Well, we have a lunchbox thread, how about school lunches?

[Archae]

Anything infamous about the lunches you had in the school cafeteria?

I was in school mostly during the 70's.
And we had two quite memorable things served to us.

Pizza burgers
Cookies

The "pizza burgers" were a half a bun, with hamburger in tomato sauce spread on them, and an inch square slice of "American cheese."
I liked 'em!

The cookies were treated like fine wine, they were aged.
By the time they got to our trays, they were tooth-breaking hard!

Anyone else have any pleasant or unpleasant memories of hot school lunch?

[femmocrat]

1. Does anyone else remember breaded fish squares with a tomato-y sauce?

The sauce was kind of like cream of tomato, but thicker. It was disgusting.

I do remember a turkey mixture on a split biscuit that was really good though.

I never ate the school lunch after 6th grade.

[spiderpig]

12. Friday fish at junior high in the 60s

Top of the menu (black board with push-on white letters):

"Haddock 25 cents"

It looked like an orange kitchen sponge soaked in grease, with a big blob of tartar sauce on the plate.

[femmocrat]

13. LOL

Good description! I never saw this "concoction" anywhere but a junior high cafeteria.

[haele]

2. They started getting away from actual cooks when I was in High School.

But in Elementary school and Jr. High/Middle school (They did the switch the year I started Jr. High), I remember we had actual cooks that would start making both a hot and cold lunch every day for everyone around 8 in the morning.
There was always a snack "tray" with a choice of a piece of toast, veggies (primarily a piece of fruit, carrots and celery - though occasionally, we'd get snap peas in season) anti-pasta (cold cuts and cheese), and boiled eggs.
And by 10am, we'd be smelling hot lunch; big trays of lasagna, beef stroganoff, fried chicken, all sorts of casseroles, chicken-fried steak, the ubiquitous meat loaf and mashed potatoes, fish sticks/mac n' cheese on Fridays. Soup of the day, along with the toast.
They also made pudding, cookies, "tarts" or sheet-cake for dessert - in elementary school, they made us bring back our lunch tray before we could pick up a dessert; had to eat something "healthy".
The cooks weren't too bad, either - and you'd always be encouraged to get as much as you felt like eating, and there were many kids in my school where the school lunch was the biggest, most complete "real meal" they ate all day.

Once in a while, the school would get fast food (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burgermiester) for special events, but usually it was a last day of school before one of the breaks.
In High school, I had my first - and last - commercially provided school lunch. I went home to make my own hot lunch after that.

I swear the hot lunches back in the 1960's came from the same Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my Mom got at school when she took Home Ec.

Haele

[lillypaddle]

11. Sounds like we had it pretty good in the '60s

Too bad the kids today are missing out.

[surrealAmerican]

4. We used to get pizza every Friday.

It looked just like a round potholder, but was by far the most popular meal they served.

At first, if you didn't want what was served that day, your only other option was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. One year, they changed that, and you also had the option of getting a hamburger.

This was also in the '70s. I remember it cost us 35 cents.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Mystery Meat.

Some kind of ground "beef" (Woodchuck? Possum? Road kill?) with the occasional lump of gristle, awash in pale greasy gravy over mashed potatoes. This was in the '60s.

[Jamaal510]

6. My favorite lunch

were at my old elementary school. I loved the Teriyaki rice and burritos, and it was also nice how on Fridays, they would give us cupcakes.

[Awsi Dooger]

7. I was a trader

Many items were dependably scheduled. I loved some and hated some. Other kids at my table had opposite tastes.

One day I proposed automatic trades: Every time certain items I loved but other kids hated were on the menu, they'd give them to me, in return for me doing the same.

Let's see, I got all the green beans and fish sandwiches. I gave up macaroni and cheese and cheeseburgers. I despise cheese.

There were other swaps but I forget the specifics.

It was fun, especially when I was loaded with 5 or 6 fish sandwiches and I had to cover my plate when a cafeteria worker or teacher walked past the table. I couldn't risk my scheme ruled illegal.

Some days I went mostly hungry but my grandmother would make up for it with a quick trip to Burger King once I got home: Hamburgers were 19 cents, fries 21 cents, milkshake 25 cents. I was too young for Whoppers but they were 39 cents. I think the Yumbo was 45 cents.

