My elementary school lunch experience was unusual. Mrs. Stang ran the kitchen, she was a fantastic cook, moms volunteered to assist, and occasionally her sisters would help out. Mrs. Stang and her sisters were known for winning prizes for their pies and other foods at the county fair. She had the usual institutional supplies to work from, but we knew she’d bring in other ingredients to make the food better. Not every lunch was wonderful, but she made a Thanksgiving lunch every year that would be better than I would get at home.
I knew all about the terrible school lunch meme, but it wasn’t until I went into the 6th grade at a different school that I understood it. Mrs. Stang made real pizza. It was a little on the doughy side, but about as good as we could get at any local place back then. In the 6th grade pizza was a half a hamburger roll topped with some sauce barely distinguishable from ketchup, and a slice of american cheese that may as well have been a piece of melted yellow plastic.
I liked the school lunches in elementary school. Except the weekly hot dogs. They always had a bit of a greenish tinge to them. ISTR they tasted like Farmer John’s hot dogs, which I didn’t care for. FJ’s had some weird flavour to them. But decades later, I’d rather have them than the Bar-S brand they have up here. Of course I ate them anyway.
We substituted sour cream for mayo. It was also our after-school snack, as suggested by my mother. I guess she preferred that we eat fat on bread, rather than donuts or candy.
My mother’s cooking was sort of old-school English - lots of roast chicken and roast lamb, as well as things like steak and kidney casseroles. Proteins were generally accompanied by mashed potato and some form of boiled vegetable.
We very rarely had pasta. My mum liked to make spaghetti bolognaise, but my delightfully enlightened Aussie stepfather thought that was “wog” food, and not a proper meal.
One thing that really sticks in my mind was a ham and pineapple concoction my mum used to make. She would buy processed packaged round ham steaks, about a quarter-inch thick, and fry them on the stovetop. Then each one would get a ring of canned pineapple, then a bunch of cheddar cheese. Place under the broiler until the cheese melted, and serve with mashed potato. I used to love that dish.
I never heard of this and so I did a search and found this commercial. As I watched it, I thought they were jerky of some kind. Until I got to the end and saw they were chocolate, caramel and peanut butter. Now I’m so confused.
P.S., loved the shot of the atronaut eating one through a hole in his space helmet.
Whenever we had a meat dish with gravy, for dessert the old man would place a piece of white bread on his plate, pour gravy over it, and eat it with a fork.
My mom never really learned how to cook. I remember using the old aluminum trays to melt broken crayons so she must have served TV dinners at one point when Dad wasn’t available.
My mom used to make this casserole of chicken and Cambells Cream of mushroom soup and those crunchy onions thing from a can and it had poppy seeds on top. Why poppy seeds? I don’t know, but I loved that stuff.
Also speaking of that Great American Dish The Casserole my grandma used to make this green bean casserole with bacon and almonds and also those crunchy onion things from a can.
And may I say God Bless the Genius that came up with those crunchy onion things.
Also may I say here is some Irish people eating American casseroles, I also must add that corn cheese casserole sounds amazing. Corn on corn on corn on cheese! God Bless America!:
My mother made these cool things she called “ghost rolls”: you take a marshmallow, roll it in butter, then cinnamon, then wrap it in a triangle of crescent roll dough, roll that in the butter and the cinnamon and bake till the dough is done. Fiendishly messy things, but delightful for a young person.
It’s crazy, but now and again I want the kind of cinnamon rolls that came in a shallow crimped aluminum foil pan with a waxy icing. Sometimes available with raisins. Haven’t seen them in years.
My mom always made cinnamon rolls. They had gooey, dark icing, not the waxy white stuff. I remember one time waking up from a dream in which the indians were trying to burn our house down by throwing red-hot cinnamon rolls into the garage – not sure where that came from.
We would put a loaf of Rhodes frozen bread dough into a buttered pan in the morning, and it would rise while we were at school, to be baked in the late afternoon (serious balloon bread); one time at lunch, another kid asked me why I always ate sandwiches on homemade bread, pathetically striving to make it sound like a bad thing.
And, of course, I have to repeat the story of the time my brother read the note wrong and put the salmon in the oven at 3:50 at 500° (this was basically pre-smoke-detector days). We ate out that evening.
My mom used to make a curious little(like 2-bites) cinnamon “roll.” They were baked well apart on a cookie sheet, so they wouldn’t unite with their brethren, and as they baked they assumed a conical shape, like old-fashioned bee skeps. I have tried to reproduce them, using both yeast and baking powder doughs, good treats have resulted, but no cones. Tried placing a marble under the center of each one(which I know she did not do)hoping to make the dough center poke heavenward, all to no avail. Rolled the doughs VERY tightly, thinking that would cause the center to spiral upwards-I thought wrong. I guess they’ll just have to remain the after school snacks of memory.
