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

 

[mr_whipple]

Ok.. almost forgot. I only recall a few items from school food as I mostly was a brown bagger as a kid. We were lower middle class blue collar, but mom always sent me packing with the basics. That said, in elementary we had the cafeteria and I would always buy the little cartons of milk, kick me for not remembering the finest of details but I'm pretty sure it was a nickel for the chocolate and pennies for the plain old white stuff. Born in July '67 so whatever year... I'm guessing 3rd or 4th grade, we had these things called pizza burgers that were english muffins, pizza sauce and cheese, and if there was a pepperoni I can't say, but no damn way was there a burger anywhere around. Pretty sure it was sauce and cheese, nothing else. Anyway... there was this girl who was completely in love with the pizza burger and would trade her bag lunch one item at a time for them. I recall her having a few stacks maybe 5-6 high each on her tray and beaming like the chesire cat. Seriously obsessed. Oddly, for all the things in my memory that are lost to time I still recall her name. She must have moved as I don't remember her in middle or high school, but she was the queen of the pizza burger! Thanks mneeley490 for posting this thread.

 

[mneeley490]

Oddly, for all the things in my memory that are lost to time I still recall her name. She must have moved as I don't remember her in middle or high school, but she was the queen of the pizza burger! Thanks mneeley490 for posting this thread.

There's one girl I remember from those days, as well. I sometime wonder whatever happened to her, especially around this time of year. Never saw her again after grade school.
Her name was Becky, and she was a sweet girl who always wore what looked like hand-me-down-3-times clothing, always in a shade of brown or beige. Not quite burlap sack, but obviously not store-bought, either. Not that any of us were young fashion icons, but it stood out in the suburbs. This was a time when the line between Secular and Religious schooling was a little more blurred, especially around the holidays. But her parents belonged to some sort of offshoot of LDS, or Jehovah's Witnesses, and she was never permitted to attend school when we would be having a Halloween, Christmas, or Easter celebration in class. Her absence was conspicuous, and we always felt bad for her because of it. In retrospect, it's amazing to me that they let her attend a public school at all.

 

[DougE]

A couple of years after I graduated (1995) they discontinued that.

That'll make a fella feel old! I graduated in 1983

 

[homebeerbrewer]

I don’t remember grade school, but in high school, the cafeteria lady made turnovers. Blueberry, strawberry, cherry, apple. I always scheduled my study hall, which was in the cafeteria, the first or second period of the day, because after that, there were no more. Plus, they had coffee in the morning. Hence my addiction to this day.

Graduated in 1985.

 

[mneeley490]

A couple of years after I graduated (1995) they discontinued that.

@yankee2bbq I too am Class of 1995

Dave

Another 1990 grad...

Ryan

That'll make a fella feel old! I graduated in 1983

Graduated in 1985.

Whipper snappers...1979.

 

[DougE]

Whipper snappers...1979.

You are the same age as my twin sisters, then. I graduated junior high in '79 and they graduated high school the same year.

 

[Winterrider]

Whipper snappers...1979.

I'm with ya !

 

[jcam222]

Several things I remember liking were the rectangle pizza, burgers with cheese whiz , pizza burgers and corn bread with syrup. Also loved the no bake cookies

 

[DougE]

Several things I remember liking were the rectangle pizza, burgers with cheese whiz , pizza burgers and corn bread with syrup. Also loved the no bake cookies

We got a rectangle thing called pizza with a wedge of cheddar cheese, edible but not great. The other things you mention must have come after my time.

 

[JIMSMOKES]

That'll make a fella feel old! I graduated in 1983

Youngun I quituated in 82! 10 weeks before graduation! LoL

 

[DougE]

Youngun I quituated in 82! 10 weeks before graduation! LoL

I was going to quituate myself, but my parents wouldn't sign. I turned 18 in April, so really wasn't much point in quitting at that point.

 

[JIMSMOKES]

I was going to quituate myself, but my parents wouldn't sign. I turned 18 in April, so really wasn't much point in quitting at that point.

This was me starting around 8th grade. LoL

In between 7th and 8th grade I put a small engine repair sign at end of driveway.

 

[philpom]

While I mostly brown bagged it, usually something called a jam sandwich (2 pieces of wonderful bread jammed together) I did on occasion get to grab a tray of food, meal assistance, single mom. Every Wednesday was pizza day and every Friday was burgers. I remember that because those were foods I almost never got.

I saw the rectangular pizza mentioned several times here. Oh yeah, that was the ticket.

I like this guy's channel and he did an episode on school pizza. Enjoy it.... maybe!

 

[TimboBBQ!]

One of the things I love about this forum is that many threads stimulate thought on other subjects. For instance, JLinza's thread on chili made me think back of my grade school days in Seattle in the 1960's when chili and cinnamon rolls were a Wednesday staple. Thank you, JLinza!

That got me to wondering what other folks fondly remember?
This was when school cafeterias were staffed with women who actually prepared and cooked the food. No farming the meals out to mass-produced, commercial "kitchens".
Besides chili, my other favorite was creamed turkey over mashed potatoes, with big chunks of turkey in a savory gravy. This was always served with maple bars. And in grade school back then, if you ate everything on your plate, you could go back as many times as you wanted, until they either ran out, or lunch period was over. My friend and I would eat our favorites until we were stuffed! And as I recall, a carton of milk was a nickel, and a school lunch was $0.35 in the late '60's.
But not everything they made was great. I remember sauerkraut was on the menu way too often. Who feeds sauerkraut to little kids??? We tried to bribe other kids to eat it for us, because you couldn't leave for recess until your plate was clean. Also, their "hamburgers" had so much oat-filler in them, they might have qualified as "Vegan".
View attachment 725700

Anyone else have a story to share?

I hated the burgers and loved the little square pizza

 

[TimboBBQ!]

This was me starting around 8th grade. LoL
View attachment 725762
In between 7th and 8th grade I put a small engine repair sign at end of driveway.