How good were your skool dinners? Was anything absolutely amazing - and now of course you cannot replicate - or anything in the Room 101 "tubes in meat" horror category?
The reason I ask is everyone I currently work with has been talking about skool dinners in the US and they all say they were very very good. They pointed to the rice which was cooked in lard ( o ) but was phenomenal, and a peanut butter fudge/mousse thing that was harder than pudding but not fudge. They almost orgasmed when talking about mashed potatoes and gravy, or the "Friday pizza", or the most fabulous fish sticks they've ever had.
I told them about the dull pig-feed rejection vegetables we had at my skool. Or the tapioca that was obviously slag sold by the nearby cast-iron plant - compulsory at all skools. I mentioned the staple evil - mushy peas - that I'm absolutely convinced was all the snot collected from severely ill people in hospitals around the country. But I did mention the beautiful steamed puddings covered in custard, or the suprisingly good stuffing that we got with christmas dinners, or the most awesome thing - an amazing invention that consisted of a sausage roll and chips sealed inside a crusty roll that was sublime.
How's about you?
My primary school meals were absolutely horrific.
I've never been able to eat SPAM since the crap they served at school.
Best thing we had was steamed jam roly poly with white sauce. Although once when i was at junior school we went to York and stayed over there and went to local schools for dinner time. Best was one with a salad bar. Unbelievable for the 50's and really really good.
I never ever had a school dinner all through my school years. I went home for lunch everyday as both primary and secondary schools I attended were only about 5-10 minutes walk away. But I do remember the smell coming from the kitchens...
I really only have horrific memories of school dinners through the ages.
Particularl low-lights were spam fritters that were about 1% spam and 99% oil, stews with meat that you could chew for a week and still not be able to swallow and semolina that looked like a cat had just vomited in a bowl.
By the time I was about 13, a sympathetic doctor advised my parents that my diet was going to cause me health issues and in association with the teachers strikes that were going on over that period, I got to go home for mum's home-cooked lunches every day.
Ah - good times.... )
Particularl low-lights were spam fritters
Yep, ding ding ding BINGO!
bloody horrible they were.
Primary school lunches were pretty awful.
I think in Juniors was about the worst because on top of being awful it was often luke warm from being trekked across the schoolyard from the kitchen in another building.
I can't complain about high school lunches too much as my mum was running the kitchen for the 1-3 year.
In the 4&5 year they had a less imaginitive menu, same 10 meals rotated each week.
So all through high school if I didnt like what was being served I could just go in the back door and help myself to whatever was in the pantry or fridge.
The kids used to like pizza Wednesdays in their old school as it came from Pizza Hut. Mostly my son would eat a lot of what was on the menu when he was younger.
My daughter now is pretty much eating bagel or yoghurt and my son just buys the junk food, then they both eat at home when they get in at 210
Well, I never much cared for liver and onions, and the custard/mashed potato/gravy was invariably lumpy. BUT I loved the cheese and onion flan, Manchester tart and rice pudding! D Not all at the same time though.
That reminds me, I have some Atora suet in the fridge.......anyone for jam roly-poly?
Debs x )
Cornflake crunch. P Puddings were definitely the best. There was also something that was chocolate rock cake or something like it. It was chocolate (in colour roll ) and rock hard but tasted good. Yummy D
Debs, totally agree on the custard and gravy being lumpy. We used to call the custard - plop plop custard because when you poured it out it went plop plop! lol
I was another packed lunch or home dinner person. The smell from the kitchens was enough to put me off. I remember being very put off by some pink blancmange thing with cornflakes in that I witnessed once.
At primary school, horrible lumpy mashed potato. I've never really liked mashed potato since. Also, watery custard and tapioca. Didn't mind the semolina though. Anything nice like meat pie, the boys got seconds of but not us girls. High school lunches were ok because you got a choice and chips were on the menu every day, not that I had them every day.
My school dinners were always horrible and it took about 5 or 6 years to convince my mum that they weren't edible and that I should be allowed to take a packed lunch like the sensible kids did.
Worst was this butterscotch tart that had custart made from evaporated milk. x
I have a lifelong aversion to hot custard because I was force-fed at two schools when I was a child. Even the mere smell of it makes me want to heave.
Can just about tolerate cold custard as long as it's heavily disguised in something like trifle.
I had Canadian parents growing up in England, so school dinners were generally a bit of a mysterious journey through all sorts of things I would have not normally eaten, and mostly pretty awful I thought. A particular shock was vegetables boiled for a month-and-a-half and of course the (shudder) custard.
The chippy and the caff always seemed a preferable option whenever possible.
I know - whats with the force feeding?Those dinner ladies were like little Hitlers. In those days, there was no choice - you'd get standard slop and be forced to eat it.....I was so glad when they introduced packed lunches.
We got free dinners because our parents were divorced, so we weren't allowed to taked packed lunches. ( I think that was the only bad thing about my parents splitting up.
...oh no, wait.... my mum's choice of boyfriends was also pretty dire (still is, last I heard roll)