School lunches - a pleasant memory?

I had the misfortune of being at boarding school where the food was prepared by an untrained cook....none of today's strict food regulations. Boiled cod, lumpy mash and butter beans meant it was Friday; fishy tasting spam, lumpy mash and pickled beetroot appeared on Saturday. Breakfast was invariably a gloopy, grey porridge...more lumps and evening teas were a triumph of nastiness. Sliced boiled egg, with green yolks, in a cheese(?) sauce or boiled liver were the worst. We were allowed to have our own butter which was kept in a cupboard, so that the last wee lump was completely rancid.
As a consequence of nine years of eating revolting food, I can now eat anything!

I mostly loved my school dinners. My favourite was the salad served with 2 thin slices of spam. Sometimes we had the most delicious dessert. It was pastry based with soft sticky raisins on the top. Served with custard, it was absolutely Gorgeous. If any Gransnetters have a recipe for this, I would love it.

The school dinners at primary school were dreadful but the ones at High School were an improvement - the hearty dinners of the 1950s and early 1960s were generally meat, potatoes, veg and gravy followed by pudding.

Puddings were good unless they were sago or tapioca (frogspawn).
I remember when we had sliced bread with our gravy dinners for quite some time when there must have been a failure of the potato crop.

I still love beetroot and mashed potato - making 'pink' mashed potato.

No-one had packed lunches in those days, there were one or two girls who went home for lunch, but very few.

I didn't have school dinners in Primary school. I went home. My dinners in Grammar school were great. We had allocated tables ruled over by a prefect. I had my first taste of watercress. We were in a watercress growing area. I loved all the puddings especially one we called concrete. It was shortbread served with pink custard.
I well remember my son , when he was in Primary school being excited at the prospect of Cowboy Hot Pot for lunch. He was really miffed when it turned out to be liver !!!

Same as inishowen I loved them
Main memories : beetroot juice on mashed potatoes, prunes and custard, leek rolypoly.
I've got a photo somewhere of me as server on our table, published in the local paper.

I didn’t like my primary school lunches in the 1970’s?
I used to watch with great envy the children who went home for lunch. This was not an option for me as both my parents worked and that was in the next town along, a 40 minute drive!
I too remember hideous over cooked food and luke warm meals! It was all very different from the food we ate at home!
Both parents had lived abroad, and in my mother’s case had grown up abroad. so our food was always very seasoned or highly spiced, and not at all British food of the time! My grandparents ate the same way (for the same reason) so I found stodgy UK school lunches highly unpalatable? things improved when I went off to boarding school, and at least the food there was prepared fresh on the premises and not shipped in by outside caterers?

If I have to venture into a school even now, and get a whiff of 'dinners', it makes me feel really queasy.

Hadn’t finished message!! The majority of the children were free school dinners and in some cases the only food they got. So they weren’t really eating anything.

We had servers too you became one in what’s now known as years 5&6. Liver would have been my nightmare meal. Chicken Marengo a favourite.I have also been a School cook. The children ate healthy meals at my school as I planned menus. I hid veg in all sorts of things . Then along came Jamie Oliver!! We then had what he called healthy meals which children wouldn’t eat. The amount of waste was appalling.

Some people have mentioned the seating arrangements. At our grammar school, we had tables of 4, and could sit where we wanted and leave when we'd finished. The teachers sat along the edge of the dining area on a long table. If any announcement was to be made, they would bang on the table and everyone would shut up and listen.

Occasionally, if the salt in the salt pot on the table had got damp, someone would bang it on the table, and it was quite embarrassing when everyone suddenly went quiet, thinking the teachers had an announcement to make.

I loved school dinners, I came from a very poor family of 9 and if we didn't eat school dinners, we did not eat
My favourites were beef crumble bake and Hungarian Goulash , for pudding it was a toss up between chocolate sponge and green mint sauce, or treacle pudding. Yum
The only food I did not like and struggled to eat was prunes and custard.

Meant to add, when I moved to Lancashire and had a school meal as a teacher in 1986 I ordered the fish pie. When it arrived, it was a layer of mashed potato over tinned pilchards, still with the spine and fins. I was disgusted, but that was the menu for the Asian children who didn’t eat meat.

