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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Best and Worst School Dinners
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Emma Louise:
My school dinners were really good. When I went back to teach many years later most of the staff had them.
If school staff and those at the education departments had to eat the meals that would ensure decent school meals. ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
When I started at one junior school, we shared part of the site with a secondary school which had the kitchen, and a very good cook. I taught in the building with the kitchen, from which lovely smells wafted through the morning. Once a year, cook took the kitchen staff to the local pick-your-own farm and made strawberry gateaux.
Meanwhile, our children were fed from cans brought from the other side of town with gristle stew and overcooked outer leaves of cabbage. (I wonder if the hearts were kept for their superior caste children.)
Eventually, we acquired the whole building, the kitchen and the cook. Wonderful. Until outsourcing to the cheapest tendering private companies removed the skills and the use of fresh raw materials and filled the freezer with peculiar processed stuff.
Better again now, post Jamie.
In my youth, sluggy or caterpillary lettuce was worst.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
Amanda B. I'm sure I should know what Salisbury steak it but I can't remember.
Behold!
Looks like what my nother used to call a rissole..
Posts: 1905 | From: the back of beyond | Registered: Jan 2009
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
Worst savoury: cold pilchards in tomato sauce
Best savoury: boiled salt beef and pease pudding (East London school)
Worst sweet: tapioca pudding (aka frogspawn)
Best sweet: chocolate sponge and chocolate custard
Most embarrassing school dinner admission: my younger son told me 'Mum, the chicken and rice we have at school is much better than anything you cook' ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
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Posts: 776 | From: Edge of the Fens | Registered: Feb 2010
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Worst school meals: the ones they gave us at our primary school
Best school meals: the ones we didn't eat because we went home for lunch. Though even nothing at all would have been an improvement - school dinners were a net negative so eating nothing was preferable.
Worst individual food item: so-called "custard"
Best individual food-item: jelly - but only on the days they ran out of "custard" so they couldn't put any on. (You weren't allowed to refuse what they gave you you were meant to be grateful, the nicer dinner-ladies might put a smaller portion on if they liked you)
One day there was some ice-cream. They apologised for not having the custard. I thought that was funny. What could be beeter than jelly and ice cream? What could be worse than school custard?
The "afters" in general were nasty. Rice pudding was sort of unpleasant but not utterly horrible. There was always rose hip syrup with it which was a bit sickly but actually tasted nice.
There was a kind of steamed spongy pudding which was edible if you could avoid having "custard" poured over it, and was improved by quite large amounts of salt.
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Favourite was fish fingers. Even West Sussex school meals service couldn't screw them up.
You were lucky. Brighton schools could. Of course West Sussex schools were a lot posher and better funded than ours were back then... There were probably few worse primary school systems in Britain in the 1960s than the Brighton ones - I don't really know whey they were so bad, but they were.
quote:
Originally posted by busyknitter:
Spam Fritters anyone? ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
I don't think we had them at our school. I didn't encounter them till much later, so I quite like them
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
The two courses would be placed on the tables before we arrived, which the 'table moniter' would then dish out.
IIRC that was the system in our secondary school, more or less. (At least in the earlier years, later it want to a mroe cafeteria-sysle) You were assigned to a table with some classmates and had to sit at the same one each time. A supposedly respobsible older pupil, would be in charge. It was better than the other way of doing it because there was some possibility of negotiation.
Though, to be honest, I can't remember much about the actual food at all! I suppose that must mean it wasn't so bad.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Angloid
Shipmate
# 159
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Worst individual food item: so-called "custard"
I have never ever seen 'custard' like the stuff they used to serve at my secondary school. Pale yellow and frothy, it was as if they had mixed a teaspoonful of custard powder with washing up liquid. It didn't taste too bad though, especially with the cook's speciality, apple pie.
I didn't stay for dinner in primary school: they were brought in canisters from a distant kitchen and were even less appetising than they might have been in their place of origin. But that was in the days when children could walk home unaccompanied in the middle of the day.
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Posts: 12927 | From: The Pool of Life | Registered: May 2001
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Gracious rebel
Rainbow warrior
# 3523
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Posted
I've been writing a diary daily since 1970, and during my first year at Grammar School (1971-72) each and every day I recorded what I had for school dinner. Even if that was all that I wrote that day!
