Sunday, March 14, 2010

Fun Monday - School Lunch!

Faye has come up with an interesting topic for this week's Fun Monday: School lunches!

Your assignment is to share your memories of school lunches. What kind of school did you attend--public, private, parochial? Did you bring lunch from home or buy in the school cafeteria? What did your lunch look like? Who prepared it? Who did you have lunch with? Was this a happy part of the school day? What did you do during lunch time other than eat your PB & J sandwich?

My all time favorite school lunch was spagetti!!! I don't know exactly what it was about school spagetti that got me going, but I LOVED it. Still do.
Now that I have a kid of my own, I will occasionally go to his school to have lunch with him. He usually wants me to bring him lunch on days when he doesn't like what they're serving, but sometimes, I'll check the menu and see when they're having spagetti and go have lunch with him on THAT day!
I was a public school student from start to finish and my mid-day meal was almost always provided by the cafeteria.
Growing up, I only recall a few times when I brought my lunch to school. I had a few of those marvelous, metal lunchboxes (featuring the Monkees and the Partridge Family, I think). They usually held PB&J, carrot sticks and an apple. A cookie if I was lucky. And it had a thermos that fit inside which almost always had milk in it. It was a pretty good lunch, but I really liked school lunch. The pizza was great (at least I thought so because we never had pizza at my house) and there was this one lunch that was some sort of meat gravy poured over white rice. No one would eat it - probably because they couldn't actually identify what it was supposed to be - but I absolutely adored that. I always ate mine and sometimes my neighbor's as well. Imagine my surprise when I went to lunch a couple of weeks ago, ordered gumbo and got the meat gravy over rice! Aha! Now I know what it was!
Things changed a bit in high school. I hated the cafeteria. It was so loud and it took forever to get your food so that by the time you could sit down to eat, it was time to go back to class. I ditched school lunch at that point, preferring to sit outside on the portable steps with a coke, a bag of chips and a couple of cigarettes. Sometimes I did that with friends, sometimes alone with a book. The atmosphere was so much better - but I sure did miss the actual lunch from the cafeteria!

14 comments:

Swampy said...

I love puh-sketti, too. Even with just butter and salt, there's just something fun about eating those long strings of pasta. It's especially interesting when you're about 10, have a mouthful, sneeze, and blow a strand out your nose.
Visualize that the next time you have a bowl-ful.

Sandy said...

Sounds like you have some wonderful memories!

Gattina said...

That's nice to read for me because I never had school lunch. In Germany schools finish at 1 pm. But my son had and never complained. In Belgium schools last until 4 pm.

Celeste said...

I never liked the school spagetti but always loved my mothers (which was ground meat with some sort of tomato sauce). I know I loved the school pizza (which I rarely got because I brown bagged), but in retrospect, I think it was likely AWFUL.

PS: Good luck on the remodel project!

loonyhiker said...

You were so lucky! I always wanted one of those cool lunch boxes that the other girls had but I only had the usual brown bag.

Faye said...

School lunch spaghetti was the BEST! Also where I had it for the first time. Agree with you about high school lunchtime being better. You didn't have to be part of a herd. And can you imagine being able to smoke on campus? In the 60s we just had to step off the school grounds and then smoke away. My favorite English teacher used to raid the boys' bathroom to roust the smokers. If only it were as simple today. . .

Janis said...

I had a red plaid metal lunch box in my grade school days..that was before they started putting characters on them. High school lunches were also bad for me...the food was horrible..so I would just buy an ice cream and go out in the courtyard to smoke...all of my friends smoked back then.

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

I would have loved to have had something as tasty as spagetti for lunch at school.

My lunch box consisted of a small square tupperware that tended only close on three sides.

joanygee said...

Guess spaghetti's found in school canteens here (UK) these days, but I never came across it during my school days.
But then that was the 1950s and 1960s.
Even in the 1970s at college we were always provided with traditional foods.
How times have changed.
Thanks for sharing.

Jill said...

Sounds about like lunches in my day, by high school it was easier to avoid the cafeteria! Please feel free to come and visit, I just got my post up, as I hadn't found out until late who was hosting! http://lilmouse.blogsite.org

Pamela said...

The "time" it takes is still a factor. At least from my observation as a sub tutor. (sub-tutor sounds like a lunch entree, doesn't it)

gayle said...

The school lunches where I work are terrible this year!! My husband said he loved school lunches!

Sandcastle Momma said...

My favorite were the rolls. There are none better than those made by cafeteria ladies. Before I started homeschooling my boys I would go have lunch with them and then snag all of the uneaten rolls at the table to take home with me LOL

grace said...

sweet that you go and have lunch with your son! I love spaghetti