Every day except Friday meant sitting over gristly meat I couldn’t eat, then having to down the pudding in 5 minutes when the dinner ladies finally gave in and let me leave it. Friday fish or cheese pie was a welcome relief-I got to enjoy a leisurely pud and have time to play. I loved the puddings -milk puddings, sponge or suet jam rolypoly with custard. I wasn’t a particularly fussy eater but I’ve never been able to eat mince since, stew meat must be carefully cut up by me and the most minuscule piece of gristle in a sausage means I can’t finish it.

Only had school dinners for one term. Absolutely hated them, and the school dinner lady's nickname was 'Hitler', as she wouldn't let you leave the table until every mouthful had gone, regardless as to whether you liked something or not.

I never had school dinners. The kitchens adjoined our playground and the smell of cabbage that pervaded the playground every morning, the sight of grey vans delivering large vats of stuff, and the fact that no-one seemed to have a good word to say about them, convinced me that I didn’t want to start! When I moved on to FE college, the catering moved up to a whole new level and became something to look forward to.

I remember complaining to my Dad that one of the dinner ladies was stirring a huge vat of mashed potatoes with an oar, whilst smoking a ciggy with a long ash on. Ash then fell in the vat. I didn't eat the mash that day! Dad was a school Governor and told the Headmistress, who suddenly became most solicitous towards me as she hadn't known he was my Dad! I liked her even less after that, and as for Fagash Lil in the kitchen, I think she got a good telling off.

We had a wonderful pudding -Isle of Wight pudding - and I have looked for a recipe but not found it 8-(. The worst thing was semolina

I loved my school dinners. We had lovely mashed potato most days with a pie or meat. We also had good stew once a week. The puddings were delicious, pink custard with chocolate sponge, apple crumble and custard were favourites. At Christmas we got a proper turkey dinner with all the trimmings, followed by Christmas pud and custard. This was in the fifties and the women who ran the canteen were good plain cooks. I would say the dinners were the only good thing about my school!

I remember lying in bed praying for some way that I shouldn’t have to eat school lunch. It was a convent school and the kitchens were a long way from the refectory so everything was cold by the time it was put on our cold plates. My greatest dread was overcooked cauliflower in thick white sauce with a deep skin. Second was tapioca though I would admit that the sisters must have had a good baker among them and Sally Lunn was one of many favourites.

Loved my school dinners. I have never had such good roast potatoes since. And the jam roll-poly - to die for

I had a love/hate relationship with school dinners.
I was a picky eater as a child and there were lots of things I didn't like. When I was in primary school I went home for lunch as we lived near the school. But my secondary school was further away so I was given dinner money each day. I had a dinner on Mondays (sausage & mash); Wednesdays (shepherds pie) and Fridays (fish and chips). But on Tuesdays & Thursdays I either went to the local Pie & Mash shop or I had two puddings instead of a main course. I asked my favourite dinner lady if I could have a second pudding if I helped her clean the tables at the end of the sitting. She agreed!

I adored school puddings (and still do) - spotted dick with custard; jam roly poly; suet pudding; lemon meringue pie; ice cream; rice pudding and jam..... mmmmmm

I loved school dinners especially fish and chips. Lovely crunchy batter on the fish. One day I bit into a piece of batter and there was something hard in it. It was a giant fish-hook! (The type to catch huge cod at sea.)
I was so lucky I didn’t choke on it. I took it to the headmaster and he called the chief cook who promptly accused me of putting it there myself. At least the headmaster believed in me and said I couldn’t possibly have found a hook like that. I was only twelve and was made to sign a disclaimer. My Dad was mad at the school for asking me to sign it. Still liked the fish and chips though!

I have never been able to eat rhubarb. When I was 5, one of the cruel horrible nuns at my catholic school forced me to eat some, despite my saying it would make me sick. I duly vomited all over her and was punished for naughtiness!

Can't remember much of the food apart from the gristle which we were forced to eat.
The worst bit was that we were distributed daily at our grammar school on different tables with the most frightening members of staff. We were required to keep the conversation going with this person for the entire meal...... Any wonder that I still witter now

We had a dragon of a dinner lady at my primary school who wouldn’t let you go out and play till your plate was cleared. I hate veg and used to gag trying to eat it all alone in the hall. Still don’t eat veg and I’ve been one of the healthiest people I know