School in Japan Serves Whale Curry, Sept 12th wrote:A public junior high school in Japan's northern port town of Kushiro had a new item on the menu for its students Monday _ rice topped with whale curry.

The meat is from minke whales the local whalers had caught just off the coast of Kushiro on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, Kyodo News agency reported.

Whale meat returned to public school lunches in Kushiro, the former whaling hub about 560 miles northeast of Tokyo, last year for the first time in 38 years as part of the city-sponsored campaign to promote whale meat.

...

That's a pretty significant hotbutton issue - many people that are against whaling feel that feeding it to children in school merely teaches them to eat whales. (Which wouldn't be hunted otherwise.)

Pete,

If you read the balance of the article those concerns comes up. IN fact they suggest the school lunch program is a thinly disguissed way of returning commercial whaling.

Yet, it does strike me as an interesting lunch and you have to wonder what else they offer for school lunches there. I remember watching films at school with the Eskimos/Inuit eating blubber, which I always found fascinating.

Regards,

On this topic, check out the 2009 Beard-nominated video, School Lunch Revolutionary , though take cum grano salo statements such as “what we need to do is blow up the USDA.”

It took reading this thread to recall the nostalgic joy of the thinly sliced sweet pickle and peanut butter sandwich. I loved that and haven't thought of it in years.

My lunches came in a brown bag, too, which seemed to get smaller and smaller as I aged (the bag, not the lunch). Tuna fish, roast beef and even bologna and cheese sandwiches always seemed to trump whatever the kid to either side of me had. No trade, buster.

And I had carrots. Sliced carrots, every day, and they arrived in that waxy bag that never allowed the carrots to hold any moisture. Why they were packaged this way, exactly, is still a mystery, because the sandwiches were always in the smooth, moisture-keeping clear foldover bags we see today.

Later, after buying a few hot lunches in high school, I think even now I'd do some pretty frowned upon things to get ahold of one of those District 113 delicious rectangles served on "Pizza Day".

My most vivid memory of school lunches is really not a school lunch memory at all. In the fifth grade, I thought my best idea at the time would be to launch an open carton of school milk toward a particularly offensive and upright classmate. Upon release, the target sat down and I hit the lunch room monitor in the side of the face with the airborne carton. The lunch monitor that day was the principal.

Now banned from the lunchroom for the remaining year that had just begun, I was faced with the option to pedal a long way home for lunch or just not eat. So home each day I went, fast as I could, leaving me about 4 total minutes (less if the sidewalks had snow) to eat and retreat on my bike back to school after a real hot meal with Mom. Grilled cheese and tomato soup always hit the spot. Plus no gloppy Thermos to lug back home.

Later, I found out Mom loved this "unexpected" time with me, and I realized at that time I did as well. I've since forgiven the inclusion of waxed-paper-bagged carrots.

If I took my lunch, my Nana made egg salad or ham salad sandwiches, or grilled cheese. I liked grilled cheese even if it was cold.

A friend I had from Russia had caviar sandwiches or sardine sandwiches that stunk to high heaven. At first I thought the caviar was jam because it was red but then I found out it was fish eggs!!!!!!!!! Yuck!!!!! She relished these.

If I ate at the cafeteria, we had a daily hot lunch made by "mom like" cafeteria workers. They made "pizza burgers" which was a mixture of ground beef mixed with sauce they spread on a toasted or baked hamburger bun with cheese. All the kids loved this.

Another favorite was a noodle dish made with hamburger. It was basically hamburger fried out with a gravy and noodles. That was popular. Also fish sticks on Fridays. They often had cake or canned fruit. Most of the stuff was made there from scratch.

Mike G wrote:One was a sandwich of butter, with sugar on it. As kids we called this a "no good" sandwich because it was, clearly, the best possible thing one could eat.

I remember the butter and jelly sandwich in grade school. I also recall seeing stuff like in those photos (Thanks, Bob S.!) and that's why I never ever bought lunch. The nice thing was when I was a junior, or at least a senior, I would go through the teacher's lunch line with little reprimand because the food was noticeably better.

In the 70s in elementary school i remember the hard plastic trays with dividers to separate your ham steak, mashed potatoes, corn, jello and milk carton. I was one of the very few who only drank white milk. The chocolate milk around that time changed to "low fat," so they added corn syrup to make it "taste better." Foul nasty stuff. To this day I hate premade chocolate milk. 99% of it is low-fat and overly sweetened....just insipid stuff.

Those hot lunches of the 70s are probably part of the reason I like overly salty, fat laden food to this day!

toria wrote:If I ate at the cafeteria, we had a daily hot lunch made by "mom like" cafeteria workers. They made "pizza burgers" which was a mixture of ground beef mixed with sauce they spread on a toasted or baked hamburger bun with cheese. All the kids loved this.

