recreate an Indian Railway dinner so watch out for that…
Have Bag, Will Travel 
