Most or Least Favorite School Lunch?

[1MoreFord]

In elementary school you could get cookies and milk at morning recess for, IIRC, $0.03 and I believe extra milk at lunch was $0.02. I think lunch was $0.25. I rarely ate lunch at school as I only lived about a block and a half away. The ladies at school even made the hamburger buns for lunch. You might get a huge half for the bottom, or the top, but they almost never matched!
I got volunteered to help unload the kitchen stocks one day and when I saw the chicken soup base that about ended my days of eating school lunches. Nastiest looking mess I'd ever seen. Bunch of fatty globs floating in an ugly colored liquid along with chicken limp chicken skin.

During junior high I just carried my lunch most of the time. When I did eat the food it had improved to being at least edible by my standards.

In high school the food there was prepared at a central kitchen and trucked to the school. There were a lot of fast food type items available and I remember the "BBQ" sandwiches being among the better choices.

College memories include mystery meat and gristle burger. AKA smothered steak and country fried steak. There was always mashed taters and usually well overcooked broccoli. I ate so many green beans, because the other offerings were usually so bad, and burned out on them. Stopped eating them for years.

When I practice taught I fondly remember their chili beans and cornbread. Also the apple sheet pan pies. Wish I had gotten the recipes for the beans and pie as I've never been able to recreate them.

 

[zwiller]

1990 grad. School lunches were really good but from some reason the kids talked trash about them. Piping hot lunch in the middle of winter like turkey, mashed taters with gravy, corn, bread, and brownie instead of PBJ?!?! F YES! My friends were weird, they mostly bagged so they could eat treats/candy. I'd often trade my dessert for their pizza, etc. I was sorta famous at lunch for awhile. I once asked for 2 milks. It created a scene, one lady after another yelling asking their supervisor "Can we sell a kid 2 milks?!?!" LOL

MIL retired from school kitchen and my wife worked in ours for awhile but been out of it a decade. The current menu is INSANELY modern. None of that "sunday meal" meat and taters stuff anymore. Salad bar, walking taco, general so chicken, etc. Yes there WAS a notebook with all those old recipes in there. Wife laughed about my fascination of the notebook. I found out the recipes are SOOOOOOOO simple. Without ANY hesitation my fave thing was white sauce over rice. No idea why just loved the stuff. Was served with multiple things. It's simply canned cream of chicken soup made with milk!!!

 

[Brokenhandle]

Another 1990 grad...I don't remember any really bad cafeteria food, maybe some that wasn't the greatest. Only had one cafeteria in the grade school, if you were in high school we had to walk two blocks to get there. I do remember the spaghetti was watery enough it took two slices of bread to sop it up!
Cafeteria food in college was pretty good also. I worked for a farmer after I got out of class so stopped by the cafeteria for a sack lunch for supper... never ate them, usually brought them back to the dorm after work and let the guys playing cards have it. Farmer's wife Betty was a great cook! Always had a home cooked meal every night... boys would always ask " what did Betty make for supper tonight?"
I should have brought them to the farm... Betty would have loved to cook a meal for them and they would have loved it!

Ryan