How times have changed

Remember my boyfriend ( now DH for 49 years) cooking us Vesta Chow Mein on his bed sit gas ring in 1967. Seemed very exotic, but only really liked those crispy noodles.?

When I was 14 I had a babysitting job every Saturday night £1 a week and a vesta meal for supper. Happy days.

Chow Mein with crispy noodles. You could buy the crispy noodles separately and we used to have them as a snack. Haven’t seen them for years.

Vesta meals too exotic for my parents who preferred fish'n'chips.

Loved them all! But how about Fray Bentos s and k pies in flat tins, hard to open, hardly any meat and soggy pastry, lovely....I still keep one in the cupboard for 'emergencies', not everyone's choice but with a few veg has made meals for my family from way back.

Haha-yes i too had these my mum got them 'as a treat' when i was a kid! (In the 70's mainly)I thought theyd stopped selling them by the 90's! But NO- i found some not long ago in one of the supermarkets and bought a couple of chow meins to see what theyre like..then promptly went off ideaBut theyre still in date(they always had such a long shelf life,so great for camping/caravanning)so tonight i might show my 2youngest kids(20&15) what we had 'back in the day' for a chinese meal! Thanks for the reminders.& the fond memories.i too used to watch fascinated as the crispy noodles puffed up?great memories! Wonder if kids from today will have fond memories of a 'happy meal' or some such when theyre older?

Yes the chow mein definately seems to have been a firm favourite for most! The others were nice we tried every flavour when i was growing up(im now 55) but chow mein definately the winner,cause of the fascination of the puffy noodles

Chow Mein for me too. When the children were in bed we treated ourselves.

Bring back crispy noodles!?

I seem to remember a company bringing out some kind of 'ready made meal' in a foil airtight package of sorts- probably to rival vesta- but dont think they really took off in the same way

Yes I used to make myself one as a special treat back in the 70's when my Mom & Dad went out on a Saturday night. I thought myself so posh that (like 'Massimo') I used to place the curry in the centre of the rice ?
Ahh great memories!!!

Used to love the prawn curry back in the day.
I thought i’d put a packet in my DD’s grocery box when she went to university. She thought it was disgusting so tastes have certainly changed?

Yes if i remember rightly it did actually say in the cooking instructions to arrange the rice in a ring then spoon the curry in the centre for serving?great days.yes i remember chicken supreme too from those days- in a can we loved that- and the fray bentos pies- you can still get both these- i try them sometimes as a quick meal& a flash with nostalgia- my 2 youngest wont eat them- we used to have some soya meat chunks in a tin also i remember- i dont remember who made them though- but for soya they really were tasty(in some kind of gravy) and what with the rise in vegetarian/vegan diets these days maybe these should make a 'comeback'?? I doubt theyd taste the same though

I know- weve spoiled the kids of today by giving them all the new& exotic 'real food' available to us these days- that they dont appreciate what we considered 'exotic' back in our day.

I used to beg for a Vesta or something similar!! I thought they were the height of sophistication.
My Mum cooked Spanish, Indian & Chinese from scratch. My Grandfather & Uncle had spent time in India & China & were good cooks so taught her. Her next door neighbour as a child was Spanish- having escaped from Spain at start of Civil War & Mum loved going in there to look after her small sons & was taught to cook there too.
One of my clearest memories is being taken to Soho to find dried bird's nests to make soup- I must have been about 4 & very bored.
Luckily she passed it all on to me so we rarely have a takeaway unless it is fish & chips although I'd happily choose one but DH prefers my cooking- I should never have let on I could cook 'foreign'.

This thread has triggered some vivid memories for me. I actually worked at Batchelors Foods as a student in the late 60's. I started by having to work in all areas of the factory in Ashford in Kent. I watched the raw meat being loaded in on conveyors (blue clothes for raw meat area), cooked and feeze dried, to following the process through to the spices and flavourings being tipped down big hoppers (by women who would hoik up a huge sack under each arm and carry them), then seeing ingredients being fed into packets. I spent a week packing dried soups in boxes. Then onto quality control.

I ended up working in the packaging department for a few years. Packaging also included taste testing to make sure that the packaging was doing its job. I don't think I've touched Vesta since but that's where my career started.

Omg such memories, especially making a ring with rice and putting the curry in the middle. I'm going to do that the next tevwe have curry.

My mum was a home economics teacher and was quite ahead of her time. We used to have sausage curry.

Another favourite of mine were the crispy savory pancakes

It was always fish&chips on a friday teatime for us from the local chippy(fish&chip shop)but we always had a vesta night once every week. I remember too when my mum discovered dried pasta vermicelli ' nests'- and enhanced her cooking repetiorre

Before we were married my late DH shared a flat in Tottenham( an interesting place ! ) with one of our friends. His girlfriend and I used to mock them for living on Vesta curries etc. . Have to admit to buying them a couple of times after we were married, but then began to make our own-much nicer ! Thank goodness we’ve moved on from then and have a great choice of what to eat -too much sometimes,maybe.

OMG! Yes the crispy pancakes kate- we had those too but my older brother was more keen on them than i- but i noticed findus still do these and i introduced them to my kids-(older ones had them when they were growing up mid 80's-90's)but now ive re- introduced them in last 18 mths to my 2 youngest boys-my 20 year old likes them but sadly my youngest(almost 16) does not.he prefers a medium rare steak! See,completely spoiled these days!

The crispy pancakes dont seem to have anywhere near as much filling as they used to though- but its still gets sizzlingly searing hot in the middle so you burn your yourself if you dont be careful

Also still around and a firm favourite with my 20 year old is the angel delight packet desserts that my mum used to make back in the 70's- maybe theres more of my late mother in my son than i realised!

And she passed away before i was even having him- hmm strange that

Nankate - prawn cocktail,steak and Black Forest gateau - yummy that brought back good memories- remember the Bernie Inns. Forget the Blue Nun though.
Loved the Findus pancakes.
My parents had a small shop/post office. She sold the Vesta range, so exotic.
Dad loved Camp coffee, Mum and I preferred the little tins of Nescafé.

Little tins of Nescafé! Really cute size.
And remember ‘Pop Tarts’?

Try getting anything delivered where I live! Make it or lump it round here...