Your favorite school lunch...

What was your favorite school lunch (K-12)? I'm referring to food that was actually prepared in your school cafeteria by lunch ladies.

The grilled cheese and fries at the Bowen High School cafeteria in the early '70's. It was highly addictive, and I have friends who still wish we could get it on the menu somewhere. I have no idea why it was so delicious, but it was the best school sandwich I ever ate.

Suzy

I was one of those kids who refused to buy a school lunch for many years (and, fortunately, had a mother who as happy to pack a lunch). I can even remember one instance in elementary school where I'd decided to bite the bullet & eat the school lunch, only to call my Mom once I got to school to ask her to bring a packed lunch to me.

In 8th and 9th grades I actually ended up at a school where everyone went home for lunch--loved it!--or to the local snack bar. I'd go to the snack bar a couple times a month, but was more than happy to head home for a homemade lunch with my Mom.

Irony of all ironies, after years of homemade lunches I ended up at boarding school in England for my sophomore year in high school...talk about institutional meals! For 9 months I had to eat school lunches...and breakfasts and dinners, too! I must have some kind of mental block on the food side of it, because I remember only a few dishes that were served:
* Garlic chicken (the first meal I ate at school, and one that made regular appearances on the menu) - noteworthy only because it was a mysterious orange color
* French fries - I ate a lot of these
* Fried calamari - Never ate these, but memorable because people used to shoot them across the dining room like rubber bands
* Un-iced yellow cake served with a warm vanilla cream sauce (probably some Bird's Custard knock-off)

Now, we did have a student snack bar that sold these awesome grilled cheese sandwiches, which I ate regularly, and every weeknight after study hall the seniors would make a run into the closest town and buy a ton of kabobs, which they resold to students...those I loved!

I went to Northwestern some 20-odd years ago and in the dining hall (run by Marriott, I think) they served this French onion soup with deep-fried croutons in lieu of bread...it was awesome in greasy kind of way.

When i was in grade school in Georgia in the 70s, the lunch room served these huge warm freshly baked yeast rolls. Reeally, it was the only thing worth eating.

Not lunch, but my high school cafeteria made the best Taylor ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches for breakfast. I would have put them up against any in northern NJ.

Junior high in the western 'burbs - when a teacher ordered but did not pick up a taco salad (with the crispy bowl and everything), they shrink-wrapped it and put it out on the line for the first taker. I then discovered there was a separate menu of adult food for teachers, and they let me order off it periodically when I saved enough chore change at the house. Not that fried bologna from home didn't hit the spot most days.

Cuban sandwiches at AP Leto High -- terrific bread from the bakery down the street, OK boiled ham and salami (Tampa style Cubans have it), 50/50 mayo-mustard mix (increasingly rare but legit Cuban condiment), pork, pickles, and government issue American cheese -- not Kraft singles, but the "real" stuff. Obviously, the cheese was all wrong, but also not too shabby. It all came together. Winner would have been the picadillo (best use of govenment surplus hamburger ever), but for that one time a palmetto bug made its way into my portion.

My grandmother was actually the head cafeteria lady at my small town school.

Every Friday, they would make cinnamon rolls from scratch. I would sometimes hang out in the kitchen before school started and I loved watching them roll them out and cut them into individual rolls.

Our school actually had pretty good food. Back then (the 80's), they were still able to cook most of it from scratch each morning.

I'm not sure I ever liked anything that school served when I was a kid, mostly I ate what my mom packed.

When I taught school, the cafeteria made whatever had been lunch the day before into soup - two that I remember were steak sandwich soup (steakumms type steak, not actual steak) and cream of fish stick soup. I actually liked cream of fish stick soup.

As a sort of a flip/flop:

The tuna salad sandwiches (which were the only option I remember) on Fridays at my Roman Catholic grammar school in the '60's put me off tuna salad for at least 20 years...

I think it was the nuns' idea of doing penance.

I'm embarrassed to say, my favorite lunch in elementary school (grades 3-6, the only years my mom didn't pack me a lunch everyday) was the rectangular pizza with the little rabbit-poop-looking bits of sausage on them.

In college, my friends & I always made it a point to get to the dining hall early for chicken patty sandwich day and grilled cheese & tomato soup day. On turkey tetrazzini (a.k.a. a thick slice of turkey breast wrapped around a couple limp stalks of broccoli, sitting in something watery & murky that the dining hall staff kept referring to as "gravy") and spanikopita days, I either ate out, made some ramen, or used my meal credit at the greasy diner/pool hall in the dorm basement for something like chicken fingers or a patty melt.

From K-2, mom bagged my lunch. I have no idea what was in it, but I do remember her packing jelly and butter sandwiches. Messy but delicious. This is probably how I developed a sweet tooth. Occasionally I would have the school lunch; I mainly went for the pizza, tacos or chicken nuggets, but they were so nasty I stopped.
The rest of the time I was in grade school, I went home for lunch. My favorite was bologna on fluffy white bread with mustard and lettuce.
My first two years in high school, you wouldn't catch me in that lunch line. I learned from grade school that there was nothing worth eating in there, but I do remember going once. Usually my lunch was two cartons of chocolate milk for sixty cents and either a bag of Munchos or a Mounds. Most people ate bags of Fritos with hot cheese poured over it.
The last two years were spent sneaking into the teachers' line, which had much better food, or at the hospital where I was getting my nursing license. Now that was fine cooking. I always looked forward to the broiled scrod.

