School dinners

Like this?

recipes.sainsburys.co.uk/recipes/desserts/gypsy-tart

My DD1’s favourite. Will save the recipe for the next family gathering.

Almost all my food loathings come from school dinners.

I went to a lot of schools (father in armed forces) I can remember one, it was about 1950 and schol mash was made from from potato powder and when mixed it was full of tiny little lumps, that made me gag - and I cannot eat mash potatoes to this day. At the same school, the minced beef (?) was so gristly that when a tooth came out during lunch, I ended up swallowing it, mistaking it for a bit of gristle. My parents assured me the tooth fairy knew and understood and would still visit.

At boarding school, if we had boiled eggs for breakfast, theystood them on end side to side in a shallow bain-marie. These are quite shallow and the water did not quite cover he eggs so that we often had boiled eggs that were rock hard one end while at the other end the white was still liquid. Just the thought of it makes me want to heave.

Then there was pink blancmange with a thick skin on it and macaroni cheese that hadn't been within 10 miles of a piece of cheese

Cannot think of anything I really liked or remember with pleasure.

My dear mam was a dinner lady and we ate well! She used to bring us some puddings home as extras and we loved them! She also brought home coleslaw and chicken curry sometime and it was lush! It was great time every night for us!,!,

I loved the caramel cake at school dinners.
Basically a pastry base and a tin of carmelised condensed milk poured on top and sprinkled with chocolate vermicelli.
I used to boil a tin of condensed milk for hours to make the caramel, now you can get it ready made.

In fact I had the same cake from the bakers today. Probably had a thousand calories in it, but it was so delicious!

I loved my school dinners too! When I worked in schools in London, when meals were still subsidised, we had our own cook & kitchen staff and food was made from scratch. So good that the teachers chose to be on lunch duty & eat with the children to get a 'free' lunch! Sadly things went down hill but there is a growing movement now to have tasty and fresh school meals with several schools growing their own veg.

I used to love chocolate sponge and ‘pink’ hot custard.
Proper gourmand me.
?

Gypsy tart was my FiL’s favourite and as if it wasn’t sweet enough already he used to pour condensed milk on it. It would always make him break out in a sweat.

Ooooh chocolate cake and chocolate custard and mixing it into a stodgy paste... Could not do that now so gross but I make it for my children x

Loved ours! Freshly cooked on the premises - my favourites where their Cheese Pie - never found anything like it since - it was NOT a Quiche! Chocolate Concrete - stick your spoon in that and it would fly across the room half the time! And they did a gorgeous date shortbread too ....

Loathes though were any form of 'milk pudding - rice, sago and tapioca and the dreaded Manchester tart - a custard flan - yuk!

I used to eat the skin from milk puddings for all my friends! Still the best part IMO.

School dinners came from a central kitchen at my infant school. Only one I remember is goulash. Lumps of gristly unidentifiable meat.

I also remember steamed sponge pudding gate. We were given various steamed puddings every day at school and my Mum decided to make one on the Saturday. I refused to eat it and had to sit at the table for most of the day. I was told it would be brought out again for breakfast next day but fortunately it disappeared over night!

I actually quite like steamed puddings now!

I used to love my school dinners, and like Sussexborn I used to eat the skin on the variously coloured custards for my friends. Still love the skin . I work in a Primary School now and you wouldn't believe how many different menus we have to cater for: Nut free, Dairy free, Gluten free, Soya free, sesame free, Vegetarian, Vegan etc. We also have to have 2 "meat free" days. The list is endless. I'm surprised some children are allowed to eat anything at all! Give me Roast Pork dinner and Pink Custard dessert any day!

I cannot look at gristle on meat, hate lumpy custard with skin and have never eaten tapioca or sago puddings (someone else would eat them). The smell of heart made me want to throw up and I would cry because we had to eat it all.
Dry white bread instead of potatoes when there must have been a shortage or potatoes one year and over-boiled cabbage.

Other food was OK and some of the other puddings were good.

Gypsy tart looks good though but I don't remember ever having that.

MadeinYorkshire I loved Manchester tart, pastry case with jam on the bottom, custard filling and coconut scattered over the top, blooming lovely.
Our school cook did an apple pudding with a syrupy cornflake topping which was delicious, the chocolate pudding with chocolate sauce was good too. My friend,who was watching her weight used to get a pudding and give it to me. I was an active athletic girl, and very slim.

My favourites were curry, spaghetti bolognese, cottage pie and cheese and potato pie. I still enjoy these dishes.

The meals at secondary school were much better than the ones we had at primary school.

Oh, yes, MadeInYorkshire, cheese pie! It was my favourite - they certainly didn’t stint on the cheese.

I was easily pleased, and loved most of my school dinners, the puddings in particular. My only hate was gristle/fat, so I was wary of any meat, and absolutely hated liver (oh, those pipes! ). I once sat in solitary splendour at a table in the school hall for a whole afternoon, swinging my legs and gazing at a piece of liver I refused to eat. Waste of everyone’s time, as they had to let me go at home time. I’m very surprised, my teachers being the old bats they were, that they didn’t give me a couple of whacks with the ruler to speed me on my way. By then the cleaners were in though, and they were on my side.

Thank goodness we were never served heart, Callistemon. That calls for a few more .

I loved Manchester tart as well MiniMoon yummy. I used to pray for the corner bit.

I loved the school curry and cheese pie too.

We had every variety of stodge ( suet pudding) going.

Meat stodge, jam stodge, spotted dick stodge, treacle stodge, apple stodge , stodge stodge. If not , all the above with pastry. Not to mention the rice pudding and semolina in a variety of odd flavours.

No wonder we put on weight.

I enjoyed school dinners, the food was OK but mainly for sitting with my friends and chatting.

At our school we had to sit on tables with girls from each year, a sixth former as table head.
We weren't allowed to choose where we sat.

Being a 'new girl' faced with a disgusting meal was just all too much for me especially as no-one was allowed pudding until everyone had finished their dinner.

Oh the gristly mince! In the early'50s I just couldn't get it down one day and a vile dinner lady kept me back and stood over me forcing me to eat it all up. I was gagging. What I should have done was be sick all over her shoes but I was a well behaved little girl!

I hated school dinners. There was very little I considered edible and was often kept in to finish it, which I couldn't do, and missed playtime. We had meat that was mostly gristle and fat, ox liver, lumpy mash, lumpy gravy with overcooked greens. Puddings were regularly milk puddings such as rice, semolina, tapioca, all of which I hated. Custard was lumpy. Luckily at secondary school noone checked if you didn't eat it. I do remember often being hungry as a teenager. It was no wonder I was skinny.

I suspect that a lot of the gap between those who liked and those who loathed school dinners can be explained by age. The older posters among us, at school in the immediate aftermath of the war, are the ones that loathed school dinners, because quite frankly any food not on ration was the worst of the worst, and children's stomachs were often treated as the national dustbin. If there was any food that was really poor quality and really cheap, it went to school dinners. Children were seen as one great mouth and it was always open, uncritically to swallow what ever was dropped into it.