I have no idea what the school for pupils aged 4-11 is called, Sorry.
Anyway, what were your favourite meals, puddings etc?
Mine were
Sausage and Mash (Best sausages I ever had)
Cheese and Onion Pie (I think it had a different name, but it was basically cheese, onion, and pastry)
Rock cakes.
The stuff I hated was…
Chicken supreme.
Jam rolley poley and custard (too sickly)
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I must learn to finish sentences
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(It should end “…in America”)
In general, Elementary school is grades K-5, middle school grades 6-8, high school grades 9-12. There are different combo’s, like K-6, junior high school 7-9, senior high school 10-12.
Loved…
Tater tots, crinkle cut fries and pizza.
Hated…
Any meat in sauce, better known as mystery meat.
My elementary school (K-6) and junior high (7&8) didn’t provide or sell food, except for some truly gawdawful peanut butter and jelly sammiches that were kept in the nurse’s office in case you forgot a lunch. (Actually, they must have had some lunch program in place for poor kids, because it’s state law. I didn’t ever see anyone with one though.)
They did give us milk in little cartons. Usually of the not-cold-enough variety. Ugh. But if you helped the janitor distribute the milk crates to each classroom, he’d give you a Tootsie Roll Pop! So that was my favorite.
In high school, we had a real cafeteria, and it had surprisingly good food. Pizza day was awesome. They served taco salads to die for. But what I miss most are the chicken patty sandwiches - I’ve never found a chicken patty to equal what my high school sold. How sad is that?
Oh, and tater tots rock. I was so excited when I started doing my own grocery shopping and found out they sell them in the freezer aisle!
Heh, I did the same thing, I must have consumed my weight in tater tots when I first realized that private citizens could purchase them. I think my mother was keeping this a secret so that wouldn’t beg for them at home.
I never thought much about the milk one way or another (at least the milk at my school was cold) but chocolate milk day was a day of much rejoicing. I would guess they offered chocolate milk a few times a month? It’s hard to figure out the frequency when dealing with childhood memories, it probably only seemed like an eternity between chocolate milk days.
There was a frozen dessert that I loved, I can’t remember the name. It came in a little cardboard cup like ice cream, only it was more of a fruit-flavored ice slush rather than ice cream. It tasted like chemicals, and I couldn’t get enough of them. Depending where in the freezer they had been kept, they were either only vaguely chilled, and the slush was syrupy and runny, or they were frozen solid and it was impossible to do anything with the spoon other than scrap little ice shards off the surface.
School rolls! Loved those school rolls. In high school, you could get as many as you wanted. I have fond memories of the lunch room lady yelling out:
Sarah! We need some more roooollllllssssss!!!
They made really good fried chicken in my elementary school. Almost as good as mine.
The big dread was: “Manager’s Choice,” which meant mystery meat in gravy or, horror of horrors, “Chicken Tettrazini.” :eek: I never did know exactly what that was supposed to be but it involved egg noodles, alleged chicken and peas. :eek:
Banana custard - it wasn’t like ordinary custard; it was pale, quite thin, very creamy and was served at room temperature - I realise that doesn’t sound terribly appetising, but it was everybody’s favourite - it was ladled out into bowls and topped with floating slices of fresh banana and grated chocolate.
I don’t remember a single one of the main courses in detail, but we were always ravenous and I don’t think anyone ever left anything on their plates.
School was a long time ago, primary (elementary) school even further back…
Let me remember various meals
Pizza… awful
Tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich… eh, can’t mess that up too badly
Salisbury steak and veggie of day… horrible
Spaghetti… worse than horrible
Hamburger… formerly frozen meat patty on a stale bun, condiments in communal uncovered bowls on the table… actually, not too bad
Chili… Not. Edible.
Well, those are the stand-outs…
I guess the hamburger would be the best…
Oh, me too! The rolls were great! Yummy and just a little bit underdone, just the way I liked 'em. I’d even get the rolls when I brought my own lunch (they charged 10 cents for 2 if you didn’t buy lunch). Mmm…rolls… 
We didn’t have school food until I went to high school. But there, they made the world’s third-best french fries and gravy. (Second best was at a restaurant in town, first are the ones you could only get once a year at the fall fair.)
There wasn’t much that was good at my elementary schools. On Wednesdays, they had turkey and gravy, and you had to ask for the gravy on the side as fast and loud as possible, so that it would be possible to eat the mashed potatoes without all the goop on top. Friday was chocolate milk day.
Terrible food: the vegetables, which appeared to be canned veggies that had then been cooked. The rice pilaf (green rice, basically). And the infamous Corn Dog Incident, when everyone’s corn dogs were green inside, and the few kids who were dumb enough to eat them got very sick. (I don’t know how they could; the one bite of cornbread I had tasted terrible.) To this day, I don’t eat corndogs.
My highschool sold really yummy chimichangas. Mmmmmm.
