Scool Cafeteria Food..

[circlew]

The only things I remember liking in the school cafeterias was the apple crisp, chocolate cake with caramel icing, and tomato soup (Campbell's).

The nastiest thing they made was meatloaf - it looked and smelled just like dog food, and if I'd ever eaten dog food (didn't), problably tasted the same. Mashed potatoes looked like they were made out of toilet paper that had been stirred into water, and tasted like salty paper. Most of the food was gov. surplus, or a budget food service brand.

 

[xraytech]

I had completely forgot about the apple crisp and cherry crisp, they were the best.

 

[norgeway]

I Think

It varied from region to region...when I left Lower Creek for middle school in the 7th grade, the food was badddd..everything was floating in grease!!certainly not up to Lower Creek Standards!!

 

[frigilux]

The lunch program at the school I attended (grades K-12 in one huge complex) was excellent. Nearly every lunch was like a home-cooked meal. I graduated in 1977. Today, many school lunch programs consist of fast food: Chicken nuggets, pizza, burgers, hot dogs, commodity items. It's sad, but schools just don't have the money to fund lunch programs with a full staff of cooks.[this post was last edited: 8/7/2014-20:42]

 

[danemodsandy]

Cafeteria Strike:

We pulled one of those in my high school in, I think it was, my junior year. My school had been drastically expanded and remodeled, and we'd been given a new cafeteria. The only problem was, the quality of the food went wayyyyyy downhill; portions became tiny and a misguided effort to be "trendy" resulted in alleged pizza with a crust made of bread-roll dough, a ketchup-y sauce entirely innocent of herbs or - God forbid - garlic, and rat-trap gummint surplus cheese. There was also a so-called "hamburger" that had so much textured vegetable protein in it that no food manufacturer would have been permitted to call it meat. What meat there was in it inspired jokes: "Somebody musta gotten a bargain on gristle."

Back in 2012, I wrote about the strike in the thread linked below:

"I also participated in a lunchroom strike in high school. Every morning in homeroom, they read the day's menu to us, and took a count of those who intended to buy the school lunch.

Well, lunches had been so bad for so long that we struck. We ran the lunch count up during the homeroom check, and then No. Damn. Body. bought lunch.

Before it was over, the dietician was on the intercom blubbering about how "this is no way to behave," and the air was thick with threatened investigations of who was behind it all. Nothing came of those.

Lunches improved, dramatically and immediately. That waste charge had to be answered for up and down the line."

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?42446

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

"Only The BEST is branded Bar-S!!!!"

For a while my daughter got her lunches in school provided by her school cafeteria, just for the stuff to be found to be very turn off:

The milk was ONE-PERCENT, as opposed to the TWO-PERCENT she prefers... (And back in my day we drank Whole, Vitamin D) the pita is hell-fire spicy, and the hot dogs aren't even all-beef--pork inside (but Laura just doesn't like 'em & won't eat 'em, regardless, nor even no longer the pizza...)

 

So it's the same Nutella (or another brand of Chocolate/Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread) and either Apple Jelly (which the over-use forced us to run out of & am reluctant to replace--we've got tons of jams, jellies & preserves in EVERY FLAVOR!) or Strawberry (that I was willing to buy another jar of & it goes better with) but still can't understand why Peanut Butter still has to be out-lawed... (Yeh, I know--Allergies!--but why STILL?! Can there still be no better effort to make it better for you?)

 

And she won't even eat my favorite--that's every morning, before school, easier to make: Bologna and/or Cheese...!

 

 

-- Dave

 

[vacerator]

Bar S

is the cheapest ion the shelf, and for a buck not bad, except the all chicken hot dogs.
When I crave bologna, I wait for Kowalski to go on sale. I only get a half pound. I also dry it with ketchup or bbq sauce.
My weakness is Dietz and Watson London Broil. It's the best, but a $12 a pound, well, I don't drink or smoke.

 

[luxflairguy]

Mike!  There is no need to criticize Dan's choice of lunch meat and then brag about what you like.  It shows a lack of respect for the poster and their choices.  That is not what we do here on AW.  If Dan likes and uses a product you don't like or look down on, keep your opinion to yourself.  Are you able to do this?  

 

[vacerator]

Happy

Chanukah Dave!, and happy holidays if you celebrate both. I bet you're very busy this week. Enjoy your time off with your families once the store closes Christmas eve. I know it is short. I used to usually have to be back to work early the day after.

 

[brib68]

I'm amazed

At the number of people on this thread with positive memories of school lunches! Our program in the small Ohio town where I grew up (70s grade school, 80s jr high/high school) was pretty awful for the most part. Starting with, elementary schools got left overs from the previous day's menu at the Jr High and High School. There was a Hot Pack and a Cold Pack to the meal (a foil pan covered with foil and a crystal-polystyrene tray covers with plastic wrap. The cold pack held the spork and near-useless napkin and featured a dessert or jello salad. Very often the dessert was a square slab of red gelatin with a thin layer of white foam. The apple Brown Betty was very good. "School pizza" was the most revolting slab of I don't know what that anyone ever set eyes or taste buds on. Late in my grade school years they introduced Tony's pizza (the cheap supermarket frozen stuff) and we were out of our minds with how "good" it was! (Come to think of it, I guess Tony's and Totino's were probably the best around back then I don't remember even seeing Tombstone or Red Baron until the 80s)

Most days I carried my lunch from home in my Charlie Brown (later Six Million Dollar Man) lunch box. Hm, wait...I think at some point I had a Wee Pals lunch box. I think that was the name...uber-diverse group of little kids teaching valuable lessons.

