School Lunches

TastyReuben

TastyReuben

Nosh 'n' Splosh
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When you were a child attending school, what were your school lunches like? Did you have a school-provided lunch, or did you bring one from home? Did you use a lunchbox/bucket/pail? What were some of your favorites, and what did you hate?

For me, some years, I bought lunch, some years, I brought a packed lunch from home. My first lunchbox was a vinyl one, with Scooby-Doo and the gang on it, and later, I had a Funky Phantom lunchbox. The last lunchbox I had was a much more mature red plaid one. All my lunchboxes came with a thermos and a smaller insulated container. Some years, I brought my lunch in a brown paper bag.

Typical packed lunch was PBJ sandwich, a baggie with chips or crackers of some type, some kind of raw veggies (usually a sliced tomato), and some kind of dessert (usually a piece of cake or pie).

Some years, I'd buy lunch. I can still see the light green trays our school district used for the entire time I attended school. I remember a lot of turkey a la king (turkey pot pie filling over instant mashed potatoes), tacos, hamburgers, pigs in a blanket (hot dogs and cheese wrapped up in toasted bread), and everyone's favorite, rectangular pizzas, about 4" x 6" and topped with either a finely ground sausage or finely diced pepperoni. Lots of French fries, canned ravioli, and hot brown sandwiches, too (roast beef and gravy over toast).

School lunches were really cheap, and you could either pay cash for the meal or buy a monthly meal card.

How about you, any school lunch memories?
 
As a young kid, I went back and forth between lunch in a lunchbox, to buying lunch in the cafeteria. It all depended on the menu for each day. My mom would allow us to buy those square pizzas and hamburgers. But, most days, it was a sandwich and chips in plastic baggies in a lunchbox. As I got a bit older, the lunchbox became a brown paper bag.

In high school, I ate at the local food joints, ranging from McD's to my favorite, a PoBoy from Amuny's liquor store. Yes, a liquor store. It was packed with HS students at lunchtime. Their PoBoys were really good, and cheap. That store is still there, on a street that is almost deserted. I still go there from time-to-time when I'm in Port Arthur, just for a PoBoy.

I can't imagine what parents where I live now would think about teenagers buying lunch at a liquor store.

CD
 
caseydog said:
In high school, I ate at the local food joints, ranging from McD's to my favorite, a PoBoy from Amuny's liquor store.
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We weren't allowed to leave school grounds during lunch. There was a fast-food joint right across the school parking lot, and teachers would stand at the exit, keeping an eye on everyone.
 
Plastic box with three compartments, 1 big enough for two sammiches, I isusally got jam/jelly, or fish paste, or Belgium ( like your Bologna) then two small sections with 1 biscuit/cookie. Then sometimes a piece of cake. All home made. Peanut brownies were my fave. I used to swap cake for something else my friends were eating. Sammies were wrapped in grease proof paper. When I got to high school (13) we had a tuck shop where you could buy pies or buns or lollies. I never had money so a packed lunch again. Nothing ever flash but filling.

Russ
 
TastyReuben said:
We weren't allowed to leave school grounds during lunch. There was a fast-food joint right across the school parking lot, and teachers would stand at the exit, keeping an eye on everyone.
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We too had someone at the entrances to see who was coming and going. I obtained a fake pass and used to bunk off for the afternoons. My friend and I used to go to his empty house a few afternoons a week. He had flash food at his house. And bottles of soft drink. (Fizz/pop) . He was my best friend for 3 or 4 years. He got leukaemia at 17 and passed a year later. I live a 10 min walk from my old high school.

Russ
 
School published a weekly menu - picked your days in advance of when you would be purchasing a cafeteria lunch with a "meal" ticket. I ate cafeteria lunches on the day days they served pizza burgers, upside down meatloaf, Hamburg gravy over mashed or fish sticks.

Pizza burgers were ground beef with a light tomato sauce and finely chopped pepperoni served open face on a hamburger roll topped with melted American cheese. Upside down meatloaf was meatloaf mixture spread out in a sheet pan that had sides and then topped with a layer of mashed potatoes on top and cut into squares for serving.

On the days I packed, it was bologna and Hellman's mayo sandwiches or tuna fish and miracle whip sandwiches. Bag of chips and a cookie. Bought milk at school for the bev.
 
43002


As kids, we mostly took THIS to school for lunch.
 
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Pizza burgers! Ours were just a pre-formed burger patty, pizza sauce, and mozz cheese on a bun.
 
TastyReuben said:
We weren't allowed to leave school grounds during lunch. There was a fast-food joint right across the school parking lot, and teachers would stand at the exit, keeping an eye on everyone.
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Even in High School? But, seriously, our HS cafeteria couldn't have held the roughly 2,000 students. I had a car, and friends. We ate where we wanted. We actually didn't do much McD's, or the like. There were too many good, scratch made food joints in town that were pretty cheap. I could get an Amuny's PoBoy, a bag of chips (crisps) and a coke for less than a burger, fries and a coke from the Golden Arches. And, it was better food.

CD
 
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I took joy at the reactions of other kids at my boxed lunch. Pickled herring was a big attention grabber, so were the peel and eat shrimp. I always wondered why no one wanted to swap.
 
School lunches are not a national tradition in the Netherlands. No schools except boarding schools serve lunch. So everyone is expected to bring a packaged lunch and a snack for the short break.

The schools do provide rules about what is supposed to be in a lunchbox, snacks and candy are usually not allowed. When I was a kid I used to get fresh rolls with some kind of spread, meat, or cheese and a piece of fruit. Usually with a package of juice or chocolate milk on the side.
Sometimes I would get a wrap or pancake too, because my parents liked to cook. But usually it was just plain bread, which is the national expected lunch fare. For snacks I would be given a nut bar, or a satchel of raisins or something.

I always envied those with hot school lunches, it seemed much more fun to me. Still does.
 
In high school, we got out at noon, so no cafeteria lunches, 9th thru 12th grade. The school was on split shifts so they didn't provide/offer cafeteria food at all.
 
In elementary school, I remember that both my brother and I used to bring a snack from home mid-morning (usually a focaccia or a pizza or a brioche) since lunch was in the school dining room, so we didn't need to bring lunch from home.
My mom had embroidered a little towel with our names on it, and she had embroidered a little flower next to mine and a little sailboat next to my brother's. So that could be my first lunchbox where to wrap around the snacks.
I still have it, by the way!

We used to put everything carefully in the school backpacks without having a real lunchbox, in those days it was not used yet.

In middle school I hardly ever brought a snack, at most it could be crackers or chocolate, but no more, and at lunchtime I would come home to eat. And no lunchboxes, even in that case we put everything in our school backpacks.

In high school instead I started to bring a lunchbox on which I had stuck the sticker of Nirvana, then Pearl Jam and slowly all the music scene of the 90s, usually there was a pizza or fruit and yogurt ... actually I would not really need a lunchbox even then, it was more like a kind of beauty-case or hiding place for cigarettes ...
 
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Windigo said:
I always envied those with hot school lunches, it seemed much more fun to me. Still does.
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School lunches here are notoriously terrible (at least they were when I was a kid), right up there with prison food. Be careful what you hope for! :)
 
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