School Dinners

Don't remember too much about the dinners but I do remember we had buns and cocoa in the winter at break time. Lovely bath & Chelsea buns.
At primary school we had the obligatory third of a pint of milk, it was often left next to the radiator and tasted disgusting.

Our school lunches were fine. Good old comfort food, especially the puddings. It was my mother’s cooking that was dire and where you’d most likely find a caterpillar in the ?

My favourite pudding was butterscotch tart yummy ,we had cold lunch twice a week marmite sandwiches or cheese and salad nice in the summer as we had a big hut in the playground for cold lunches.

School cheese pie was my absolute favourite . I have tried so many times to copy it but it’s never been the same.

Also Manchester tart with pastry, jam, custard and coconut on top. Delicious.

I never had school dinners; we were expected to walk home and back. Even at grammar school I went to my aunt's for dinner as she lived 5 minutes from the school.
But when I became a teacher I had my first taste of school dinners! I loved them. Our cook was brilliant, and what we did was called 'family service'. Tables arranged in groups of about 8 children and one teacher. The teacher served the dinner to the children and we sat, ate and chatted together. It was good for fostering table manners, sharing, learning to use cutlery, and encouraging the children to try just a little bit of unfamiliar food. My favourite dinners in those days were the roast, and a lovely lamb pilaf (which I got the recipe for).
Not like that now, I fear, it seems to be self service and get it down as quick as they can.

There were a lot of the dinners I really liked although some of the "stews" were not so nice with fatty/grissely meat!

Among my favourite main dishes
- roast dinner
- shepherds' pie
- fish and chips
- cheese pie
- school salad - a huge long tray with rows of different finely chopped salads - usually rows of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, grated carrot, tiny cubes of cooked beetroot and sometimes sliced radishes and defrosted peas.
- I even sort of liked spam fritters

Then there were the desserts:
- chocolate crunch with chocolate custard
- iced sponge with sprinkles and custard
- pink blancmange and homemade shortbread biscuits
- cornflake tart
- Bakewell tart
- rice pudding with jam

Oh and the school "cheese and biscuits" - 2 Dairylea triangles, a butter pat and 3 cream crackers

I have fond memories of school dinners. Lived too far away to go home lunchtime. Small village school where cooks were also Mums/Grans and food cooked fresh in school kitchen.
Third pint of orange juice in summer for each pupil, milk in winter. We sat at tables of eight and monitor dished out each meal. I loved sausage and mash, cawl, and shepherds pie. Treacle tart with cornflakes on top with custard, two scones - one with jam, the other with cheese.
My mother always had a cooked meal ready after school. We weren't overweight, guess we were more active then, I was always out on my bike.

Thanks for the recipes everyone - I can see the calories from here! Looking forward to trying it out

I went home for lunch when I was at primary school, but when I went to secondary school I stayed for school lunch. The head cook was very strict but fabulous. I loved the meals and remember gypsy tart. My absolute favourite pudding was Manchester tart, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Mrs Sampson, I salute you.
Gypsy tart recipe and the history of the pudding.

www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/03/the-perfect-gypsy-tart-recipe-dessert-felicity-cloake

The Guardian's version of Gypsy Tart.

We always had fish on Friday mostly with mash or chips if we were really lucky and always served with beetroot. Could never quite work that combination out.

I must be an exception as our school dinners didn't feature lumpy mash or custard but were absolutely delicious - and I had Mum's home cooked perfection to compare it with.

I got free dinners and Cheese Pie was my favourite, very buttery short pastry with layers of cheese, onion and potato inside. I've tried to duplicate it but never seem to get it right.

I also loved the Apple tart and Custard but wasn't too fond of sago.

If you Google gypsy tart, recipes come up. Sorry I'm not good at links. It seems to consist of brown sugar, butter, evaporated milk and a couple of other things.

My school meals were horrible until the sixth form, when a kitchen was built on the school premises and they were lovely.
Then I went to training college and the food was appalling. When teaching I was forced to eat a school meal sitting with the children every day, until one of the Unions discovered it was not part of our contact, and we were free to refuse.
I never ate another school meal for the remaining thirty-seven years of my career.

Gypsy tart was on Radio 4 The Kitchen Cabinet on Sunday. It’s also mentioned apparently in Joe Brands memoir, she said you could hear your arteries furring up as you ate! Pretty sure they gave a recipe.

Hi crafty cat
Please could you give us the recipe for Gypsy Tart?
I remember it from Primary School brings back such good memories!

I forgot about the prunes, Grandma70s. We had those too, about the only fruit you could get in those days. With custard. I still like that as a dessert.

Glad to see I’m not the only one who was made to sit over my cold, fatty, gristly meat until I ate it. Only I didn't eat it. I just went on refusing. There was nothing they could do. I won. This was in the 1940s, and because nobody had much food then I normally loved any sort of food, even school dinners. The same teacher who tried to make me eat the meat expressed alarm about the large quantity of prunes and custard I managed to eat, constantly going back for more like Oliver Twist.

This was a private girls’ junior school, and lunch was supervised by the teachers. We didn’t have dinner ladies.

Before that I was at a very small infant school, about 40 pupils in all. We were taken by bus to a local baker’s shop where we took over an upstairs room for our lunch, which was presumably provided by the shop. The only food I remember was very brightly coloured jelly, which looked delicious but definitely was not.

I hated school dinners and remember missing playtime as I was forced to sit there until I finished the inedible food. Secondary school was better as no-one tried to force us to eat the awful food.

At primary school I was forced to eat horrible lunch and spent most lunch times crying over cold lumpy food. I wasn't allowed from the table until the bell had gone for afternoon lessons, having missed all of play time.

However the one thing I loved was Gypsy Tart! Have no idea what it was made from and have never had it since.

Chocolate slosh with warm syrup! Delicious! I think it was chocolate semolina.

We had suet in its many forms....meat, jam rolly polly, apple, spotted dick, treacle, surely that wasn't all. As I remember all the above also made into tarts.

Then custard, semolina and rice pudding in a variety of colours. No wonder we put on weight. As I got into the 5/ 6th form I changed to a packed lunch which helped somewhat.

I remember having great meals in the 50.'s at school the only grouse being that the cabbage wasn't chopped in pepper and butter like mum's.

Manchester tart at school was delicious as was the Bakewell tart.

I can remember in infants/ junior school being made to eat onions ( I really couldn’t eat them still can’t) by a school dinner lady. She stood over me until I had finished them and then said there you are you were just being naughty!
At which point I threw up all over her suffice to say never had fond memories of school dinners.
I used to like going home to my nan’s she usually treated me to pie & mash a couple of times a week
What is gypsy tart