[malthaussen]

8. My first elementary school had no cafeteria.

We had one 45-minute midday break, during which we trooped to the basement to eat lunch, which we had to bring with us. Our mothers voluntarily supervised a cooler that dispensed milk (in glass bottles), but nothing else. However, the 45-minute lunch was just long enough that one could, if flush, walk to the high school where they had an actual cafeteria that served hot meals.

Then I moved across the state, into a school district with one of the thoroughly modern modular elementary schools that sprung up like weeds in response to the Baby Boom. There we had a 15-minute recess and a half-hour lunch period, and a cafeteria where one could buy a hot lunch for the bargain-basement price of 25 cents (milk not included -- add 5 cents per half pint. Since I love milk, I always got two). This was just one of many culture shocks awaiting the poor boy when we moved to the new suburb. Interestingly, for how "modern" the facilities and curriculum were, they were behind my old school in just about every academic subject. But at least it was a nice building that hadn't been constructed in 1910.

-- Mal

[jmowreader]

9. The "Surprise Burger" was an especial treat

The Palouse region, which crosses the Idaho-Washington border, has always been America's most significant lentil-growing region. As a result, in the 1970s the schools up here were each presented an entire truckload of palletized 50-pound bags of lentils as a gift from the state lentil-farmers' association. Fortunately, they didn't have to make us eat ALL the lentils, and all the school districts made a nice chunk of change by selling off their free lentils. But my school's cooks were still stuck with a skid of lentils they had to get rid of by putting them into us.

Enter the Surprise Burger, a delectable mixture of chopped onions, boiled lentils and some sort of meat we couldn't identify (although we quickly noticed the supply of stray dogs around the school fell to zero the days they cooked this atrocity), encapsulated in bread dough and baked to a golden perfection.

The first time they served this shit, the surprise was they were the most godawful things any of us had ever eaten.
The second time they served it, the surprise was they were just as bad as the first time.
The third time they served it, the surprise was the entire student body refused to go to lunch.

They didn't serve it a fourth time.

[lillypaddle]

10. I was in junior/senior high (same school) in the 1960s

My favorite meal was spaghetti casserole with mashed potatoes & gravy, green beans, and a buttered roll. Container of orange drink. The cost for that? 34 cents!!!

We had good, hot meals, almost NO junk food. I don't know how much 34 cents would be in today's dollars/cents.

[mainer]

14. San Diego public schools, the 60's: MEATLOAF!

I loved the meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It was tender and juicy. I've tried to reproduce it, without luck.

[hunter]

15. 35 cents and it was cooked at school.

Real stainless steel utensils and hard plastic trays. (The kitchen staff had dishes to wash, and the lunch supervisors and janitors had to be mindful that utensils didn't end up in the trash.)

Fish, cheese pizza, mac & cheese, etc. on Friday.

Orange juice frozen in little paper cups, "sherbet," but not really.

Our cafeteria made good brownies and cake.

Parents could pay for lunches in advance and those kids got a card that was identical to the card kids with subsidized or free lunches got. But after a few days the cafeteria workers knew who to let pass without paying, and they probably let a few kids pass who'd forgotten their lunches or lost their lunch money. After you'd eaten your lunch, you could go back with your tray seeking any leftovers.

While our kids were growing up their school lunches were free, but not so nice as lunches I remember, being made in some central place and delivered to all the schools, frequently including a few items of factory made food.

Lunches are free because so many children qualify for free lunches here it's not worth accounting for the kids who can afford them. During the summer break school cafeterias remain open for lunch, free for anyone 17 and under.

Our children preferred to bring lunches from home, but it was handy knowing if they forgot their lunches they wouldn't starve.

I think school lunches ought to be free, healthy, and appetizing everywhere, even in affluent communities because we never really know what horrors a kid may be facing at home.

Sadly, there's too many people who are terrified our children might grow up to be socialists, or worse, they don't want their taxes going to feed children who are not white.

[Yonnie3]

18. In elementary school we had real food.

Home made, fresh from the oven flaky biscuits and hearty home made beef soup was my favorite. Once in a while they would make fried chicken from scratch and that was good too.

By the time I was in high school, frozen breaded mystery meat patties with color coded gravies, instant mashed potatoes and canned vegetables were the usual fare.

[lillypaddle]

20. Kids deserve a decent meal

I know my granddaughter will be okay, but ALL kids need to be okay. School may be the only decent and nutricious hot meal they have all day. Damn, that is the least we can do for our children. Chuck that fast food and mystery meat.