My dad went to Senn, and he still talks fondly of the big butter cookies they had. I still can't get the recipe right.

Evanston Township in the late 80's. I've never had a pizza puff as good as the ones there. Bog standard IlTaco ones but somehow the way they were deep fried made them better, not sure how but even then puffs from restaurants didn't compare.


Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Suburban California, late 70s to mid-80s. I loved this one lunch that was turkey in gravy with dumplings and mashed potatoes, all dumped together in a grayish-brown slurry. It looked like dog food, but I loved it. I also really enjoyed hamburger days, because it came with a cup of coleslaw that I put on the burger. This really offended my tablemates for some reason; once, one called over a hall monitor and complained that I had done so. They were told to get over it. I still like coleslaw on sandwiches, incidentally.

There were also rolls with lunch every day, always the same dough, basically a cinnamon roll that was sometimes sweet, sometimes not. Of course we liked the "sticky buns" (buttery, sugary, nut-topped) best of all, but the mysterious savory rollls as well...until someone asked the principal what was really in it, when he was making his lunchtime rounds. "You don't want to know," he said. And ten rolls were instantly dropped, never to be picked up again.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote: It looked like dog food, but I loved it. I also really enjoyed hamburger days, because it came with a cup of coleslaw that I put on the burger. This really offended my tablemates for some reason; once, one called over a hall monitor and complained that I had done so. They were told to get over it. I still like coleslaw on sandwiches, incidentally.

My dad was also a fan of that. Have you tried The Mess at Costello's?

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:someone asked the principal what was really in it, when he was making his lunchtime rounds. "You don't want to know," he said. And ten rolls were instantly dropped, never to be picked up again.

Sounds like a funny guy, messing with kids's heads when the opportunity presents itself

Several popular items...my grade school cafeteria food was made by lunch ladies that did all the cooking from scratch. Much of it was not really good but they made a so called pizza burger that all the kids loved. It was a mixture of ground beef mixed with tomato and cheese into some kind of a paste they spread on toasted hamburger buns and served the two pieces open face. The kids really loved that. Another dish was noodles with hamburger meat. They apparently cooked hamburger with a little onion and crumbled it into cooked noodles. It did not have a red sauce but I think the fat from the meat moistened the noodles. That was a really popular dish. Also there was a mystery meat called chuck wagon steak. It was a baked or fried patty of meat served with brown gravy and mashed potatoes. One other memorable thing was oddly my high school cafeteria sold home style cream puffs every day. They were really good.

Kindergarten: pickle and pimento loaf with yellow mustard on white bread cut into four triangles enjoyed while watching Casey’s Roundhouse.
http://lunchwithcasey.com/main/

Grades 1-3: nothing. Lunch at St. Francis grade school was always scary to me, especially on stew day. The stew was bad, but the huge wedge of plain, raw cabbage next to it was worse. I devised a plan to stuff it into my empty milk carton, so the nuns would see my tray was empty and I could leave for recess (which was always appealing even on the coldest Minnesota days). I was shocked when the nun took my tray, but handed me back my carton and sent me back to the table until I finished my milk.

Grades 4-8: Banana bread at St. John’s. I didn’t ever care for the lunches. But each day, the lunch ladies (as we called them) made delicious homemade breads. It was not uncommon for me and my table-mates to ask for 4-5 slices. At that age and in that setting, no bread limits seemed like such a great thing.

My favorite meal was an occasional one in middle school - sauteed chicken livers/gizzards over rice. Of course, that was back in the old days when schools used real chickens and the lunch ladies really cooked.

Pie Lady wrote:

Suzy Creamcheese wrote: It looked like dog food, but I loved it. I also really enjoyed hamburger days, because it came with a cup of coleslaw that I put on the burger. This really offended my tablemates for some reason; once, one called over a hall monitor and complained that I had done so. They were told to get over it. I still like coleslaw on sandwiches, incidentally.

My dad was also a fan of that. Have you tried The Mess at Costello's?

Yes. It's genius.

bean wrote:As a sort of a flip/flop:

The tuna salad sandwiches (which were the only option I remember) on Fridays at my Roman Catholic grammar school in the '60's put me off tuna salad for at least 20 years...

I think it was the nuns' idea of doing penance.

Those Catholic grade school tuna sandwiches put my husband off any kind of fish--and seafood--for life!

I won't say it was my FAVORITE school lunch, but.... When I was growing up in Cincinnati, sauerkraut was a fairly routine offering at our home dinner table, and I always refused to eat it. One day in high school, the lunch was hot dogs, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut. I must have been exceptionally hungry that day, because I ate everything on my plate--and never turned up my nose at sauerkraut again.

In my little 4-classroom Catholic school, the lunch ladies had a cupboard stocked with an infinite supply of canned stuff—especially tinned chicken and turkey—flour, lard, whatever, left over from WWII. Once every couple of weeks we'd get chicken or turkey à la king, with wonderful thick gravy and equally wonderful light, flakey biscuits, served to us on war surplus *tin* divided trays and Army tableware. Those kitchen ladies really, really knew how to cook and bake. Every once in a while I get so hungry for those dishes my mouth waters. I've *never* succeeded in re-capturing those tastes.

Friday was always either mac 'n cheese or tunafish and noodles, both made the old-fashioned way, from scratch.

Geo