Fun question: favorite elementary school lunch

2

Replies

  • My favorite was French toast sticks! And smile fries (fried potatoes in the shape of a smiley face).
    Least favorite thing was "country fried steak". Still no idea what that was - it was probably the only day every month I would bring lunch from home.
  • Kelkat405
    Kelkat405 Posts: 166 Member
    I remember my friend always brought spray cheese in a can and crackers in her lunch. I was always jealous. Lol.
  • soupandcookies
    soupandcookies Posts: 212 Member
    French bread pizza!!
  • Ryansworld84
    Ryansworld84 Posts: 83 Member
    That rectangle pizza!
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    I went to a few schools when I was growing up, and none of them served lunch. Everyone either went home for lunch or brought their own. Is it a normal thing for schools to serve lunch to kids?

    The only food I remember being served was a snack in kindergarten, and it was cheez whiz on saltine crackers, and it was awful!

    School lunch being served has been pretty common for quite awhile in the US. There was a National School Lunch act passed in the 1940's.
    We were not allowed to leave school for lunch in elementary or junior high at the schools I attended but some kids did in high school. You could bring your lunch or buy a lunch.

    http://mentalfloss.com/article/87238/what-school-lunch-looked-each-decade-past-century
    http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-school-lunch/
    https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/history_5
  • Sp1tfire
    Sp1tfire Posts: 1,120 Member
    perfectly rectangular cardboard pizza and smiley face potato fries
  • Ebony_Kitty
    Ebony_Kitty Posts: 41 Member
    Ellio’s Pizza. On Fridays, all other days I brought my lunch.
  • mikeb4bjj
    mikeb4bjj Posts: 317 Member
    Jamaican beef patty, hands down. If you went to NYC public schools, you feel me.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,093 Member
    Spaghetti day. The spaghetti with meat sauce was good, but the garlic bread was crazy good (or at least it seemed to a lot of us at the time), and there was generally extra that you could buy after lunch when the ice cream and cookies went on sale.
  • crabbybrianna
    crabbybrianna Posts: 344 Member
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    I went to a few schools when I was growing up, and none of them served lunch. Everyone either went home for lunch or brought their own. Is it a normal thing for schools to serve lunch to kids?

    The only food I remember being served was a snack in kindergarten, and it was cheez whiz on saltine crackers, and it was awful!

    School lunch being served has been pretty common for quite awhile in the US. There was a National School Lunch act passed in the 1940's.
    We were not allowed to leave school for lunch in elementary or junior high at the schools I attended but some kids did in high school. You could bring your lunch or buy a lunch.

    http://mentalfloss.com/article/87238/what-school-lunch-looked-each-decade-past-century
    http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-school-lunch/
    https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/history_5

    Weird… I didn’t know that. Thanks!
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
    Lounmoun wrote: »

    My elementary school did not have a kitchen that I knew of. I'm not sure how the food got prepared. It was served from a table set up in the corner of the gym.

    A little off topic, but did anyone else have the opportunity to work in their school kitchen? In 6th grade (when it was still part of elementary school), we could sign up in groups of 4 for "lunch duty". It was real work (serving, doing dishes, taking out garbage, etc) and you ate free. May sound weird, but we had a lot of fun with our friends & it was so popular it was hard to get a week! I doubt any schools still do it (this was @ 1980). :(
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    I remember cheese sandwiches- white bread, velvetta, miracle whip.

    I had completely forgotten about these! My mom made them all the time! Just turned into a gross wad in your mouth :/
  • Cbean08
    Cbean08 Posts: 1,092 Member
    Hmm, I was in elementary school in the 2000s. My mom never packed a lunch so we always ate in the cafeteria. I loved the cold green beans. I was a big fan of the mini cheeseburgers. (basically White Castle) I also liked the mozzarella sticks with marinara.
  • Frankie_Fan
    Frankie_Fan Posts: 562 Member
    edited January 2018
    I liked the square personal pizza they served in elementary school, high school I looooooooooved the bosco sticks. I used to be able to buy a box of them at Sam's Club but I can't find them anymore. :-1:
  • RaeBeeBaby
    RaeBeeBaby Posts: 4,246 Member
    try2again wrote: »
    Lounmoun wrote: »

    My elementary school did not have a kitchen that I knew of. I'm not sure how the food got prepared. It was served from a table set up in the corner of the gym.

    A little off topic, but did anyone else have the opportunity to work in their school kitchen? In 6th grade (when it was still part of elementary school), we could sign up in groups of 4 for "lunch duty". It was real work (serving, doing dishes, taking out garbage, etc) and you ate free. May sound weird, but we had a lot of fun with our friends & it was so popular it was hard to get a week! I doubt any schools still do it (this was @ 1980). :(

