School dinners

Jam roly poly pudding, which we called boiled baby!

I hated school dinners.
I can remember the aroma of cabbage lingering around the halls as the morning wore on, along with unspeakable mince something or other, with lots of gristle into the mix.

It makes me feel queasy to this day.

I went home for dinner at primary school. I only lived about five minutes walk from the school gates.
I stayed for dinner at secondary school though. We had a fabulous cook in Mrs Samson, she ruled the kitchen with a rod of iron! My favourite dinner was brown stew with mashed potatoes and mashed swede. My favourite pudding was anything that was offered, they were all lovely. Chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce and Manchester tart with custard were particularly delicious. ??

We had some weird and wonderful things - and some downright awful slop. Hungarian goulash made from cheap mince and baked beans was horrendous, but the gypsy tart - a local Kent dish - was amazing. We also had coffee and donuts, which I always thought was a strange choice of pudding for primary school children

I liked the school roast and the pink custard. Didn't like spam fitters though.

Our favourite pudding was doughnuts and hot chocolate, also loved school salad cream, and we used to have something called cheese pie, a sort of runny cheesy mess, loved it! School roast potatoes were the best ever!

annsixty we must be about the same age.
Our dinners were ok, but there wasn't much variety around in those days. All home produced ingredients, food still rationed.
My main memories were of leek suet pudding, and beetroot with lots of juice which turned the mashed potatoes pink.
Milk puddings with jam.
Hardly any meat.

I never had school dinners. My mother said they were for children whose mothers couldn’t cook so we walked home for dinner and so did my own children.
I don’t think any children do this now. My grandchildren take a packed lunch as school meals are too expensive.

I remember starting at a posh school when I was 9 where we sat in groups of 6 at round tables, like a restaurant, and we helped ourselves from the serving dishes on the table. I wondered why nobody helped themselves to the ‘baked beans’ until I tasted them. They were home made and not like Heinz at all. I had taken quite a big portion as I loved baked beans - and the rule was (quite rightly so) if you took it you had to eat it.

Loved faggots! Also savoury mince and have never had a better rhubarb crumble. How did they make that crumble?

Loved school dinners! Faggots and rissoles were my favourites and the white sauce with the fish on friday’s was to die for...

Never had them - always either went home or took lunch with me!

I can remember the dreadful smell. Then being given a plate full of slop and having to eat it all. I hated all of it the nasty food police (lunchtime supervisors) the food the plastic cups with bite marks and the jug of tepid water. I thankfully had other pupils waiting to eat my food. It was tricky not letting the staff see.
Sometimes I would gip just looking at the food.
My mothers cooking was only marginally better?

nina I loved the kitty-kat pie! I loved all the school dinners but was never keen on the cabbage ?

My absolute favourite was the cheese pie.. served with a tomato sauce poured on it.. would love to have the recipe for that sauce
Also loved salad day..served with tiny roast potatoes... happy days.

I always went to my granny’s for lunch ( loved tinned tomato soup with macaroni on a Friday), but my mother eventually gave in to my craiking and allowed me to stay for school dinners. It was cottage pie with raw grated carrot, then cornflakes and figs for pudding, all served at desks in the music room.
I never asked again.

When I was working in a Glasgow school I loved the spaghetti pie ( puff pastry base topped with tinned spaghetti and grated cheese). I’ve never been able to replicate it.

At primary school, loved the luncheon meat with salad but hated the stew, came in huge stainless steel pots and the meat was gristly. Also hated the peas that came with it, processed ones that smelt vile. Loved the chocolate cannonballs , pink blancmange and red jelly.

I remember a group of us being shown round Big School before we started there and on the kitchen shelves were the tins of Argentinian corned beef ready to be collected and destroyed. There had been an outbreak of typhoid in the UK, which was traced back to the corned beef!

I loved Tapioca , Sago and Semolina puddings , I still like them !
And have the waist line to prove it

I started having school dinners in about 1947, they were awful.
I don't know if rationing was still in place but I remember sago and tapioca pudding and lumpy mashed potato.
The highspot of the year was Christmas pudding when the cook would put sixpences in them and if you found one you had to go and put a X on a blackboard at the front of the hall.

Our school dinners were pretty good on the whole. The only time I really found something unpleasant was when they'd put salted peanuts on top of the sweet trifle. Funny - no problems with allergies in those days..... or maybe the girls who had them were old enough to know and cope.
My abiding memory, though, is that they used to put out any unused sponge pudding or tart for us to help ourselves to in the following morning's break. Yum, big rush to get there first!

Gypsy tart, yum
Pink custard, yum
A frothy green sauce which we called snot and Masterchef would probably call a "lime or kiwi foam" it tasted delicious.
A meat pie that we called kitty-kat pie due to it's appearance, flavour was good.

I loved the Manchester Tart with coconut sprinkled on the top,I have tried to make it myself but it never ever tasted the same,I also loved any of the puddings with white sause.

Pink custard! I had also forgotten about the sweet white sauce. JackyB that is so funny

I loved my school dinners, especially at my last school,
I mainly remember chocolate pudding with white sauce,