Remembering School Dinners !!

Recipes, Cooking tips and maybe some 'Home Made' secrets !
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Richard
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Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Richard »

What School Dinners do you remember, good and bad !!

Swede brings back dubious memories!

I could hack Semolina Pudding, think I recall a slop of Jam on top if you wanted it?

I'd like to hear some others which will bring back more memories.

Then there were the Lunch Time Monitors and Dinner Ladies with large presumed Aluminium Ladles who enjoyed a good slop.

Oh happy days :-D

Also, what do kids get nowadays, haven't a clue.

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manda
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by manda »

Those treacle puddings that they cooked in the long tin and then they sliced them up....with custard (I used to love the skin on the custard).

Tapioca (frog spawn!) again with the jam

Semolina (still love that) and jam lol

Those sponge puddings with the jam and coconut on top and custard

Apple Crumble and custard - loved that always had that crusty bit if you got one of the outside bits.

Fish and chips (the chips were always floppy)

Funny I can't really remember any of the other dinners ...just the puddings stick in my mind (and I am more a savoury person now so I think that's weird...or they were just really awful lol!!).
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Spreckly
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Spreckly »

We had to eat every little bit, and were not allowed to refuse anything! Bacon tart, was disgusting, we had lots of prunes (one girl always swallowed the stones). Favourites were chocolate bricks, which shot across the table if you were not careful, and trifle, we all had a blob of "cream".

As the school was on the coast, we always said the cabbage was seaweed. The salad was grim, and the rice pudding very watery. The potato was watery, goodness knows what they did to it.

A teacher was always present for dinner duty, and nothing escaped her eagle eyes.

I didn't enjoy them!
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by albertajune »

I can't remember what I liked or disliked at my school dinners but can't stand tapioca so must have hated it then. I have just remembered the boiled swede. Definitely not enjoyed but it had to be eaten.
I am now a widow and live with my memories.
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KathJ
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by KathJ »

My mum was a dinner lady first at my junior school and then moved to my senior school so I could never get away with leaving anything - especially sprouts and cabbage which I still hate to this day yike* The pudding were always lovely and as my mum was allowed to have her dinner she'd always fetch home her pudding for me and my brother. Probably where my love of sweet things came from {warn}
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Grannyof4 »

OMG it is soooooooo longggggggggg ago. The main thing I remember was the foul smell coming from the kitchen. Cabbage boiling at 9am!!
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Richard
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Richard »

Gosh what fabulous and interesting replies, certainly brought back Tapioca and Chocolate Bricks !

I guess today it's mainly Pizza and Chips !

Speaking of Tapioca, I googled and noticed that Ambrosia still do it in tins - fancy serving that up to your kids or Grandkids simply to see the reaction !

Keep them coming, fascinating.

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HedgeHugger
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by HedgeHugger »

One of the things we used to get was apple, cheese and a cream cracker. My OH thinks I'm a bit weird because even now I get a craving for it.
There used to be a cornflake cake, pastry, something fruity in the middle (not quite jam) and cornflakes on top. Custard of course.

I remember a very miserable dinner sitting because I refused to eat the fish. I was in that room for all the dinner time and I never did eat it, I don't eat any type of fish or seafood these days either. It was foul! yuck, I can still taste it's horribleness from one mouthful.

There was also a time when we had a daytrip to see a play in the local park. School provided sandwiches. They were sardine in tomato sauce. OMG, some bright teacher thought it would be ok if they just took the big bits of fish out for me... No sandwiches for me that day either.

Apart from that I wasn't really a fussy child and would eat mostly everything put in front of me.
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Mo »

We sat on tables of 8 with 2 servers (5th form girls). They had there fixed tables but the rest of us lined up and were sent 1 form at a time so never knew which servers we would get. Some were fair, some less so.
Didn't like 'leather & onions' much, the slimy fish pie was disgusting.
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Mo
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Mo »

The one I remember most was not a school dinner but at Keele University. In one of the canteens the milk for the custard had gone off one day - it put me off custard for ages - revolting. I'm not particularly fond of milk at the best of times.
Ah yes, school milk. At junior school we had to drink it, it stood in the corridor till playtime so in summer I was kept in most playtimes till I'd managed to force it down. Some kids liked it and would ask for any spares. At secondary there was a milk monitor who took numbers of those who wanted milk each morning.
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Richard
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Richard »

Yes, Thatcher stopped School Milk and to be fair, it was justified.
I recall in summer months when the heat put them right off and in Winter when the tops ended up two inches above the bottle top !

When I see the occasional documentary or bit about Prisons and they show the Canteen, can't help remembering the School Canteen !

The Dinner Ladies .some fair, some not' rings a bell. You always knew the one which would give you a bit extra if you smiled enough !

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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by manda »

I don't know about in the UK now but in NZ (well certainly at the schools in our area) there are no school dinners - the children take packed lunches.
Our son will take sandwiches or a pasta / rice dish in a container (as long as it something that's palatable cold). I sometimes make him sushi ...nothing like the dinners we had :-D
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by wendy »

Coming from an extremely poor family and being the youngest of 5. I ate everything.
But school dinners succeeded in turning me off of ALL milk puddings for life.
I will only eat custard, nothing else YUK
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lancashire lass
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by lancashire lass »

I never had the "privilege" of enduring a school dinner though I do vaguely remember drinking the milk (I was only in infant school in the UK for a few short months before we emigrated) If I remember, it was in small glass bottles with a cardboard lid pushed in at the top ...

In South Africa when I was in school in the 1960s/1970s, we had to take a packed lunch to school and something to drink usually an orange squash (you daren't risk drinking tap water straight from the tap without it being boiled first ... ) Nearly always there was a piece of fruit like an apple (sometimes a piece of fresh pineapple, some grapes or my favourite were lychees when they were in season - other fruit in season were reject Outspan oranges and tangerines (naartjies we called them) but I didn't like eating them preferring fresh squeezed juice), and something equivalent to a Penguin chocolate biscuit. The lunch itself could be anything - usually sandwiches wrapped in grease-proof paper with a sliced meat like polony (not my favourite) or ham, cheese in summer was a big no, and I never had egg sandwiches probably because the pong that came out of other people's lunch boxes put me off ever eating one forever. Now and again, my mother would roast some chicken pieces like drumsticks or thigh which went into the lunch box, or sometimes a piece of pork pie (it had the best pastry, and meat and jelly was peppery and really nice. I remember it used to be sold as an individual pie inside a cardboard box - just reminding me about how everything today is plastic wrapped) In winter sometimes I took a flask of hot (home made) soup instead.
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Richard
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Re: Remembering School Dinners !!

Post by Richard »

Sounds OK Lassie.

I just did a random google 'school meals menus 2017' and this came up.

Cor, they just don't know what they've been missing from our day !!!

http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/media/124247/ernhale-junior-school.pdf

Spoiled brats :-D :-D :-D

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