School Dinners anyone?

[BondGirl]

What were/are the best (I can honestly say none from my old school and I live to eat!!) and worst school dinner?

Am I alone in the boiled-to-submission veggies and meat that was reconstituted Hush Puppies group?

[pjm007]

The PINK custard was cool !

[funkychicken]

worst was all of it at my middle school (that crap like you see on jamies school dinners) and the best were all of them at my last school, they were yum, we had strawberries all year round and more types of salad than the number of pupils lol

[ursula62]

I'll always remember that well balanced offering of Cheese and potato pie and chips, followed by spotted dick.

[Xollob]

Yes! Glow-in-the-dark pink custard and chocolate sponge. Takes me back...

[Gilli]

I honestly can't remember anything nice about my school dinners at all (we are talking 70s-early 80s here).

All I recall is that whatever "meat" we were supposed to be having was always grey, no matter what, and full of "tubes" - yuck ! - and fat. Roast potatoes were never crispy and always hard, with more grey bits in them, and if you were unfortunate to be a vegetarian or couldn't eat a certain sort of meat for religious reasons, your only "choice" was a pile of grated cheese and half a boiled egg - which was - yes, you guessed it - grey in the middle !!!

Of course there was also the good old scoop of "mash" (probably 10% real potato) which was ............ grey !!!

I can remember the astonishment at high school when it was decided to offer "canteen" style food - i.e. fries and nuggets - but even as a kid, these seemed appallingly greasy and no doubt came out of a mega value freeze pack !

The only pleasure I can remember re: school food was on the very rare occasions when we got our milk (now that's really dating me, but I am a very young 40 honest) in glass bottles and it was a very cold day so that just for once we actually got a nice cold fresh tasting drink. Milk was usually handed out in waxed cartons which for some strange reason always looked as though a bird had pooed on them and the flavour was very suspect. Thinking about it this was probably due in no small part to the fact that this milk was delivered 1st thing and stored stacked up against the caretaker's office, in all weathers - even hot sun - for a good few hours. Plenty of opportunity then for passing birds to hit the target ! Even though I have always drunk a lot of milk (skimmed these days) I very rarely drank the school stuff.

[Snappy]

People always go on about school dinners being horrible but mine were always great! I went to school in North Tyneside (i left 4years ago) and at primary and high school they were almost the same. My fav meals were curry and chips, chicken casserole and bakewell tart and custard! I would love to be able to have school dinners made for me every day. The worst thing though, was when we got milkshake and biscuits instead of a proper pudding! It was always banana and i hate banana milkshake! Yak!

[betty-nugs]

Worst dinner had to be Chicken Supreme.

It looked like pale wobbly vomit.  Errrgh.

:D

[ursula62]

The worst school dinners I had were at primary school - liver and bacon and the dreaded cheese pie.

Best ones were at secondary school (a convent). Fridays was fish fingers, chips and peas. The nuns used to smile at me cos I always asked for more peas!  I won't tell you what the girls in my class called me as a result (it's rude!).

[natalie_1982]

I wasn't allowed to eat school dinners because I used to be sick after eating them all the time, I do remember one Xmas though the dinner lady wouldn't let me out of the dinner hall until I ate my sprouts (which were either like stones or squooshy mush) and I was sick into the plate.  After that I was allowed to take my own peanut butter sarnies :)

Oh, also they had a milkshake that tasted like toilet cleaner.

In my secondary school they had turkey burgers, crisps, pizza slices, chips, sponge with icing, custard and sprinkles, cookies, pies, sausage and beans.  I took my own food for that too!

[Desdemona]

I have obviously missed out big time. I was a packed luncher. But does anyone remember Yo-Yos, those minty biscuits or Tunnock's tea cakes. Those were the days.

[BondGirl]

Gilli - sounds like we went to the same school!!

There really wasn't anything positive about our food - everything was greasy, tasteless and always a guessing game as to what it was....  It's crazy to think that the kids on Jamie's School Dinners are turning their noses up to everything (except chips of course) - as for chips in our school - we didn't even know what they were!!  The closest we got was dodgy mash with a brown skin on it, due to being left in the oven.  How any of us got a balanced diet I will never know.

However, in my very early days (must have been about 5) I do remember chocolate cake and mint custard -   De-Lish!!  I STILL love mint choc now!!

[BondGirl]

And MILKSHAKES???  Either banana or toilet-cleaner ones - Nope, we never got them either - we were lucky if our milk wasn't watered down to nothing, and even then it was only for our tea or cereal - certainly not to be wasted by drinking.

PS - Snappy, I just luuuurve banana milkshakes!!

[natalie_1982]

Mybe it wasn't milkshake.... maybe it was toilet cleaner!

[GucciGal]

we used to have school made yogurt, cold and strawberry with shortcake biscuits (as dippers) .....

[LordyGeordie]

I used to love dinner at school. steaming hot meaty pies, melt in your mouth fish cream buns.

None of it came from the canteen, i used to hop the school fence and go to the butchers/ bakers or chippy in town!

[sddsddean]

Worst: At Primary School I was forced to eat a salad (which I hated at the best of times) topped with grated cheese and half a peach! 40 odd years later, I am just starting to eat salad and fruit again.

Best: At Secondary School we had all sorts of great things (this was in the London Borough of Greenwich where J Oliver is doing his thing). Stuff like Sheperds Pie, Sausage Pie, Bubble and Squeak (complete with crunchy burnt bits!), Chocolate Rice pud, Arctic Roll and hot custard (still one of my fave afters).

As an aside, when I was in sixth form, we were always allowed in first for lunch and so used to chat to the dinner ladies while they were sorting everything out. One of them had worked at Butlitz at Skegness. She said that as breakfast was served to so many people in such a relatively short time, they had to put the first lot of fried eggs in the warming cabinets at 5am ready to serve at 7am. So if you used to go there in the 60's and thought the eggs were a bit naff, thats why!

[normyc]

I used to luuurve school dinners ( late 70's early 80's)  semolina with jam, rice pud, the "meat" pie with mince and a bullet proof crust, and always a glass of water, served in the glasses that had a number on the bottom, and everybody used to look to see who had the highest number...... aaahhh the good old days

[tetherend]

They made me eat tapioca (spelling) which was like little white fish eyes boiled in water with some milk on top.  It was the worst thing ever. 

[sunflower68]

Blimey Norm, those glasses.  They had 2 rings around them, about half way up.  I think it said OTEX next to the number, or is that an ear cream?

Gilli you made me laugh.  I have always believed the milk at school put me off for life.  The boys making smelly milk burps or milky spit-bubbles, the stinkystraws afterward.  yuk. I cannot bear the stuff in any form now.  worst meal for me - curried eggs. :0

[lodekka]

normyc/sunflower - the glasses we had in the 70s and early 80s were made by Duralex. In middle school the numbers determined 'how old you are'.

Being a boarding school refugee, I have fond memories of fish fingers and warm bread rolls at breakfast, though the best dessert ever was definitely toffee cream tart! On a good day, the dinner ladies would come round with bowls of toffee cream mixture for those requiring seconds, though we only had it very occasionally. It's taken me forever to find it again, but I tracked some down in an industrial estate just south-east of Glasgow recently. Heaven!