Question Of The Day, Friday, September 6

Good morning! And Happy Friday!

Let's talk about school lunches. When you were in school, did you buy your lunch or did you pack? If you packed, what was usually in your lunch? If you bought, were there any school lunches that you enjoyed? Or what did you NOT like?

We mainly bought lunch at school. The lunch that I really, really hated was the Friday tomato soup with a toasted cheese sandwich. I never did like tomato soup and I still don't like it today either. When our son was in school, he loved taking his lunch. He truly loved leftovers and saw nothing wrong with taking a thermos of soup or chili, a couple muffins, some cookies or cupcakes, carrots, etc. Or he'd take leftover spaghetti. Leftover fried chicken. It didn't bother him at all. Evidently, it didn't bother his classmates either because they'd often ask for a trade. He never would.

What about you? Tell us about your school lunches.

I packed in grammar school. Thermoses of soup, sandwiches, celery stuffed with peanut butter, left-over fried chicken. Jr High and High School I bought and I loved some of the school lunches esp. the baked spaghetti.

I brown-bagged it all the way through school. Lunch consisted of one bologna and cheese sandwich, one pb&j sandwich, and an apple, or a banana, or an occasional bunch of grapes.

I usually bought lunch. In middle school you could buy a bagged lunch; which was much quicker than waiting for a hot meal. It was some kind of sandwich, fruit, milk and juice. It may have had some chips too.

In high school we had a salad bar and I loved that! I could never stand the wait in the regular lines. They turned it into a baked potato bar once a month and it was really good!! They also had pizza there. You could get a slice of pizza (which came from a local place, Dominos I think) with a small salad. Or you could get a large salad. They also had warm rolls that were SO good! I don't know if they were truly homemade; but I do remember my senior year whoever was in charrge of the kitchen changed and the rolls weren't as good anymore.

In elementary school I brought my lunch a lot more. I liked bologna sandwiches too.

Up until 2nd grade I was a fussy eater. My mom humored me and I brought bread and butter and a thermos of water. Eventually I would take tuna sandwich with no mayo or condiments and Hawaiian Punch. I did like Friday pizza day with salad. But high school I would eat regular sandwiches and lunch food. I find it funny because I now eat almost anything.

I lived within walking distance of my schools so I went home for lunch ever day

I remember absolutely loving lunches up through middle school, mainly because they would service friend okra and none of my friends would eat it...so I would end up with a mountain of fried okra on my plate...

I am a vegetarian so I mostly brought my lunch from home. I usually brought a cheese or PB&J sandwich, fruit and potato chips. When I brought lunch they were having tomato soup and grilled cheese, chilly or spaghetti. This was in the sixties and they did not have salad bars. Back then the cost of lunch was 25 cents.

In elementary school, I lived about 2 blocks from the school and walked home for lunch.
From 7th - 12th grade, I went to a private school. Lunch was served family style each day. Each table either had a faculty member or a senior as the table head (I was one of the seniors with a lunch table). Students were rotated through the tables (I think is was each marking period). Also, each week one student at each table was the designated waiter who brought the food out from the kitchen on a tray and then returned the dirty dishes to the kitchen.

Brown-bagged it early on... one year, my pop bought fancy lunch boxes for all of us, I had the "Tarzan Of The Apes" lunchbox. Funny thing, the brother who followed in my pop's footsteps and became a CDR in the USN Submarine Service, he had the "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea" lunchbox, no lie. Sandwiches were PBJs or bologna, with a piece of fruit and/or some cookies tossed in to round out the meal, maybe a homemade brownie if my mom had baked a batch. Thermos with milk... no thermos, no milk, ya had to choke the sandwiches down with water from the fountain.

High school was different, we lived two short blocks from school so we rode our bikes home to eat lunch. If we weren't hungry, we skipped lunch and ate after school. By this time in my life, my parents were separated and we were totally strapped for cash, so we didn't eat as well as we once did. Buying lunches was out of the question, we were that badly off... but more than one hand has subsisted on scant PBJs, oatmeal, bologna, etc., at some point in his life. One more reason why I never waste food... lean years will do that to ya, LOL.

We always got school lunches, my mother was never together enough to pack a lunch for us. And for the most part they were pretty good. My favorite was called goulash, basically a spaghetti type hot dish and they had the most delicious toffee bars.

I packed my lunch pretty much the whole time I was in school. I started out with lunch boxes that came with a thermos, but switched to plain brown paper bags after a while. Probably after I realized my parents weren't going to buy me a brand new lunch box every year just because last year's wasn't cool anymore.