No photo's though.
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Posts: 4413 | From: Suffolk UK | Registered: Nov 2002
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I loved school spam fritters!
The two best puddings were Swedish apple charlotte and custard, and chocolate cracknel and custard. Tapioca was good too. The only pudding I didn't like was prunes and custard, with people spitting out the prune stones.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I've remembered the worst.
Overcooked spam fritters with really thin spam and dry batter bubbles, served with beetroot from which the colour had leached, along with the flavour (I like beetroot)(normally), and spaghetti in tomato sauce.
And the best. Gypsy Tart. (This was in Kent, where it was a speciality.) I could eat four portions and put on no weight (we spent hours each day walking between buildings up to twenty minutes apart). (This feat is remarkable because the ingredients, apart from the pastry case, consist solely of evaporated milk and a huge amount of soft brown sugar.) (There were four portions available because half the girls on the table didn't eat any, and the remaining three only wanted one portion.) (Recipes available on line, or ready made in independent Kent bakeries or Kent branches of Morrisons.) Second best was Lemon Meringue Pie.
[ 25. June 2012, 17:47: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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busyknitter
Shipmate
# 2501
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Posted
When I was very young I had a terrible time with school dinners. We were given no choice and were expected to eat everything put onto our plates. I was a mega fussy eater, who was not forced to eat anything I didn't fancy by my parents. This combination did not go well.
At my infants school, I was consigned to eat at the "slow eaters" table, presided over by the stern and unsympathetic school secretary. We had to sit with the four year olds and were given spoons to eat with instead of knives and forks.
Things improved in juniors where we had the system of the older children serving the younger ones on each table (as Ken said, more room for negotiation).
When I went to secondary I took my own sandwiches.
In terms of the actual food, I think my favorite main course would have been the roast dinners and for pudding the ice cream, which always came wrapped in little blocks, like a choc ice with no chocolate.
The horrors:
-The dreaded spam fritters; grease on a plate.
-Liver and bacon
-Manchester tart. The jam and pastry was nice, but the custard topping always congealed into a solid block.
-rice pudding and rose hip syrup; completely vomit inducing, I always tried to negotiate being allowed to have just a puddle of the syrup on my plate.
Posts: 903 | From: The Wool Basket | Registered: Mar 2002
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angelica37
Shipmate
# 8478
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Posted
Primary school dinners were rather mixed, some nice things and some horrors, I still can't bear the texture of rice pudding even a nice home made one will make me heave. Spam fritters were OK, if you have to eat spam then fried in crispy batter is the way to go.
One nice but odd dish I always thought of as 'yoghurt pie' which was a pastry base with jam and pink strawberry yoghurt on top.
Posts: 1351 | From: Suffolk | Registered: Sep 2004
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I have had pretty good luck with school food. The most anticipated day at our cafeteria was chicken patty day- basically deep fried white meat patty.
The one cafeteria classic that makes me queasy just thinking about it is the corn dog- a hot dog on a wooden stick, dipped in corn meal batter and fried. I don't get why some people love these things. I love hot dogs, I love corn bread, but something about the combination, especially when I think about someone eating it with cafeteria grade yellow mustard, just sets my stomach on edge.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Keren-Happuch
Ship's Eyeshadow
# 9818
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Emma Louise:
My school dinners were really good. When I went back to teach many years later most of the staff had them.
If school staff and those at the education departments had to eat the meals that would ensure decent school meals.
At KGlet1's school the staff eat with the children. They also have excellent school dinners. Not sure of the precise relationship between these two facts...
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Nea Fox
Posts: 2407 | From: A Fine City | Registered: Jul 2005
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
I have had pretty good luck with school food. The most anticipated day at our cafeteria was chicken patty day- basically deep fried white meat patty.
The one cafeteria classic that makes me queasy just thinking about it is the corn dog- a hot dog on a wooden stick, dipped in corn meal batter and fried. I don't get why some people love these things. I love hot dogs, I love corn bread, but something about the combination, especially when I think about someone eating it with cafeteria grade yellow mustard, just sets my stomach on edge.
