School Dinners in the 1960's

Oh yes, I remember it well. As a vegetarian, I was lucky if there was grated cheese or a hard boiled egg, and that was served with whatever cabbage, carrots etc were meant to accompany the main meat dish!

I must have gone to a really good school, with a really good cook. I remember the Manchester tart with fondness, and wish I could make it, the chocolate sponge and custard was also lovely. We used to have something called brown stew which wasn't so good.

Chocolate concrete with pink semolina - yum

Our school dinners were very good too. The puddings especially - those huge tray bakes of different sponge puddings and custard; or tarts.

I can only remember the puddings!
Chocolate custard was to die for

They used to stand over me and force me to swallow the thick ham fat....can't touch it now! But I did like the spam fritters...greasy but yummy!

The puddings weren't bad, but the lumpy mashed potato (which seemed to come with every meal, even salad) was revolting! And the tubey liver...

To make lunchtime even worse, all girls had to wear their school hats with elastic under the chin...as if it wasn't difficult enough to swallow the pigs swill.

Ladies wearing hats indoors Linsco
I remember kitikat pie, the meat had the texture and appearance of cat food but oddly I liked it I also remember green frothy sauce (lime foam ) with chocolate blancmange.

Do you remember semolina and tabioca pudding? The latter we used to call, frog's eyes!
Despite the awful taste, I had to eat it or else.....!

I think it must have very much depended on the cook as the meals were cooked on site back then.
Definitely the puddings - yum, Mains were a bit iffy.

I always loved the meat and potatoes, hated fish and vegetables and longed to have second helpings of every single pudding. The exception was during school holidays when we used to continue to get free school meals and they always served very watery thin custard.

I had school lunches from when I started school at five until I was in the sixth form. They were fine. Not everything was a favourite but it was all perfectly edible good food. I think I only started having a packed lunch in the sixth form because all my friends did and it meant I could eat with them as sixth formers didn't have to go down to the dining hall.

The only choise we had ever was eat it or don"t eat it.

c

No, you are not exaggerating Linsco56
I was table head in the last year of primary school. Some of the food was inedible but we struggled through it - apart from the gristle and lumps in the custard. The HT used to patrol the tables inspecting the plates to see if anyone had left anything. She told me that, as table head, she would make me eat everyone's leftovers. I was very upset. However, DM said that if she said that again she would go into school, scoop the leftovers onto a plate and make her eat them herself.
Dinners at the High School were much better, but no-one was allowed pudding until everyone on the table had finished their first course. I found that excruciating, because I was a very slow eater and everyone used to finish quickly then all stare at me.

Sago and tapioca Yuk, yuk
Frogspawn!
Although I did (and do) like semolina

DH went to boarding school and was barely fed much at all. At least I went home to Mum's food.

Most of ours was just boring plain fare and I suppose it was nutritious - always with some sort of potatoes (never chips) and at least two veg. I liked the fish and the pies - corned beef or cheese, and yes, I loved the puddings, apart from the frogspawn (was it sago?). But oh, the gristly, fatty meat and the liver with tubes in No choice at all, not even about eat it or don't eat it. Forcing that fat down used to make me heave. I once sat all afternoon staring at my plate till home time when I was told I couldn't leave without eating the demon liver. That's probably the day everyone else had algebra explained to them...

I used to sit with tears dripping down my face and my throat closed up because they were all waiting for their pudding and I couldn't finish my dinner ....
But I did learn to eat quickly (not really a good thing).

I remember a time when we had a slice or two of white bread with our dinner because there was a potato shortage for some reason. Can't remember why (not, it wasn't the Irish Potato famine of 1847, I am old but not that old).

Jalima school prefects used to act as table monitors and some of them were worse than HTs, quite freely handing out lines or other penalties if you didn't eat quickly enough as there was always a 1st and 2nd sitting in the refectory. Fortunately for me, my friend had a healthy appetite and would eat just about anything...including the frog spawn!

My favourite school dinner was spam (sliced, not fritters) mashed potato and baked beans. Yummy!

I remember my favourite was minced meat open pie with crisps on the top,,followed by rhubarb flan topped with mock cream anyone else remember mock cream.

Yes, Maggymay! Our local bakery used to sell mock cream doughnuts which were long like an eclair and filled with the 'cream' and a bright red jam substitute. Only ever had them for a special treat. I wonder what mock cream was made of in the 60s?

I was a very nice prefect!!
(somewhere in the attic I still have my prefect's badge from primary school!)

And the head of table at the High School (a sixth former) was lovely and kind.

DM used to send me to the local bakery with a very large jamjar to buy the synthetic cream for the top of the trifle!! (probably made of lard with flavouring, yuck).