School Dinners in the 1960's

In my primary school they served a savoury mince dish topped by scones and called it 'American Biscuit'. Though it doesn't sound too good it was lovely. The only things I didn't like were the salads and the tinned Macedoine vegetables. There was a dark, bitter chocolate pie that was to die for.

I hated my school dinners. Even my mother agreed that the infant school meals which were brought in from elsewhere were awful. I remember being told "think of the starving children in Africa" and I thought they are welcome to this food.
At Juniors we could not go out to play unless we ate it all so I often missed playtime - lumpy mash, fat and gristle instead of meat, ox liver, tapioca and sago for pudding - all awful.
At the Grammar school it was a little better and you were not forced to eat but I remember the portions being very small for teenage girls.
In the 70s/80s when on the maternity wards the food was as bad as school dinners but during my recent hospital stay, the food was not too bad. Hospital food seemed not bad in other hospitals where I've visited in recent years so I can't agree that it is as bad as school dinners were.

I remember my school dinners well,my Mum was a school dinner lady,preparing and cooking the meals with her team of hard working ladies! Not at my school l would point out. The meals had to be balanced and well thought out each week,all fresh foods,no chicken nuggets!! My favourite was the meat pie and chips,pudding favourite was the Bakewell tart and custard. We had to take turns in being the server to serve up for the 8 kids on a table too. Oh it seems just like yesterday,not 50years ago.

michellehargreaves
Our daughter in law is from Wigan, where suet puddings of all types are known as 'babby's heads'!

A few delights chipolatas, a lemon cake with fake cream, commonly known as "shaving cream". Some stand out horrors that we were forced to eat, and dare I say until we vomited, these included rice pudding, tapioca, mashed potato all with lumps, still feel haunted by lumpy textures today. I also hated the enforced daily milk that was foisted on us, Margaret Thatcher hadn't done her worst then, so I missed out having my milk snatched unfortunately

What school dinners?

Then why ask, granjura??

well of course Ana- but as you say, I never had any as a child.

In the '50s the school dinners were perfectly all right, unexciting but we were hungry. I liked rice pudding but not the skin, fine as the others on the table all wanted it. Chocolate concrete was the most popular pudding, even served to us for nostalgia's sake at a 1980s reunion! It still shot across the dining hall as we tried to get into it with our forks!

1946 Changed schools at 6 and met milk warmed by a stove. Tried to drink the horrible stuff but was slow. Got hit around the head for needing a second straw, paper one which flattened easily. Disliked stews and mince, being invited into the kitchen to see the 'lovely meat' before it was cooked didn't help.
1951 Changed schools again at 11, dinners 10d a day. I avoided the milk place until a new friend promised me a (synthetic) cream iced bun if I went with her. What?? I discovered a tuck shop with various high calorie delights and stacks of milk crates in a corner available to those who wanted a bottle, or two. Or not.
1958 College, paid for meals, enjoyed most, especially pork pie with salad which included cold baked beans. On our uniform list was cloth napkin and ring, we kept them in special pigeon holes but no one actually used them.
1960 I began teaching, enjoyed a well cooked school meal each day, as did my Camberwell pupils. Fish, chips and peas on a Friday.
1964 moved to Birmingham, well cooked meals each day, children very keen to have seconds when available.
1980 Big comprehensive very proud of a new cafeteria system with 'choice' for pupils. . I spoke (gently) to an overweight little girl who had on her tray double chips and two doughnuts. She explained that her class was last in that day so there was, at that stage no 'choice'.
Progress??

Surely you've heard of them, granjura, even if you never had them yourself!

What school dinners?

After aforementioned incident with the creepy crawlie in the milk, I`ve never touched the stuff since. There were a few of us hated milk, but we had to have a note from home to be excused it, but there was one girl in our class loved milk, and she drank about 7 or 8 bottles every morning! She should have looked very robust, but she was a tiny little thing. Irene Jepson, you wouldn`t happen to be a Gnetter would you?