Ah, but you've never had hot dogs from North Carolina, have you? If you ever had one of those foul things, you'd be singing the praises of corn dogs, which I admit are pretty disgusting. After my mother died and I had to move from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and go to public school, I encountered truly vile school lunches. The first time I laid eyes on a brightly dyed hot dog, my first instinct was to vomit and then run away. These hot dogs were so creepy! They resembled no hot dog I had seen before or thankfully, since. It was a very poor elementary school I landed in and the stuff they served for lunch just barely qualified as edible. After seeing the horror-show hot dogs and the nauseating puddle of dog sick they called beef stew, I brought my lunch.
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
Sometimes I get the chance to dress up as a Viking and go into schools to demonstrate spinning and weaving to eight year olds, which is huge fun.
We normally have lunch with the children, and often the food is quite good - but it is worrying that children often don't know what they're eating, but don't seem concerned.
As a Viking, I ask them what the potatoes are, (and sometimes they demonstrate how to use a fork - which is like a spoon to shovel stuff up, apparently), but we've also had horror when we've told them that there are dead cows in their beef pie, for instance.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
In the States university dorm food is usually much better than the school food back home, and is usually served cafeteria style, with a variety of menu choices.
My own dorm had the added benefit of being next door to the university test kitchen, so we would regularly get to sample the creations of the food science/culinary arts students who came up with recipes there. They were usually quite good for institutional food. And since we had a huge agricultural college (this was MSU, by the way), I suspect that assorted university livestock and produce wound up in the dorm cafeterias.
Favorite foods in my dorm included the university-made granola, which I sometimes still crave, and for some reason the Maurice salad, which was served in a huge bowl at the end of the salad bar and contained greens, strips of Swiss cheese, ham and turkey and was dressed with a mildly herb-y cream dressing. I really can't think of anything totally awful, except maybe for the overcooked slivers of roast lamb that were occasionally offered as an entree choice. Being a small-town kid from a white-bread part of the state, I always liked International Week, when we'd get passing facsimiles of various cuisines as meal alternatives; that and Passover, when I could enjoy matzoth and haroset.
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Simul iustus et peccator
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Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Confession - my daughter has inherited her mother's love of stodgy school dinner puddings with custard. In primary school she discovered that if she told the dinner ladies horror stories about my cooking, they gave her extra pudding.
"It was" (puppy dog eyes) "ratatouille last night, and the aubergines were organic" she would say, pathetically, and the dinner ladies would shake their heads and ladle on extra custard.
Village life being what it is, I would then hear these tales of my Great Culinary Disasters, as they circulated back to me. "I hear you've been experimenting with organic chick-peas" the dinner lady would say. "I hear it didn't turn out well. Never mind. We made sure she got a good dinner."
The dinner ladies got entertainment, and my daughter got extra pudding - all I got was
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Paddy O'Furniture: quote:
I had my first pizza in first grade and it was a greasy, gloppy mess. I don't know what cheese the cooks put on the pizza, but it wasn't any recognizable cheese I had ever tasted.
Amen, sister.
The weird thing was that most of the other kids loved pizza days. I think the word "pizza" had them mesmerized. Ours were just as bad as yours. Personally, I mostly brown-bagged. Lots of bolognie, peanut butter, and olive loaf sandwiches, with potato chips, an apple, and a few store bought cookies. My lucky lunch days were when the planets conjoined and Mom decided she couldn't make the bag lunch and the cafeteria served fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, green beans, with an ice cream bar for dessert. This was in elementary school.
Middle school was where you could choose between dry hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches with artificial cheese, and whatever mystery meat concoction that was on offer. But what made it all worth it was that our school cooks made the most amazing, large, chewy cookies! ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif) Chocolate chip, peanut butter, snicker-doodles, and the epitome: ginger molasses cookies- oh man!
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Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Confession - my daughter has inherited her mother's love of stodgy school dinner puddings with custard. In primary school she discovered that if she told the dinner ladies horror stories about my cooking, they gave her extra pudding.
"It was" (puppy dog eyes) "ratatouille last night, and the aubergines were organic" she would say, pathetically, and the dinner ladies would shake their heads and ladle on extra custard.