 

[fan-of-fans]

My favorites were
1) Chicken noodle soup with vegetables and a grilled cheese
2) Chicken pot pie with two biscuits on top for the crust
3) Chicken nuggets with mashed potatoes and roll
4) Corn dogs with french fries and baked beans

The french fries were crinkle cut and always perfect. The chicken sandwiches were pretty good also. Sometimes (very rare) there were tater tots (they called them potato puffs).

The worst were the peaches that were prepackaged-always tasted funny and still had ice crystals in them. The fresh peaches were much better.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Yes, ABBY LOVES JOE(Y)!!!!

Well, knock Bar S if you must, but it doesn't say Pork HEARTS like Oscar Mayer does--and I always feel guilty having anything that brand in our house (my sister will go as far as to buy only Kosher Bologna and Kosher Hot Dogs that are NOT Hebrew National, while as for the latter I do, too...) --And too much, really, to elaborate on now... 'Cept Bar S has those annoying BANDS around each piece, and an ODD NUMBER of meat in each pkg. but I buy two or more anyway--just to have regular, regular-thick, beef, each in the 1 LB and the 1/2 pound of regular, just to make a good variety & I feel sorry for stuff that doesn't sell...

 

(My sister's old school-crush that I worked with at Arbor Drugs gave slow selling stuff the "Nobody ever buys this stuff" comment & you saw where some of his pay from working there went...)

 

So happy holidays to you all--and now my wife & I are the Mom & Dad who can hardly wait for school to start again!!!! (LOL!)

 

 

-- Dave

[this post was last edited: 12/25/2016-14:30]

 

[petek]

Dave

Why won't she buy the Hebrew National hot dogs ?  

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

I don't know--might be because that there are only seven, as opposed to the proper eight--that is why I don't often buy them unless I put 'em in crescent rolls...

 

Really, the reason is she will go to the kosher store for the bologna, so it's a matter of convenience to buy the Aaron's brand of both the hot dogs and bologna, that store carries; that's what I once did for the former...

 

Though my brother-in-law drank up my Pimm's drink I made to go with the special dinner I made that one day....

 

 

 

-- Dave

[this post was last edited: 12/26/2016-01:53]

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Eckrich

Well,while we're on the subject of bologna (or baloney) and bologna sandwiches, what about another brand I've rediscovered, that I didn't know or just plain forgot even still existed & that's Eckrich! My latest (though hard to get the open packages, as opposed to the other products, to pose!) sandwich creation:

 

(And let's not forget those neat commercials w/ those Keebler-like characters, Georghe & Ralph w/ their mother ending w/ the line: "Behave, Ralph!" or "Ralph, Behave!"...  The jingle was "Eckrich brings good meats from the heartland, and the secret ingredient is Mom...", as well as 'When you want to eat good, Come to Our House..."...

 

 

-- Dave

 

[vacerator]

I bought

some Ekrich hot dogs last week. It was on sale. Bar S the week before.
Son eats them, so good enough.
Where I was born, they call balogna Jumbo. They had chipped ham too. I think Lawson's stores used to call it that up here. They were like a 7-11 but with a deli.

 

[petek]

I didn't eat much in our h.s. cafeteria as we lived close enough to walk home for lunch if not that then there was always McDonalds close by or more often the White Knight restaurant in a nearby plaza we'd go and order some fries, coffee and sit around and smoke.  What I do remember about the cafeteria was that the vast majority of kids would dump their bagged lunches into the garbage and order fries and gravy and corn or something like that.  The food waste was enormous.  Only a couple or three years back my old highschool held its 50th anniversary so I had to go and see what had changed.. It looked much the same but now only has about 500 students compared to around 1600 when I attended in 69 - 73. The shops are mostly gone and empty as is the library having few books, more puters, the rifle range gone, and all the vending machines only dispense "healthy" choices,  no chips, candy etc.. bummer. 

 

 

[iheartmaytag]

When eating at the school

I can honestly say that most of the food was pretty good. 

 

In my day, the food was actually prepared in the school kitchen by the lunch ladies.  It was served hot in the divided trays and was of good quality most of the time.  Of course, there was the occasional meal that you didn't like, I never did take a liking to their Chli-Mac.  The mashed potatoes were made from real potatoes not instant, and almost always had a fresh hot roll, biscuit, or cookie every day.

 

Now, the lunches my daughter receives in middle school are prepared in a central kitchen, served either cold, or having been kept at temp or rewarmed are soggy, mushy, or dried out.  Her favorite lunch day is Thursday, that's when they can order a slice of Pizza Hut pizza that is delivered hot. 

 

 

 

[kenwashesmonday]

In high school, we had a hot lunch line and a cold lunch line.

I liked it when they had Chicken Chow Mein. Because it wasn't popular, the hot lunch line was short, and the lunch ladies really piled it on!

 

[twintubdexter]

When I was in grade school, cafeteria lunches cost 35 cents. The most hated thing they served was canned spinach. You could smell it cooking early in the morning. The kids organized a sort of "spinach boycott" paying for their lunches in pennies. This really slowed things down and caused some definite problems, but we inmates had little power and the guards remained in control of the prison. The spinach continued.