What do you remember about school dinners.

[Barrattess]

I know you were sick on purpose!!
I worked as a lunchtime supervisor (aka dinnerladies) in an infant school for 14 years. We didn't force them to finish the food, but they had to have a taste. And there were always 3 choices

So....it was you was it?.....

Look at my face...see what you did to me...lol

[FairMaiden]

I remember people pulling faces like Barrattess' lovely avatar

[PoppyGrove]

I don't know how you all do it, I can just about remember this morning's breakfast.

Luckily I take after Dad and have a memory like an elephant. Its great for the good memories ...

[herbalbrew]

I remember for dinners we have..... spam fritters (floating in 10ins of fat), bird's nests (spag bol) and mashed pots with everything

dessert was....prunes & tapioca (frog spawn), rosehip syrup & semolina, jam sponge & custard

[Fossy]

I know you were sick on purpose!!
I worked as a lunchtime supervisor (aka dinnerladies) in an infant school for 14 years. We didn't force them to finish the food, but they had to have a taste. And there were always 3 choices

1. Eat it
2. Leave it
3. or a clip round the ear.

[TexasAda]

Ah yes, memories of school meals. It sounds like most of you had a bigger variety than we did and it all sounds pretty good except the liver. I've never liked liver althogh i used to eat braunschweiger (sp?), the cold liver sausage.

We had some pretty good meals too and i never understood how people could sneer at institutional food. Even if it's not cooked gourmet style, it's usually bigger variety than a kid would get a home because no parent (in those days always mother) would cook that many items per meal, consistently.

We had a lot of "goulash" which was macaroni with tomato sauce, onioins and hamburger. I loved vegetables and in first grade made a huge impression on my tablemates by getting five servings of canned spinach and eating them of course.

We had to clean our plates. There was a lunchroom woman standing by the exit door. We had to scrape off any SMALL leavings into a communal waste bowl that must have been no bigger than four quarts. In other words, we weren't allowed to throw away food.

When we had things i literally coudn't stomach, i got pretty creative about stuffing them into my pockets. We had recess right after lunch so it was like prisoners hauling out dirt from a tunnel dug in a prison camp.

[DaisyChain]

I fondly remember pink, green and white custard with my pudding
but the thing that always sticks in my mind is the one HUGE meatball we used to get with some meals, it was the size of a tennis ball.....i swear!

[opalsmoon]

I liked everything except tapioca and semolina puddings. Yuk.

[JerseyDevil]

Here in the U.S. ( The Land of Everything Good and Pure ) back in the 50's I only recall pizza that had the taste of newspaper ladled with drying ketchup and questionable cheese.

[TiasTreasures]

This thread threw me for a minute because we Yanks call it "lunch", you Brits call it "dinner". Assume we're both talking about the noontime meal? It does sound as though the U.K. fed kids better than the U.S.

I have always loved liver and onions, guarantee you we never got that! Lots of us were on a federal assistance program for low income families, got hot lunch for $2.00 a month. The school got free surplus food from the same government agency, so we ate whatever arrived. Lot of macaroni mixed with whatever, lots of Jello, reconstituted canned orange juice (only fruit juice we got, we loved it), lots of hamburger and hot dog dishes. Fortunately, I lived in Minnesota, where the cooks knew how to make a "hotdish" that tasted pretty good from just about any ingredients they could find!