Faye is this week’s hostess for Fun Monday. I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of weeks due to our move, and I all the sudden found a post on Pamela’s site leading me to the topic, so here I am..
Okay, we want to know: So your assignment for March 15 is to share your memories of school lunches. What kind of school did you attend–public, private, parochial, city or country? Did you bring lunch from home or buy in the school cafeteria? Or, did you go home for lunch? What did your lunch look like? Who prepared it? Who did you have lunch with? Was this a happy part of the school day? What did you do during lunch time other than eat your PB & J sandwich?
I attended a public school in a small town. My class had 52 graduates, and it was one of the biggest classes in the school. For most of the time, I was eligible for a ‘free lunch’, a hot lunch from the school, but I didn’t like them. So typically I brought my lunch from home. Because we didn’t have much money, most of the time I got a peanut butter sandwich, and to this day, I don’t eat a peanut butter sandwich very often, if at all. I do recall a lot of how the school lunches looked, giant greasy squares of pizza (they always served it with rubbery corn), mystery meats that only tasted good with ketchup, and at this time of year, all the stinking fish on Fridays. Couldn’t they once have just made macaroni and cheese, or even grilled cheese? Uck. You couldn’t pay me to eat those now. As a kid, lunch was probably a pretty fun time of day, but as I got older, it was less fun, I stopped eating altogether at lunch or had a snack of some sort and a soda. I hung out with my friends, scrambled to do some homework, or sat and gossiped happily.
*Note, as a kid, I remember having a She-Ra lunchbox including a thermos that was blue. I really hope that I can find a similar thing for my daughter to take to lunches, because of the greenness of it!
**Additional note, if you DO have kids and you regularly send them stuff in plastic baggies, consider a switch to reusable baggies, they can often be washed, by hand, in the laundry, or dishwasher, and come in various sizes, use velcro or snaps, etc. Talk about a green way to live!
hey… I kind of like how the kids lunches look now. They have a choice every day from all the following: burger (somedays beef, some days chicken) pizza, Mexican food (either burrito or taco of some sort), hot dog or corn dog, Macaroni or Spagetti. There is fruit and fresh veggies, too. I was just amazed when I saw it. And so much ends up in the trash as they are in such a hurry to get to the playground!
I sometimes took soup in my thermos in my lunch box. I still love Peanut Butter. I love it with raisins, or brown sugar… or honey!
Ah square pizza with corn. I do remember that. In defense of the lunchrooms, they are required to serve a vegetable with pizza (which is considered a bread/meat component of the lunch). I don’t know what veggie goes well with pizza except maybe some salad. Kids might eat some raw carrots and celery perhaps. I’m with you on re-using baggies. I rinse them out and store in the freezer drawer for re-use.
Glad to see the house construction is coming along. Hope the weather turns good for you.
Amazing how many posts contained the words: PEANUT BUTTER today.
Excuse me while I go make myself a peanut butter and honey “sanfin”…that’s what my oldest called them when she was little.
Love the advice about the reusable bags.
I understand that you don’t like peanut butter anymore ! I ate it for the first time in 1971 when I visited my American aunt. I was 27 then and had never tasted it. I tried but I didn’t like it at all and my uncle put it with everything even with ham, yikes !
Yes….I remember square pizza and I think the meat on top was sometimes hamburger rather than pepperoni. YUCK.
I find it amusing how many people were turned off of there lunch time fare as a child. I was raised on peanut butter, and it is still one of my staple foods. Hmmmm, does that mean I am stuck in my childhood?
Must be because I’m across the ‘Pond'(smile) that I’m intrigued by the number of people who write with such enthusiasm about peanut butter.
Also the idea of eating it with something sweet? Okay, I know over here traditionally you have something sweet and something savoury, but it tends to be apple pie and cheese (not the pre-sliced kind). Dad would sometimes have a slice of apple pie with slice of cheese (usually Lancashire) as dessert. But, I digress, cheeses in the UK are so varied and we still have some regional varieties.
Thanks for sharing, Jill. It’s fascinating to read about our shared tho’ different experiences.
Mmm…greasy squares of pizza…I remember them fondly. 🙂
If this question is asked again in 50 years, I wonder how many would say peanut butter? There seems to be an awful lot of kids with peanut allergies these days – brought on by their parents’ school lunches???
I was one of those who loved the mystery meat, the square pizza with corn, the rolls and the chicken and noodles and especially the spagetti!!!
At my son’s school, if you don’t bring your lunch and you don’t want what’s on the main menu, you have the option to get a salad. I like that!
I have a lunch bag for my daughter and she loves it, she actually uses it for her breakfast.