British 24hr Ration - Menu 19 - Part 1 (Breakfast)

[Ruleryak]

British 24hr Ration - Menu 19
Muesli / Leek & Potato Soup / Chicken in Yellow Curry & Rice

Big thanks to steve1989 for sending me this UK ration - it's a February 2015 date of production! I'm going to post this review in parts as I go.

Start with the contents? Ok - sounds good!

British 24hr Menu 19 Complete Contents

Ration Contents, Evaluation, and Prize Entry Card

Main Contents:

• Fuitful Muesli
• Leek & Potato Soup
• Chicken in Yellow Curry & Rice
• Sticky Toffee Pudding
• Ginger Crunch Bsicuit
• Fruit Puree (Apple/Raspberry/Blackcurrant)
• Peanut Butter
• Chilli Beef Jerky (two L's in chili?)
• Melon, Mango & Pineapple Fruit Mix
• Mixed Fruits Nougat
• Cookies & Cream Cereal Bar
• Nuts Cocktail

Drinks:

• Apple Flavoured Isotonic Drink Powder
• Orange Flavoured Drink Powder
• Blackcurrant Flavoured Drink Powder
• Grapefruit Flavoured Drink Powder
• Caramel Flavoured Hot Chocolate Drink Powder

Accessory Bag Contents:

British 24hr Accessory Pack Contents

• Hot Sauce (green Tabasco in glass!)
• Instant Coffee - Nescafe
• Instant Coffee - Douwe Egberts
• Teabag - Ty-Phoo
• Teabag - English Breakfast
• Beverage Whitener x4
• Sugar x4
• Water Purification Tablets x6
• Tissues
• Matches x5
• Wet Wipes x2
• Assorted Chewing Gums x3
• Spork
• Re-usable Polybag

Part 1 - Breakfast

I assembled what I felt made sense as a breakfast:

Breakfast Items

• Fuitful Muesli
• Melon, Mango & Pineapple Fruit Mix
• Mixed Fruits Nougat
• Grapefruit Flavoured Drink Powder
• Teabag - English Breakfast
• Sugar
• Beverage Whitener
• V6 Dental Care Gum

I followed the instructions to prepare the contents, adding 100ml cold water to the muesli, 500ml to the drink powder, and boiling water for the tea. Looks great!

Breakfast - Prepared

The muesli with milk and fruit had great texture and taste to it. The milk was fresh thankfully - like steve1989 has said, sometimes it can go bad fairly quickly. The mixed dried fruits were strangely off putting at first, but I grew to find them to be just fine. It was the melon pieces that threw me off - I'm still not sure exactly what type they were. The packaging just says melon in the ingredients as well. Definitely hard to place the taste. If anyone knows for sure what type Vestey is using let me know.

The English Breakfast tea was just too fitting a choice for my first English Ration Breakfast so I opted for it in place of one of the coffees. Not to be too vague, but it was exactly what you'd expect from English Breakfast, all in all a good choice. The grapefruit juice was really tasty! I was impressed - it went well with the rest of the breakfast.

The nougat bar was a nice treat to end the meal. It was a bit stiff, and incredibly sweet so I paired it with the tea, bite for sip, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Each of the meals has its own package of chewing gum. Chewing after meals has been proven to clean the mouth by increasing saliva production by roughly 1000%. The saliva flushes food particles, bacteria, etc out of the mouth and thus protects tooth enamel. Other studies show it may aid digestion and increase metabolism. I know most rations include gum as a follow up, but I hadn't thought as much about it until now.

As always, thank you for reading and please keep an eye out for the next two parts. These packs always include so much food!

[Ruleryak]

Box - Side 1

Box - Side 2

Box - Side 3

Box - Side 4

Box - Top

Box - Bottom - Range Target

[steve1989]

Your photos have me in awe - your descriptions spot on - had one of these myself and it had to be one of the more enjoyable Rations I've had.

That muesli was fresh - good deal! Ya know, there's nothing worse than getting sick off expired dried milk, but this one was too fresh of a DoP for that to happen.
The mixed fruit was odd to my palate at first too! Took a second to adjust to it, and it had to have been the little melon or papaya bits. Something about was just a tad odd - not bad, just odd. I think it may have been a preservative in it? Perhaps sulfur dioxide? Not sure.
That English Breakfast Tea has quite the balance with the breakfast part of this Ration - it is mild, and almost cleans the palate for your next bite of something else.
The grapefruit juice is perfect! Seriously tastes like dehydrated grapefruit juice, for when ya add water it comes right back to life with what you would think is freshly squeezed without pulp! And somehow the acidity doesn't conflict with the rest of that awesome food.
Be careful with those nougat bars if ya have fillings in your teeth. Chew slowly and carefully - then you'll have one heck of a nice sweet treat. You did it right pairing it with the tea, I should have done the same. I actually ate mine in the car driving out to one of my accounts with work.. hehe!

I must be crazy, I'm pretty sure I gave all my chewing gums away because I have such a phobia of sweeteners. Maybe next time I should just give in and enjoy those too. Really cool stuff, I had no idea of the benefits!


Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful Ration - now I gotta check out your other post for the dinner part!

[elandil]

awesome review, you're making me wanna find one of these myself. May have to hit Ebay later, see what I can find.

Interesting to see the Douwe Egberts coffee, from what I understand it's suposed to be one of the gourmet brands on par with Starbucks. Be interesting to see how it pairs up against the Nescafe.

Never seen dehdryated melon. I know i've tried dehdryating watermelon before, and did not have much success. Based on the color I'd say it was probably a muskmelon or honeydew.


I'm really looking forward to the rest of the review. Again, awesome job.

[rattattoo]

With you eating and Steve donating, it was almost a "tag-team" review.
Thanks to you both for keeping the review flowing on here.

[SugarLord]

Great review - I just picked up one of these menu's at a 1940's fair in Bushey today (Hertfordshire) The stall was selling 24 hr rations for way cheaper than internet prices as a deal of the day. Still got a year or two to run on the sell by dates as well. We opened up a Menu 7 to ogle the contents (and eat the lemon/lime sweets and Mango cake-my daughter couldn't take that but the rest of us ate it), but I look forward to this menu 19, now your review has whetted my appetite.

I must look at part 2!

[BlackDogBob]

Great review brother! I have one of these and was putting off trying it due to doing other rations. But now I have got to try this one! Lol. Will eat it tonight. Thanks for posting.

[Ruleryak]

Thanks everybody! Links to parts 2 and 3 (for convenience):

Part 2 (Dinner)
Part 3 (Lunch)