Didn’t go to a school w/ a cafeteria until grade 6. There, they had some of the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life. Of course, that was back in the days when they actually cooked in school kitchens. Grades 7-12, the best thing on the menu was probably scrambled (actually hamburger in brown gravy) over mashed potatoes.
Chicken Nugget day was the day you DIDN’T go to lunch.
The football players (this was high school, 9-12) would literally tackle each other (and anyone else who got in their way) to get to the cafeteria for chicken nugget day.
School mashed potatoes with that nasty yellow chicken gravy. Loved that stuff.
Also, our schools had these “italian tenderloins” tenderized patties of something breaded with the cheese inside. (meat and cheese inside the breading) on a white roll. They were green inside. Loved them, too.
Big fluffy elementary school rolls, blonde brownies, and peanut butter fudge. Mmmmmm.
My friend, Ann, didn’t like her peanut butter fudge, so she rolled it into a ball and threw it. Last I heard it was still stuck to the junior high school cafeteria ceiling. 
Our elementary school didn’t have a cafeteria, either, but they cooked everything up at some big central district cafeteria, and then trucked it out to each school in these huge stainless steel containers. They wheeled them out onto the gymnasium floor and we were served out of those.
My favorites:
Turkey and gravy on mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes were almost certainly instant, and, I’m ashamed to admit, I still prefer instant mashed potatoes to real.
Beef stroganoff. Also served over instant mashed potatoes. Cafeteria food at its finest.
Spaghetti. Everyone loved spaghetti day. It arrived all mixed up with the meat sauce, and you got a huge, perfect dome created by the big ice-cream-scoop serving thingie. And it was served with shredded mozarella on top. At home, we only got parmesan cheese from a can, and Mom was pretty stingy with it, at that. And on spaghetti day we also got garlic bread. Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t like garlic bread?
My favorite cafeteria lunch meal in elementary school consisted of soup, rolls with a bit of cheese melted on top, some kind of fruit, and peanut butter balls (peanut butter & honey, perhaps a little wheat germ, with chocolate melted on top). Very yummy.
I also enjoyed election day, since we got a sack lunch with pbj sandwich, chips, fruit, and a snack of some sort.
I HATED HATED HATED HATED HATED fried bologna day (a shriveled piece of fried bologna topped with instant mashed potatoes topped with a half slice of pasteurized process cheese food). Eeeuuuuu!
I hated school lunches, for the most part. I wasn’t a big meat eater when I was little (still not, but improving!), and absolutely could not eat hamburger back then without gagging. This was unfortunate because almost every day they served something with hamburger in it. Therefore, my favorite time of year was Lent, when we got meatless dishes every Friday (thank you, Catholics!). My favorites were cheese pizza, and tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches. Mmmm … !
Least favorite: Hamburger gravy, obviously. It was basically hamburger and grease poured over instant mashed potatoes. Blech! I also hated the cole slaw. What kind of person makes cole slaw for first graders anyway?
Turkey cubes, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Man, the gravy! I don’t know how they did it, but that combination made for some unholy manna that I have never been able to reproduce in my adult dining life.
Loved -
Soft taco/Taco boat (pretty self explanatory…and there was lots of cheese for the taking)
Brunch lunch (French toast with maple syrup, hash browns, and oranges)
Chicken nuggets/Chicken fries (there were only about four, and they were served with soggy vegetables…but goodness, the chicken was delicious)
Mozzarella sticks (crumb breading, served with marinara)
Cheesesteak (always so good…very very mild white American cheese, and I usually hate the stuff)
The school would also sell extra lunches for $.50 if any were left over. That was great if you could beat the (possible) rush. Meals were always accompanied with chocolate milk (white was available, as was a juice), and optional chips/ice cream after the meal if we were so inclined. You could get a turkey sandwich or PBJ sandwich every day, and there was a bread basket full of crackers and rolls.
I don’t remember not liking anything, as we got a lunch menu near the end of each month detailing exactly what we would have every day of the next month. I made a note on the menu and took the school lunch on the days I wanted and never tried things I thought I wouldn’t like.
The absolute best lunch was something called Max Stix. They were long (almost a foot long), soft breadsticks filled with mozzarella cheese and came with a marinara dipping sauce. They had these in high school and I lust for them. I have heard they are available in the frozen section of Sam’s Club…has anyone else heard of or had these?
A high school favorite of many of my friends was this huge chocolate chip cookie. It was served on a piece of wax paper and fresh from the oven…very gooey and appetizing looking but I never thought it was good enough to buy.
Loved the tater tots and the pizza. In fact for years, I only liked school pizza. When we’d go to Pizza hut, I’d always get Thin n’Crispy with ground beef because that was the closest approximation to school pizza you could get.
One of my best memories of school lunch was when I was in sixth grade and some Japanese educators came to tour our school. (this must have been 1977 or 1978) They actually served real meat tacos. It was definitely a much nicer meal than we usuall got…