Village life being what it is, I would then hear these tales of my Great Culinary Disasters, as they circulated back to me. "I hear you've been experimenting with organic chick-peas" the dinner lady would say. "I hear it didn't turn out well. Never mind. We made sure she got a good dinner."
The dinner ladies got entertainment, and my daughter got extra pudding - all I got was
![[Eek!]](eek.gif) I hope you have Grandma's Revenge in mind?
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Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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bib
Shipmate
# 13074
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Posted
At least you got school dinners. I always took lunch packed by my mother who always used stale bread for sandwiches as she believed that fresh bread was bad for you. Also,the sandwiches were nearly always filled with smelly substances such as sardines or egg.
Posts: 1307 | From: Australia | Registered: Oct 2007
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no_prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Was anyone else presented with a meat substitute called TVP? You could tell it would be gross before you saw it on the plate.
Texturized vegetable protein.
1970's while at a boarding school. There is also TSP which is specifically soya.
Both are (hopefully 'were', are they still around?) grey, light and require water added. They also result in, to say delicately, disordered digestion.
They are still in use in the U.S. as ground meat extender in some of the cheaper fast food chains. It's probably healthier than the meat it's extending.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Re pizza: I don't remember pizza on the school menu until high school, and theirs was predictably bad: A thin, soggy crust topped with flavorless tomato sauce, a few random vegetables and meat-ish and cheese-ish the consistency of melted plastic.
Our high school also offered a hambuger opt-out alternative to the menu of the day. By "hamburger" they meant a patty of meat-ish not quite 1/8 of an inch thick. This was served with soggy frozen/reheated French fries.
The good news, in my perspective then, was that we had an open campus -- meaning that kids could leave during lunch break -- and that we were only two blocks from our downtown...so, unbeknownst to parents, many of us would save up the lunch money we were given to buy lunch at the cafeteria, and instead go downtown and buy pop and junk food...or, if we really hustled to beat the bell, make the quarter-mile trek to a local burger shack and get a real hamburger.
[ 27. June 2012, 14:07: Message edited by: LutheranChik ]
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Simul iustus et peccator
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Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Diomedes
Shipmate
# 13482
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Posted
The meat component of my secondary school dinners was so disgusterous and sickable that I applied for a 'vegetarian card'. That meant that whatever else was being served came with a large pile of stale cheese. At least it was edible! Puddings were much better - as long as you liked custard with everything.
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Distrust simple answers to complicated questions
Posts: 129 | From: Essex England | Registered: Mar 2008
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
At my college, veggie meals appeared to be usually something involving sweaty cheese slabs.
Until we took over a three star hotel building with chef included, when such delicious meals appeared that us omnivores wanted the option of eating them at times - not allowed. Nor allowed was our perfectly reasonable suggestion that all the college veggies should eat at our building. Apparently maintaining the hall of residence system was more important than feeding the students properly. Ours was the only hall with its own kitchen.
Re. school - I forgot prunes and rice, which the dinner ladies insisted we finished.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
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Posted
For a year when I was at uni, I was a house mistress at an Anglican girls' school of both day pupils and boarders. I don't remember anything outstandingly good or bad about the food. At breakfast a prefect took the head of each table of boarders and served while staff sat at a raised table with the principal.
At night we each sat a table of twelve girls and served the food. Girls were supposed to eat everything provided unless a note from the family doctor had been provided proving an allergy. There were some strange allergies!
I soon learnt to look at the person being served and to read facial expressions carefully. Similarly my facial expressions as no talking was allowed till all was served. Slight shakes of the head at pumpkin, a frown etc and I would serve the smallest possible helping.
Only two things about the food still stand out. Prunes and custard was the standard Tuesday night dessert with the prunes swimming in large amounts of liquid. Scrambled eggs were made from egg powder and were an unnatural colour and texture. Otherwise food was generally passable. As I said, boarding staff and principal and her deputy ate with the girls.
Best food was Sunday evening when the staff were treated by principal, fresh cake, freshly made sandwiches or soup or something else light and all served in pleasant staff room with fire and lounges etc.
