I don’t think there is a person in the world with fond memories of school dinners. There is nothing that brings out such expletives when it comes to food. Try it. Just ask a friend about their experience of their school lunchtime fare and I guarantee they will screw their face up in disgust!
We all had regular school meals that stick in our minds (usually for all the wrong reasons), I know I do. Let’s start with my least favourite, whenever it was on the menu my heart would sink…spam fritters. Even to this day when I think about them I get a little sick in my mouth. The limp textured salty spam covered in a thick layer of truly awful batter and deep fried (maybe just soaked?) in oil until the grease level went of the charts. The after effects of spam fritters has haunted my entire life, I cannot eat prawn or pork balls from any Chinese restaurant because the oily taste gives me a flashback to that disgustingly battered cheap meat.
There seemed to be an amazing array of stews which were called something different but were indistinguishable from each other. They were even served with the same mashed potato.
Remember that special school mash, the mash with the grey bits in it?
Perhaps those bits in the potato were there to disguise the chunks of gristle which abounded in the stew, I really couldn’t say.
Every lunch came with desert. Traditionally deserts are a treat at the end of a meal. I don’t know how they managed to get this simple concept so wrong. Those of a certain age from the UK will I am sure remember the slice of iced cake surrounded by pink custard, the pink colour did not add anything to the flavour, in fact I think it took something away.
The only desert I remember even remotely enjoying was bananas in custard (yes the desert makers were obsessed by custard!). I do still enjoy bananas in custard to this day.
I was lucky (?) enough to be in the school system when lunches transformed from what was essentially gruel by the burger and chips revolution. We were all so excited and awaited the transformation of our lunchtime meals with anticipation. We were of course let down…we dreamed it would be like having McDonald’s in the school canteen. But it’s no surprise that it didn’t live up to our dreams, the greasy fries, dry burgers and super low quality fried “chicken” (what part of the chicken used was never entirely understood) were all just dreadful. Not only did the quality remain scraping its butt on the floor low, the food was all deep fried so would have contributed to the obesity which now plagues my generation.
The only redeeming feature of my school lunches back then was from those lovely dinner ladies (now dinner person?) who served the lunches. I used to wonder how they managed to smile while putting up with us. Now I realise it’s because however badly we behaved they were getting their own back by serving us those dinners.
So what was your school dinner experience? Did anyone out there ever have a good one?
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Spam fritters? I’ve never heard of them. I rarely ate a school lunch unless it was an occasional pizza day as I always made my lunch since I was a teen, and my older stepsister made then prior to that.
I’d have to say that while some of the things at school looked okay, there were some questionable ones like the green burgers… soy burgers. lol
Nile, If you have never encountered spam fritters consider yourself one of the lucky ones! The soy burger sound very questionable, but at least there was a vegetarian option. I dread to think what meat was in the regular burgers at my school 😉
So funny that this blog has been written today as I was watching Hungry Sailors on ITV yesterday and they were making a wartime meal and the main course was SPAM fritters! What I remember from school dinners is the pink custard and the names that we gave desserts – frog spawn for tapioca and squashed flies for anything containing currants! Another thing I recall is the lumpy mash being served with an ice cream scoop – a very strange lump on the side of the plate!
Elaine, you did just make my laugh! I had totally forgotten about the frog spawn and dead flies, we called them the same thing 🙂 The splat of that ice cream scoop of mash is something that still makes me shudder…
When I was at school there might have been a war on, but it wasn’t the one the Hungry Sailors referenced 😉
I have to say I loved the school puddings – stodgy, sweet and delicious – but that said they are probably the reason I have a sweet tooth…why give pudding?
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Oh yes those puddings were ever so stodgy and like I mentioned almost everything came with custard lol
IN my day the school lunch programs were not anymore popular than they are now!…..I just couldn’t take the smell from the kitchen when it was the day for sauerkraut and sausage…..could smell it throughout the entire school…….I can’t eat Sauerkraut to this day……I have eaten a lot of spam in my day but not as “fritters”…..sounds punishing!… thanks Mike……Smokey
I love sauerkraut and German sausage, maybe it’s because I never had them at school 😉
I can’t believe that I’d forgotten about the grey bits in the mash! urghh!
Like Sarupa I remember the puddings with fondness… syrup sponge pudding and custard
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Sarah, those puddings may have been good…but as I remember they were not a patch on my mums 😉
Well my mum wasn’t much of a cook back then… we had the ones in a tin unless my grandfather steamed a pudding (and that was awesome!)
Spam fritters? Wow, sounds rough Michael lol!
I almost always brown-bagged it except for Burger King or McD’s Fridays at month end, and of course that food was tasty, although terrible for you hahahahaha….
Thanks for sharing a trip down memory lane!
Ryan
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Ryan, as I got older we would sneak out at lunch to the local chippie (fish and chip shop) for decent chips. Glad to hear your experience was better than mine 😉
Hey…cool article! I don’t think I remember the majority of the foods you’ve written about, but I think the difference may be merely cultural. I’m probably an odd one, but I loved my school lunches. The soups and pizzas were so good. We occasionally had fish and fried chicken, too…and we almost always looked forward to Friday lunch.
I think if I had had gray bits in my food, I would have been turned off as well. LOL!!
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We could have only dreamed of pizza for lunch when I was a kid. Yes grey bits aren’t something that one looks forward to lol
Well, my school lunches were completely different from yours. We didn’t have a school canteen, but in high school, there was a really yummy fish n chip shop. I was allowed to get chips once a week from there, and it was the best lunch of the week.
For the rest of the week, I mostly had cheese and vegemite sandwiches, or cheese and gherkin (not that yummy).
But, I remember some delicious lunches when I was in primary school, because my Grandma lived near the school. So, she used to cook “toasty toasties” for us! Apple and sultanas was my favourite! Unfortunately, I was pretty overweight until I was 10 years old, and I’m sure it was my Grandmas yummy cooking, but she believed a bit of fat was healthy:-)
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God bless grandma by the sounds of it! Cheese and vegemite on toast is still one of my favourite things 🙂
Hello Mr. Robinson,
I have never eaten at school. School lunch? School dinner? I don’t know what it means. I always ate at home. My mother is a good cook and the food was natural, and fresh.
As far as I can understand, in those days you are talking about, food was low quality and later it became junk food. The fact that “the food was all deep fried” is very, very bad as it leads to a serious increase in cholesterol and fat. As you said, this triggered obesity in adults and then in children.
I heard that Jamie Oliver started a program with healthy food in schools and the success was limited. Bad habits are easy to induce then very difficult to remove.
Have a nice day
Silviu, You are lucky, how I would have loved to have gone home for some of my mothers healthy nutritious food. On the TV show were Jamie Oliver did the healthy school dinners, it was the parents turning up at the school gates with bags of McDonald’s…how times have changed…