Another favorite was a noodle dish made with hamburger. It was basically hamburger fried out with a gravy and noodles. That was popular. Also fish sticks on Fridays. They often had cake or canned fruit. Most of the stuff was made there from scratch.

Sounds exactly like District 300 schools circa 1978.

Late Gen X'er style- mom gave me $4 for lunch- a large Coke and fries with a side of ranch for $1.75. The other $2.00 on a pack of Marlboro's. And I complained of chronic stomach pain for all those years?

Not school lunch but I had a babysitter who would make peanut butter and bologna sandwiches. The thought of it still makes me gag!

In highschool I loved the "pizza" slices and the Marlboros.

One was a sandwich of butter, with sugar on it. As kids we called this a "no good" sandwich because it was, clearly, the best possible thing one could eat.

wow, I thought that sandwich was on of my mom's secret recipes!! I haven't had on since I was a little kid, butter sandwiches with sugar were a real treat!

I only drank white milk at school, too. I couldn't stand chocolate milk with food. Too many tastes.

I had a hard time drinking the milk at school because it came in the waxboard containers which I believe imparted a taste to the milk. I grew up as a small child drinking Wanzer milk from the milkman. "Wanzer on milk is like sterling on silver". I had a hard time making the switch.

A hot lunch cost thirty five cents in grade school. And another memory was high school which oddly sold the most delicious creme puffs that they made there.

The only thing I remember clearly from lunches before high school was how much I used to enjoy taking a pat of butter, sticking it in the middle of my white bread, and folding it all around until I got what I would now call an American Butter Dumpling. In junior high I made many a lunch out of a bag of Lays BBQ and a single serving tub of cream cheese.
As a relatively young-'un, I was in high school in the early '00s, at a wealthy, giant NW suburban public school. As much as I benefited from my schools inequitious resources in the academic and extra-curricular arenas, I certainly appreciated them around lunchtime too.
Subway was an option 2 days a week, and Fridays they had Pizza Hut if you so desired. These options wouldn't excite me now, but they did at the time. Counters for hot dog and fries, made to order deli sandwiches, made to order salads, soup, pizza, and hot lunches existed at all times. This food was not exceptional, but the multitude of choices was.
With all the good day-to-day standbys, I still found myself getting the hot lunch was nothing to sneeze at (especially since there was a sneezeguard protecting it anyway). Standouts included sloppy joes (w/taters of course), ravioli in meat sauce, single pizzas with geometrically homogeneous pepperoni bits, and my ultimate favorite...Bosco Sticks. I'd line up for the hot lunch line, peruse my options, and if nothing met my fancy I would often grab a container of cut pineapple, cut green pepper (side o ranch), 2 chocolate milk cartons, and an Oatmeal Cream Pie. Especially with the occasional addition of a bag of chips, I made a lunch mainly of fruit and veggies unhealthy.
On my last return about 4 or 5 years ago, I was shocked, horrified, and just a little bit jealous to spot a new vending machine identical to the one below. I remember when we got the ice cream one that used vacuum to grab your selection and it was so cool. I've since heard rumors of a Starbucks, or at least Starbucks availability. ::Shudder::

Not my pic. Flickr pic from heather_h under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Where is the emoticon for head exploding?

Tuna boats...tuna salad, cheese, stuffed in a hotdog bun, wrapped in foil and baked. I loved it!

I went to a Roman Catholic grammar school in South Evanston (Saint Nick’s). Most days I got a PB & J sandwich, but on occasion, like when my Mom was visiting my Grandparents, my dad would give me a few bucks and I’d have what was being served in the cafeteria. The cool thing was back then everything was made from scratch and fresh everyday. It was really good. Then later on they switched over to a “TV dinner” style lunch of mystery meat in a tin foil pan that went into a huge oven to be reheated. I also remember back in 5th or 6th grade we did a pizza fund raiser. I think I sold 140 pizzas that year and we’d all meet in the school and hand make all of the pizza’s, then load up my Dads 1972 Ford Country Squire wagon and we’d deliver everything I sold. The next year they switched to a frozen pizza and a LOT of my customers were disappointed, as was I.

I went to school in California. Our lunches were pretty dire, even by my (fairly loose, and certainly looser back then) standards. Anything made with any sort of bread, such as Pizza Poor Boys, was flatly inedible. My favorite thing was a mush of a meal known as Turkey with Dumplings, which resembled dog food, but which tasted kind of like Thanksgiving. I continued loving it best until the day I found sharp hunks of plastic wedged under the morass.