I mostly ate plain peanut butter sandwiches, with an occasional cream cheese and grape jelly sandwich. But sometimes I would buy my lunch on those days when they had chicken fried steak or burritos.

Then when I was in junior high, the school district decided that we all needed to get more vitamin D from sunshine, and we had to go to outside as soon as we were finished eating lunch, whether it was 100+ degrees outside and 100% humidity, storming, etc. You'd be surprised how long you can make a plain peanut butter sandwich last if you have to.

Except 1 year in middle school I always bought school food. I can't think of a single good memory of school food though. They always were bad, even though they charged a lot. The worst ones were during my first two years of high school. There was a terrible catering firm that literally everyone except one person hated (including the teachers), yet they didn't change. The only person who supported them was the principal. You can probably guess why he was fired based on this (hint:$$$). But until then every day we had pasta, some cheap soup and chicken nuggets/schnitsel for lunch since they didn't bother to prepare anything else. Teachers made fun of us saying that we will start clucking soon because of the nuggets we eat every day. I know plenty of people (including me) who escaped from school to eat lunch somewhere else. Some people got caught and were punished.

Winchester said:

Good morning! And Happy Friday!

Let's talk about school lunches. When you were in school, did you buy your lunch or did you pack? If you packed, what was usually in your lunch? If you bought, were there any school lunches that you enjoyed? Or what did you NOT like?

We mainly bought lunch at school. The lunch that I really, really hated was the Friday tomato soup with a toasted cheese sandwich. I never did like tomato soup and I still don't like it today either. When our son was in school, he loved taking his lunch. He truly loved leftovers and saw nothing wrong with taking a thermos of soup or chili, a couple muffins, some cookies or cupcakes, carrots, etc. Or he'd take leftover spaghetti. Leftover fried chicken. It didn't bother him at all. Evidently, it didn't bother his classmates either because they'd often ask for a trade. He never would.

What about you? Tell us about your school lunches.

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My mom was wonderful. She packed a sandwich (usually peanut butter), carrot and celery sticks, fruit (usually an apple) and a bag of chips or pretzels, plus a tinned, boxed or bottled small drink like fruit juice. I sometimes bought a cafeteria pudding or cookie (both of which were abysmally awful). The cafeteria food was basically not ever to be trusted! It was very, very suspect.

When we had to eat in the cafeteria I loved the spinach and I always tried to get seconds on the cornbread, but when the nuns turned their backs briefly that was when you RAN to the dumpster and got rid of the rest of it!!! So funny, just waiting for that brief second and whoosh fast as you could to discard all the rest of it!!! Still makes me laugh 50 years later!!

In grammar school I was close enough to go home for lunch, and most of the time I would ask my mom to make me French toast.

In high school I bought my lunch, but I tended to buy a roll and chocolate milk so I could save my money to buy records and magazines. I didn't really want the food they had anyway.

I would do both but mostly hot lunch. If I knew there was a planned meal that I didn't want to eat at school, I'd bring my own lunch. In high school I often brought a bag of microwaved popcorn and then bought a little carrot and celery tray in the a la carte line. I believed that was how I would lose weight even though I really didn't need to. I hated popcorn for years after that. I eat it now, but usually not microwaved.

I always bought lunch at school. We qualified for free lunch most years and my parents took advantage of that. The elementary schools I went to didn't have a full kitchen. They brought in prepared meals in foil packets that were heated up in a warming oven. None of the food was ever good Middle school and high school had full kitchens but the food was mostly not good. The food was just purchased mostly frozen from various food service distribution companies and then heated up to serve. There were some fresh things like fruit and veggies. Nothing was ever made from scratch by the cafeteria staff. Most school districts have contracts with food service distribution companies where cafeterias have to purchase food from, everything from milk and juice to chicken to tomato sauce and plastic utensils to eat with.

verna davies said:

I lived within walking distance of my schools so I went home for lunch ever day

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Same here, we walked home with our friends for lunch. But on Fridays we would all go to a little sandwich shop caddy corner from the elementary school. My favorite part about lunch in high school was the giant freshly baked butter cookies. They were probably pre-made then baked in their oven but we waited in line for them.

An addendum:
Only once did I ever eat a school lunch. That was the day I forgot to take mine when I got on the bus. The principal, Mr. Esperson, walked past the table where I was sitting and asked why I wasn't eating. When I told him what had happened, he got me out of my seat and marched me- protesting all the way- through the food line where he paid the 25 cents that I didn't have. That was over 60 years ago, and that's how they did things back then.