Pink custard was obviously popular back then.?

I loved all the school meals at primary school, and remember the cheese pie, and the fish pie and the coconut sponge with pink custard.Yum!?

I hated the puddings mostly; semolina, tapioca, blancmange and rice pudding with jam. All disgusting! I also hated the mashed potato and could not eat it. I remember being sat in a school hall all afternoon with a plate of it in front of me because I refused to eat it. I won the battle!! I went to many different schools as I was an army child but most had the same disgusting food.

sausage loaf - yummy

Our school dinners were lovely. I remember stew, mince beef pie, sausages wrapped in bacon, lovely mashed potatoes, salad with a thick slice of ham. The desserts were great too, chocolate sponge with pink custard was my favourite. Of course sometimes I'd spend my shilling dinner money on a packet of tuc biscuits instead! I didn't know about healthy food in the sixties.

You could buy meatballs in a tin when I was younger. My Dad always said they were tonsils.

A hospital near me could make a fortune offering weight loss programmes. When I had my knee replaced, I was in for a week, the food was disgusting so I lost 8kg. Another 3 weeks would have sorted it!

Our school meals were mostly good, sausage pie and Manchester tart being the best of the lot!
There were the usual hated things, liver, sago, tapioca etc, but my personal hate was meatballs, they were always horribly overcooked and to bulk them out had grains of rice mixed in. The rice used to stick out of the meatball at odd angles, hence my name for them, 'sea mine meatballs'!
We have a local bakery who make Manchester tart, individual or family sized, my DH is an addict.......to be honest, I'm fairly hooked on them too!

semolina and tapioca pudding

I remember many an afternoon sitting in the canteen with a cold plate of this and not allowed to leave until I had finished it. I have never touched it since leaving primary school.

Much of what I've read here has made me eternally grateful for being able to go home for lunch - Mum's thick, nutritious soups with good Scottish floury rolls. The smells from the school dining hall were revolting and the pigs in the neighbouring piggery got fat on the leftovers. Little wonder that most of my classmates were much slimmer that I was.

Oh yes, that lovely skin atop the custard. While other children made squirmy noises I was always happy to have it. I don't make custard now but would still take the skin first, if i did.

I was vegetarian too, unheard of in the 50s when I started school so my mother had problems getting that across to the teachers. However I was allowed to have just the vegetables. I was in heaven when we had cheese pie. There was something called rusks served with the stews, what we would call croutons today.
They were as hard as rocks but soaked up the gravy very well.
Loved the puddings except sago, lumpy and glutinous. And I adored the skin on the custard, as nobody else liked it I was given all of it.

I do remember on my first day at school the lunch was salad with tinned salmon. Fine by me, I do eat fish. Problem was a small green caterpillar on the lettuce. I put my hand up to show it to the teacher who said there was nothing there and just eat my lunch. When she wasn't looking I picked it off, wriggling, and squashed it!
Generally I quite enjoyed the school lunches. At least we didn't have to suffer the horrors of turkey twizzlers which came years later.

Some of your answers resonate with me. At primary school we had fatty, gristly meat nearly every day and lumpy mashed potatoes. I well remember the huge metal trays full of tubey liver swimming in thin gravy. And all the puddings seemed to be accompanied by watery custard. We weren't really given a choice of whether to eat it or leave it. We had dinner ladies who used to patrol the dining hall and the chief one was a fire breathing dragon who would make you stay behind, staring miserably at the plate of by now cold, congealing dinner and try to eat it while all your braver friends who had managed to eat theirs went out to play. I often sat there til the bell rang at the end of break time when she had no choice but to release me so I could go to lessons. Some of the other dinner ladies weren't so strict and would divide what was on your plate into two and tell you just to eat half of it. Once they'd moved away the half that you were allowed to leave had grown considerably. It was an experience that I hated and would beg mother to let me take sandwiches but she wouldn't give in on that one. School dinners today have much improved.