But really, my sharpest memories are not of the food, but rather the dramas that happened at the lunch tables. There was the time when Jessica tattled on me for putting coleslaw on my burger, and the monitor informed her I could put whatever I liked on my sandwich. Or the time when Teri asked for my Icee Pop and wheedled, "Pleeeease? I'll be your best friend," which was a popular thing to say at the time - and I gave it to her even though I wanted to protest I didn't care about being her friend, I just hated Icee Pops. Or the time when Candy informed me I would never get a boyfriend because I liked putting mustard on my hashbrowns, as though I was concerned about that in the third grade anyway. Ah, memories.

I guess I grew up in School-Lunch Paradise. I started at St. Joseph's School in Ft. Collins CO in 1949. Everyone in the 4-classroom, 1st-8th grade school ate in the lunchroom. And a fine thing it was. In those days there was a mountain of surplus food left over from WWII, in particular canned chicken and turkey, tuna, green veggies--peas, beans, limas [ugh!], what have you. The lunchroom ladies (as we called them) lovingly turned that surplus food into wonderful chicken (and turkey) à la king, creamed this or that, or stew, or whatever, and served it with incredible homemade biscuits (surplus lard and shortning, most likely, and surplus flour), big fat wide noodles (which also appeared in the tuna fish and noodles of a Friday), or smashed 'taters and gravy.

I simply *loved* eating in the lunchroom, with its tin Army surplus trays and Army surplus 'silver'ware. The ladies were sweet and grandmotherly, they were always happy to see us line up with our trays to get the food, and we loved to eat their food. Canned green beans out the ying, canned peaches for dessert, but with (get this) USDA surplus cream. From time-to-time a pie with homemade crust, canned fruit, or a cake of some sort. It was simply wonderful.

Jr. high and high school in CA were a shock to my pampered little palate.

Geo

Of lunches served by the school, at least at the elementary level, my most vivid memory is that everything was beige -- though that said, I did develop an early passion for fried potatoes (cottage fries -- really greasy, with bits of onion, and with crisp brown edges). It is probably the only thing ever served in a grade-school cafeteria that I would actually want to eat as an adult.

Of lunches I took, my two favorite sandwiches were black olive (chopped black olives held together with a tiny bit of mayo, spread thickly on soft white bread) and peanut butter with lettuce and mayo. I also loved the fact that my mom would always add little touches -- such as chopped chives on a bologna sandwich -- that made my sandwiches taste a bit nicer than those of other students (as I found out when we traded sandwich halves on occasions).

The black olive sandwich was a throw-back to my mom's own youth. She also made (and I loved) avocado sandwiches, but those weren't taken to school, as they got pretty nasty after sitting in a locker all day.

I went to the U of C Lab Schools in the early '80s and after several failed experiments with different food vendors, they let some U of C Business School Graduates (probably from the bottom of the class) operate a lunch concession that turned out surprisingly good food. Apparently they worked in partnership with Morry's Deli who had already expanded to a location at the U of C Bookstore. The sandwiches were deli quality as were the sides. It also had the effect of keeping kids in the school as opposed to our trekking over to the bookstore and adding to what was already a severely overcrowded firetrap. I can still taste the perfectly seasoned Corned Beef sandwiches on Rye bread with Dijon Mustard.

From the mid'60s to the early 70's our school lunch was served in the cafeterial of a school building built in the late 19th century. Each month we received a menu showing the hot lunch option for each day and we could chose that or bring lunch from home. I remember chicken noodle soup with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Mac and cheese, and--yes this was lunch--cinnamon toast. I am sure some meals included mystery meat and potatoes but I probably opted for bologna sandwiches (with yellow mustard) from home. Mom always caved in and bought individual bags of Fritos plus I'd get a banana.

In High School, I got $5 a week to buy my lunch and it seemed like a fortune. I vaguely remember vending machines in the cafeteria but clearly remember pizza and hot dog options. There was a "healthy, balanced" meal option but I thought it always looked icky.

My kids will have horrible memories of their lunches. As the only working Mom in the class, getting anything in their lunch bags is an effort. Countless sammies of all varietes have ended up in the garbage. So plain bread or pita or Triscuits is the starch. My kids love Slim Jim's and I have put them in but the social pressure (JK and 1ST grade) made my kids closet Slim Jim eaters. I have tried fresh fruit but the only thing they will eat are dried cherries or blueberries. The dark days of winter had lunches soley consisting of some sort of bagged chips or Doritios, Ding-Dongs or other cake like or cookie product and some type of candy. They ate everything without complaint and no food wasted. Guilty as I felt packing such crap it was the only junk food they would have all day. Some Lunchroom Mother commented to my Kindergartner what a terrible amd unhealthy lunch she had. I found out who it was and whenerver I get the chance I give she or her kid a dirty look-without comment.

Elfin wrote:Some Lunchroom Mother commented to my Kindergartner what a terrible amd unhealthy lunch she had. I found out who it was and whenerver I get the chance I give she or her kid a dirty look-without comment.