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Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
They are still in use in the U.S. as ground meat extender in some of the cheaper fast food chains. It's probably healthier than the meat it's extending.
TVP costs more than the cheapest meat over here! At least in supermarkets it does. (And "quorn" (a kind of fungal protein) which is probvably the most common fake meat in supermarket chilled ready-to-cook fake meat meals is more expensive still.)
"Veggieburgers" sold in takeaways tend not to be TVP but made of beans that look like beans along with other vegetables. They actually taste quite nice - I'm not a vegetarian but will sometimes eat them because I like them (and because the meat in takeaway hamburgers is usually horrible) - but they aren't really prestending to be meat.
I'm pretty sure we didn't have any of those things at my primary school though! I have no memory of any "vegetarian option". Though as there were observant Jews at the school, and at least one coeliac, there must have been some concession to choice of diet. Though maybe they all went home for lunch?
There were vegetarian meals at secondary school but I think they might often have been little more than a green salad and a lump of cheese. Not sure what they would have done with a vegan - and come to think of it there were propbably quite a lot of vegans around by the time we got to Sixth Form and there werre girls there (Brighton, early 1970s, Grammar Shool - vegetarianism was practically the norm for intelligent teenage girls and early 20s)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Sighthound
Shipmate
# 15185
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Posted
I went to school in Manchester, and our school meals were vile. Absolutely vile. The meat was more fat than meat, but the 'crowning glory' was the boiled potatoes. Never before or since have I tasted anything like them. It was such a disgusting taste it literally made me gag, and for years and years at home I would not have boiled potatoes (because just the memory of the school ones made me want to vomit) and insisted on chips. It took years of gentle persuasion by my wife before I was able to eat them again!
As for the fish - God knows what they did with the fish, but when it was being cooked it used to stink out the whole school, and it wasn't the pleasant aroma that emerges from a chip shop, but something that stank like the Devil's Y fronts.
About once a fortnight they gave us chips. These were edible but came with about 0.0001 of a fluid ounce of vinegar for a table of eight!
The puddings, though on the whole pretty disgusting - particular the semolina and jam - could at least be eaten without holding one's nose.
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Posts: 168 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2009
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WhateverTheySay
Shipmate
# 16598
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sighthound:
I went to school in Manchester, and our school meals were vile. Absolutely vile. The meat was more fat than meat, but the 'crowning glory' was the boiled potatoes. Never before or since have I tasted anything like them. It was such a disgusting taste it literally made me gag, and for years and years at home I would not have boiled potatoes (because just the memory of the school ones made me want to vomit) and insisted on chips. It took years of gentle persuasion by my wife before I was able to eat them again!
I hated mash when I was at school. That made me gag. It took a long time to be able to eat it even when I knew what went into it, but I love it now.
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I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am going
Posts: 872 | From: Lost in Space, without a map | Registered: Aug 2011
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by WhateverTheySay:
quote:
Originally posted by Sighthound:
I went to school in Manchester, and our school meals were vile. Absolutely vile. The meat was more fat than meat, but the 'crowning glory' was the boiled potatoes. Never before or since have I tasted anything like them. It was such a disgusting taste it literally made me gag, and for years and years at home I would not have boiled potatoes (because just the memory of the school ones made me want to vomit) and insisted on chips. It took years of gentle persuasion by my wife before I was able to eat them again!
I hated mash when I was at school. That made me gag. It took a long time to be able to eat it even when I knew what went into it, but I love it now.
For all too many, schools do with food what they do with literature and, TBH, a good deal else besides. Despites the efforts of most teachers it's all so bloody utilitarian: the food is fuel and the study material the same: a lumpen body to enable you to survive until 5 pm or pass exams as the case may be.
Victims of school food, just as those of school-taught Thomas Hardy need decades of rehabilitation before they can look at potatoes, offal and Jude the Obscure without gagging.
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Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Enigma
Enigma
# 16158
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Posted
When I was very young - about 6, we used to live not very far from my school. I went home for lunch every day. Walked home, mind you, by myself, how times have changed! I nagged my mother to let me have school dinners because some of my friends always did and I felt left out.
