To kick off the blog, I thought I'd share a topic we all have mixed feelings about — school lunch.
Menu Calendars: You can't forget these! The menu calendars were printed on muted green or yellow paper, sometimes adorned with terrible clipart related to the month (turkey for November, shamrock for March...you get it). The ink was barely readable but somehow we managed. Each day of the week had it's own sodium packed entree, starchy side dish, a lukewarm vegetable, dented fruit, some sort of dessert (Jello square with watery dollop of whipped cream or dried out cake served on piece of cardstock), and milk or juice.Â
(photo courtesy of thelunchtray.com)
The Entrees & Sides: I remember pizza (rectangular slab style) always being an entree option, no matter the day. Somehow the congealed cheese, limp dough and mildly fruity red sauce was palatable at 11 am. I distinctly remember associating fruit with the flavor of that pizza, and I was not a fan of fruit AT ALL as a kid. I was more than a picky eater, I actually had a phobia of apples. This was probably one of the strangest aspects of my childhood. Another reason I associated school pizza with fruit was because almost every kid in the lunchroom, besides myself, would get an apple along with their pizza. The thought of the food I loved the most (pizza), along with the food I hated more than anything else still repulses me to this day. I was shy, and once in a while they would put an apple on my tray without my consent. This apple phobia translated to me feeling overwhelmed and horrified by everyone in the lunchroom. In the summertime, watermelon (another fruit I was not a fan of) was served in place of the apple. More anxiety for me.
(photo courtesy of thelunchtray.com)
Despite my bad memories of that, the pizza itself was kind of good! I think we all feel that way about most of the school entrees. Along with the cheese pizza, our school also served a "Mexican" pizza. It was a small, octagon-like shape with tomato sauce, cheddar, taco seasoning and spicy little meatballs on top. It was so tasty, and the ratio of crust to toppings was just right.
(photo courtesy of 90skids.com)
Other entrees I ordered were the pizza "dippers", the ham and cheese bomber (which was wrapped in tinfoil that always stuck to the cheese), french toast sticks doused in syrup (making fork marks in the styrofoam was part of the experience), and maybe the rock-hard grilled cheese? I'm honestly having a hard time remembering anything else I actually enjoyed the taste of. OH, they also had chicken "fries". This was rubbery chicken coated in a faint dusting of breading, cut in fry shapes. Somehow they always managed to taste soggy, just like the french fries they were served with. The chicken fries themselves weren't bad, but there was nothing more disappointing than the cafeteria french fries. They were always cold and tasted as if they had been boiled — no crispy coating whatsoever (despite being "crinkle" cut), and no seasoning. No amount of ketchup could cover up the blandness, especially not generic, picnic-squirt-bottle ketchup from an elementary school cafeteria. If they served tater tots instead, you barely got a glimpse of them because they'd be gone in seconds.
(photo courtesy of spoonuniversity.com)
Kids and Their Food: The snacks, and the things kids did with them were always unusual. I remember pretzel rods were one nickel. There was a kid who would wrap their Fruit Roll-Up around the pretzel rod and suck on it for what seemed like the entire lunch period. I also had a friend who would dispense an obscene amount of mustard on the pretzel and eat it sideways. At some point, I ended up putting mustard on my pretzels too. (Pretzels were always my go-to.)
The best snacks of all were the .25 cent cookie and the .75 cent ice cream cone. Treats like these were basically the Xanax I needed to get me through the rest of the day.
What strange things did kids do with their food at your school? What menu items do you remember loving or hating? Feel free to share them below!