Kudos!

Elfin,

While I understand your anger, I would leave this woman's kid out of it. While that Mother didn't grasp that she put your child in a difficult position, two wrongs don't make a right. I would keep the issue at the adult level.

I saw a television program once where a child behaviorist worked with parents on broadening their children's food horizons. They began by offering the same dinner to everyone in the family. Once dinner was over, whether the child ate or not, all the dishes were collected. Nothing else was offered for the evening. While the kids went to bed one or two nights hungry, they eventually began eating their dinner. Foods that were rejected by the kids, in this case brocolli, a small amount was put on their plate nightly. After a week of seeing the brocolli, they began to sample it and eventually introduced it to their diet.

You have a power struggle going on with your kids presently. You may want to consider simply packing what you feel is best for them and not necessarily what's on their approved list. Yes, it might thrown away and don't react to it. Eventually when hungry in the afternoon is unpleasant, they will eat what is offered. The lunch monitor could be your ally once they are aware of your struggle. They could cajole the kids to eat. They could supervise their uneaten lunch is packed back into their bags as an available snack later on. The trick may be in not offering them an alternative snack until it is known they really ate their lunch.

You have my sympathies, because kids can be very inventive in creating issues for their parents. I remember fully well the devil I once was (and perhaps continue to be).

Regards,

All I remember about school lunches were the hamburgers at the high school.
That pretty much all I ate for the years I was there. The thin 30's style patties, the basic two (katchup and mustard) and fries. Not the greatest but then I grew up in a household that pretty much made hamburgers like that. I didnt know true hamburger pleasure until I had my first Fuddruckers my sophmore year in high school.

I one thing I do miss was the eggs in the morning. Reconstituted powdered eggs. You knew that they were not fresh cracked cackle hen eggsbut they were toleratable.

I wish I knew a place in northern illinois or southeast wisconsin that sold powdered eggs and wasnt a Dick's or Gander Mountain or any other sporting goods place that charged an arm and a leg for a small package.

My most memorable school lunch takes me back to first grade at St. Francis. I remember the nun in long habits patrolling the room. On the menu was beef stew, raw cabbage and a carton of white milk. I was not a fan of any of those things, especially the cabbage. We had to eat all the food on our trays. I knew there was no way I could eat the cabbage, so I opened up my empty milk carton and shoved in the wedge. When I took my clean tray to the nun she handed me back the carton and instructed me to go finish my milk. Lunch at school was never a relaxing experience.

How could I forget my worst school lunch experiences?
I blame this all on my mother.
In preschool, every day we got buttered bread, and believe me, that was the best part. I remember chili with giant, slimy pieces of either tomato or red pepper in it. Pieces bigger than bite-size.
But worst of all was some kind of "casserole" made of white sauce tasting oddly like canned cream soup (like potato without the potatoes), peas, and Chex.
I can still smell it and taste it to this day, and until recently I could not bring myself to eat Chex.

during public grade school in the mid 80's early 90's our hot lunch was the soup of the day and you had to bring a bagged lunch from home, my lunch consisted of a piece of fruit, hi-c or capri-sun, some sort of little debbies snack or fresh cookies that i picked out when i would go to caputo's with my mom and the sandwich was usually peanut and jelly on italian bread you know the good stuff from the bakery (wonder bread was not allowed in the house) and because we had a fresh bakery down the block, being that there were only a handful of hard core italian's that i grew up with they had the same thing and sat at the same table, the non-italian kids would look at us asking what kind of bread is that. The other sandwich was the nutella and peanutbutter on italian bread and once again us the italian kids ate these like nothing the other kids and the teachers looked and asked why are you eating a chocolate sandwich, one teacher called my parents and asked if they knew what i was eating!

High school it was home run mini pizza's, cheeseburgers, hot meal of the day, they always had mashed potato's why i dont know, and we had fresh deli sandwich's any of those could be had for 2 bucks you had a good choice of food to get and a little thing of milk, but the best food was the snack counters we had nacho's, pretzels, half cooked chocolate chip cookies, soft served ice cream it was like being at the ball game, vending machines filled with eveything.

Hi,

When I was in third or fourth grade, Shake-a-Puddin' was a very intriguing product seen on TV. One lucky kid brought it to school for lunch. Everyone watched the fascinating transition from powder and water to pudding. It was also quickly banned by the school as a lunch option. I am sure more for the nuisance and potential messes rather than any quibbles about nutrition.

My friends and I were quite taken, though I never got to try it. My Mom would never buy this stuff. I realized years later it was just instant pudding with a novelty shaking element thrown in. I could do it now, if I wanted to. Somehow it has lost its charm. Yet when I see the commercial once more, it was understandable why any kid would want it.