Apparently there was a day when she relented and agreed that I could stay in school for dinner. On that fateful day my mother was busying herself about the house when who should appear at the door lunchtime but......me!
When I was asked why I had come home instead of staying to lunch it is reported that I burst into tears and said, 'I forgot!'
When we moved, school was further away so I couldn't get home for lunch any more.
I must say, though, that there were times in the years that followed when I wish I had forgotten to stay more often. Especially when liver was on the menu! For many years I thought it was supposed to be grey with the texture of cardboard.
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Posts: 856 | From: Wales | Registered: Jan 2011
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
I didn't mind the mash. At least you could hide other stuff under it.
The black and over ripe bananas, however....
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Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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Jahlove
Tied to the mast
# 10290
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Posted
anyone remember Snot'n'Bogie Pie? Pastry-lined dish filled with sage and onion stuffing? You got gravy and veg with it.
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“Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.” - Mark Twain
Posts: 6477 | From: Alice's Restaurant (UK Franchise) | Registered: Sep 2005
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Enigma
Enigma
# 16158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jahlove:
anyone remember Snot'n'Bogie Pie? Pastry-lined dish filled with sage and onion stuffing? You got gravy and veg with it.
Ooh I had forgotten that one - I quite liked that as I recall. I've recovered now! What they really called it though I can't remember.
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Who knows? Only God!
Posts: 856 | From: Wales | Registered: Jan 2011
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eigon:
I didn't mind the mash. At least you could hide other stuff under it.
The black and over ripe bananas, however....
Dear God. Only fit for making banana bread.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Anna B
Shipmate
# 1439
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Posted
The food at my college was a selling point. Barbecues on the school green. A salad bar. Ice-cream sundaes. Taco bars. Sunday brunches with waffles, pancakes, ham, sausage, eggs, a place to juice oranges, and make-your-own-omelet stations. Two kinds of soup every night, one of which, on Fridays, was always matzo-ball. Delectable vegetarian lasagne. Cookies baked on-site. Holidays scrupulously observed with special dishes, and during exam time one could pretty much spend as much time in the dining halls as one pleased.
No wonder we all gained the "freshman fifteen" and then some.
My husband, on the other hand, is a survivor of his college's DFS---Daily Food Services, a.k.a. Dis Food Sucks.
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Bad Christian (TM)
Posts: 3069 | From: near a lot of fish | Registered: Oct 2001
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justlooking
Shipmate
# 12079
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Posted
I thought there wasn't a single thing I could designate as 'best' with school dinners but I'd forgotten about apple crumble. Officially made of two layers the school dinner version had three layers; apple at the bottom, crispy crumble on the top and in the middle a thick layer where the apple juices had merged into the crumble to produce a slightly chewy texture. School dinner custard is the perfect topping for this.
Posts: 2319 | From: thither and yon | Registered: Nov 2006
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
We had several cafes on our university campus. One of them (which actually served quite good, basic, bacon and eggs type meals) was universally known as The Greasepit. While I was there, the university management decided to change the names of all the cafes to make them sound more appealing, and put up a new list - which inevitably got changed, back to The Greasepit.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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Ian M
Shipmate
# 79
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Posted
At primary school, I have no idea what they did to the roast potatoes but them and wafer thin dry roast beef massacred the concept of a roast dinner...
Still wouldn't say no to a good chunk of chocolate sponge and chocolate custard.
Best ever was a prefects' dinner where (the school being in Wales) to celebrate St David's Day we had Welsh-everything, including deep fried daffodil flowers.
Been dining out on that one (figuratively) ever since.
Posts: 332 | From: Surbiton, Surrey, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
The worst - I was at a prep school - was the slab of deep fried bread in a sort of puffy batter that floated on a pile of luke-warm creamed corn (vaguely resembling vomit, which it nearly became. I would wretch as I ate it). To fail to eat it was a punishable offence.
That said the lumpty water-made porridge, sometimes burnt, was vomitous, too.
The best? At the secondary school, once a term, we had a roast pork dinner, a thank-you from the pig farm to whom our scraps went day by day. The crackling was to die for. OMG it was a good dinner.
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and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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Yangtze
Shipmate
# 4965
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Posted
At my second primary school we used to have amazing chocolate sponges with chocolate custard. Yum. And I liked the salads which had grated cheese which you could mix with the salad cream.