    Same time period, but a totally different dynamic at my school. It was so NOT COOL to work in the cafeteria. The kids who were low income HAD to work in the school cafeteria to get their free or reduced lunch. Everyone knew they were the poor kids. It was so horribly ostracizing for them. Even though my family qualified for reduced lunch I would have starved before doing it. I'd rather have a skimpy cheese sandwich from home (or nothing at all). There's a special place in hell for whichever school administrators thought that was a good idea.
  • kpk54
    kpk54 Posts: 4,474 Member
    1960s: Beef Fricassee over mashed potatoes, lime jello with pears, celery sticks and a half pint of whole milk. I think it was my senior year they started the A La Carte line and we could get things like pizza, ice cream, a milkshake or desserts.
  • Frankie_Fan
    Frankie_Fan Posts: 562 Member
    The frozen strawberry fruit bars were also good.
  • Strawblackcat
    Strawblackcat Posts: 944 Member
    I always brown-bagged it as a kid for lunch, but I fondly remember buying breakfast from time to time. Funnel-cake day was my favorite, and I used to like the egg patty biscuits a lot too. I also remember liking to pour chocolate milk over those little plastic containers of Lucky Charms, although I used to hate the marshmallows as a kid. Oddly enough, I used to eat all of the oat cereal and throw the marshmallows out. :D
  • ZRunner5Lulaica
    ZRunner5Lulaica Posts: 168 Member
    Probably Aznur casserole (Nebraska is home to a roll stuffed with hamburger, onion, and cabbage called a Runza, so school was creative yo), and these peanut butter bars (I could legit eat my weight in them and the cafe lady loved me, so she'd always save me a slice in the kitchen that I would get at the end of the day, probably because I frequently helped out washing dishes or unloading trucks).
  • abbynormalartist
    abbynormalartist Posts: 318 Member
    My favorite (and what I got almost every day) was PB&J. I often skipped lunch and would eat it on the walk home.
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
    RaeBeeBaby wrote: »
    try2again wrote: »
    Lounmoun wrote: »

    My elementary school did not have a kitchen that I knew of. I'm not sure how the food got prepared. It was served from a table set up in the corner of the gym.

    A little off topic, but did anyone else have the opportunity to work in their school kitchen? In 6th grade (when it was still part of elementary school), we could sign up in groups of 4 for "lunch duty". It was real work (serving, doing dishes, taking out garbage, etc) and you ate free. May sound weird, but we had a lot of fun with our friends & it was so popular it was hard to get a week! I doubt any schools still do it (this was @ 1980). :(

    Same time period, but a totally different dynamic at my school. It was so NOT COOL to work in the cafeteria. The kids who were low income HAD to work in the school cafeteria to get their free or reduced lunch. Everyone knew they were the poor kids. It was so horribly ostracizing for them. Even though my family qualified for reduced lunch I would have starved before doing it. I'd rather have a skimpy cheese sandwich from home (or nothing at all). There's a special place in hell for whichever school administrators thought that was a good idea.

    I agree making it income-based was a horrible idea.
  • melissawill2017
    melissawill2017 Posts: 1,131 Member
    I have a few favorites: The vegetable beef soup with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (how in the world do they make those sandwiches?!). I also really liked the pizza; not the triangle slices, but the rectangle slices!
  • nicholethompson24
    nicholethompson24 Posts: 11 Member
    Nacho day! Tortilla chips with Gordon Food's Cheese Sauce topped with shredded iceberg lettuce, diced tomatoes, and sour cream. Always served with a huge homemade chocolate no bake cookie. It's the only day I didn't bring a packed lunch.
  • LizPalen412
    LizPalen412 Posts: 38 Member
    Anything pizza related was my favorite. We had pizza sticks (like skinny pepperoni hot pockets) on the lunch menu rotation, and we did pizza bread sometimes too, and then on the really lucky days, we had ACTUAL pizza delivered.
  • busyPK
    busyPK Posts: 3,788 Member
    We had potato bar Friday in my elementary school and I loved it! It's funny that after 25 years things have sure changed as my kids don't have lunch workers or even a kitchen, their lunches are shipped in from off-site. Each morning kids who want a school lunch have to pick between 3 options and then at lunch they just pick up their tray based on their selection of "A", "B" or "Y" lunch choice.
  • ktekc
    ktekc Posts: 879 Member
    Steakum sandwiches! And the clam strips in a hotdog bun were my favorites. Both with lots of ketchup
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    try2again wrote: »
    Lounmoun wrote: »

    My elementary school did not have a kitchen that I knew of. I'm not sure how the food got prepared. It was served from a table set up in the corner of the gym.

    A little off topic, but did anyone else have the opportunity to work in their school kitchen? In 6th grade (when it was still part of elementary school), we could sign up in groups of 4 for "lunch duty". It was real work (serving, doing dishes, taking out garbage, etc) and you ate free. May sound weird, but we had a lot of fun with our friends & it was so popular it was hard to get a week! I doubt any schools still do it (this was @ 1980). :(

    I think at my elementary school all 5th-6th grade students took a turn serving food, punching tickets, stacking trays, etc. I don't think we got a free lunch and don't remember it being a choice. Around the same time period.
  • ds41980
    ds41980 Posts: 133 Member
    Okay going way back....I was in elementary in the 1970s and was fortunate to be in school when the lunch ladies made everything on site from scratch. It was delicious. My favorite meal was the pizza they gave you a choice between sausage and plain and for desert homemade chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. I have tried to duplicate that cake many times. Also they had the most delicious homemade white rolls. The only things we wouldn't eat were the veggies unless it was corn.
  • beaglady
    beaglady Posts: 1,362 Member
    Elementary school was late 60's for me. I don't remember many specific foods, other than the square pizza, and cheese sticks. I think they may have been government cheese, but I really liked them.

    We move to a new area in 7th grade and they had some horrific food, like hamburger gravy over instant mashed potatoes, beside canned peas.
  • crystalewhite
    crystalewhite Posts: 422 Member
    The first day of kindergarten I was served this awful pizza that was swimming in grease that I refused to eat. So every day until I reached middle school I would get a bologna and mustard sandwich. Sides would be some kind of chips or crackers and fruit and some sort of 80's single serve sugar water to drink (I'm looking in your direction, Hi-C Ecto Cooler!). Occasionally I would get one of those little packs of Little Debbie fudge brownies.
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