(And leftovers went in the pig bin.)
Vilest were the house lunches at my incredibly expensive public (that's private to you Yanks) school. Have no clue how they made them so bad but I basically spent two years eating nothing but plain boiled potatoes for lunch every other day. Sheesh, no wonder I was skinny at 18.
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Arthur & Henry Ethical Shirts for Men
organic cotton, fair trade cotton, linen
Sometimes I wonder What's for Afters?
Posts: 2022 | From: the smallest town in England | Registered: Sep 2003
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
Eurgh, I started reading this thread but only got about a third of the way down the first page before I started to feel
Fortunately my primary school was only a few minutes' walk away, so I went home for dinner, and I had school dinners for only one year at my secondary school, which was also near enough to walk to. I remember the taste still of a lump of fatty meat that I had to eat - I still can't eat fat - but I recall fondly the lovely spotted dick & custard...mmmmm. Rice pudding with a dollop of jam in the middle was good, too.
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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Campbellite
Ut unum sint
# 1202
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Posted
The food service at my college was not universally vile, but the most memorable was the night the menu consisted of "brown". Brown what, we were not entirely sure, but everything was deep-fried and or breaded.
One of the few times that even that dreck sold at McD's seemed appealing.
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I upped mine. Up yours.
Suffering for Jesus since 1966.
WTFWED?
Posts: 12001 | From: between keyboard and chair | Registered: Aug 2001
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Speaking of monochromatic lunches, I remember "white meals" -- combinations like stringy chicken and gravy over mashed potatoes with a side of lima beans and vanilla pudding for dessert. All out of a can, too.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Campbellite:
The food service at my college was not universally vile, but the most memorable was the night the menu consisted of "brown". Brown what, we were not entirely sure, but everything was deep-fried and or breaded.
One of the few times that even that dreck sold at McD's seemed appealing.
That reminds me of the night they served what looked like large meatballs, with onion. It looked good and so a lot of us in the line had it.
It was chopped liver balls!
Shortly after the largest food fight in residence occurred. Never saw chopped liver again.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
[ 12. July 2012, 13:43: Message edited by: PeteC ]
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Latchkey Kid
Shipmate
# 12444
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Posted
I remember a college dinner that was advertised as lamb being so tough that, without thinking, I blurted out "It isn't lamb. It's mutton dressed up as lamb!"
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'You must never give way for an answer. An answer is always the stretch of road that's behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.'
Mika; in Hello? Is Anybody There?, Jostein Gaardner
Posts: 2592 | From: The wizardest little town in Oz | Registered: Mar 2007
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zappa:
quote:
Originally posted by LutheranChik:
Speaking of monochromatic lunches, I remember "white meals" -- combinations like stringy chicken and gravy over mashed potatoes with a side of lima beans and vanilla pudding for dessert. All out of a can, too.
I reckon tripe would go well with that!
Cleared inspired by Erik Satie, who for many years only wore black clothes and ate white food. I'll spare you the details but there are Hollywood wannabes with better diets.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I started school in the early 70s so I was just glad to get a meal at school, sometimes it was the only meal of the day. Having said that, we did get steak and chips for the Silver Jubilee. My "steak" was the size of a matchbox and had so many pipes it looked like some kind of plumbing junction box. I arranged some chip "keys" in front of it and pretended to play Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor which earned me a standing ovation and an appointment with the strap.
Apart from that school dinners were OK by 70s standards. When I got to secondary school I took sandwiches.
Posts: 1262 | Registered: Jul 2005
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
We would often trade our various dislikes for food we could tolerate. Or we just gave it away. I would get the canned plums and spinach.
Once we were given little dishes of what looked like slightly smaller than usual plums. As usual, most of my table mates gave me theirs. Then I bit into one. And gagged. It was a huge black olive, and I really, really dislike all olives.
Got in trouble for gagging. We had a very mean old substitute teacher that day, (actually a distant relative of mine) and she yelled at me and took off citizenship points. (Do they even count citizenship anymore?)
[spelink] ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
[ 16. July 2012, 18:55: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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