School Dinners in the 1960's

My dear sister and I were brought up in poverty so we LOVED the dinners we had at primary school. We think they were freshly cooked on the premises, meat or fish, pots and veg and always a yummy pud.
At grammar school we had decent meals too. It was more regimented; 8 to a table, filed in in silence. I recall a hard chocolate tray bake with green sauce. You had to be careful not to send it shooting across the table.

Jalima were you on the school payroll? I think I should have been!

I'm glad to say that no-one forced me to drink school milk. I think there was always someone who was pleased to have my share. I've never liked milk except in disguise - custard, hot chocolate etc. My Dad and many of his side of the family have all been the same - no milk in our tea, for example. He used to say 'milk is the natural food of baby cows'.

Every week without fail summer or winter we had a salad always chopped cabbage never lettuce,grated carrots and beetroot served with hot mashed potatoes. And to accompany it grated cheese.your heart would sink when you saw it,it was all the childrens least favourite meal.Oh and don't get me started on school salad cream disgusting.

I'm sure the school authorities in the 50s/60s didn't appreciate the phobias and trauma they caused. It was just a case of...what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

The milk at my junior school was also placed beside a radiator, warming up. It was so disgusting that I was nearly vomiting and we had to drink this daily. Occasionally I would tip mine out of the window but as it was concrete outside I was soon found out. I also only have a little milk in coffee now- I cannot touch cold milk.

Linsco, I had a similar experience with school milk, it had been warmed up because the weather was cold, and something came up my straw and wriggled in my mouth! I screamed and spat it out, whatever it was was about an inch long. I haven`t touched milk since, and that was around 1950.
My favourite school dinner, the only decent one, was meat and potato pie with shredded beetroot, lovely. The salads always had greenfly crawling all over them, and the stewed apricots we called stewed ants, because there were always loads floating on the top! This was in the late 50s though, not the 60s, I left school in 1959.

I hated most of the meals, but we used to have a very tasty meat (beef?) pie once a week and the treacle tart was yummy. We weren't a salad eating family so the school salad with beetroot and raw cabbage had me completely flummoxed.

Loved mock cream. Never realised that was how it was made though. And this from a Cornish maid brought up on clotted cream

Jalima were you on the school payroll?

Our milk used to sit outside on the verandah in the winter at infant school, and, as I was a milk monitor I used to have to try to push the paper straws through the ice which had risen up out of the bottles!
I was also bell monitor at one time - just before playtime, dinner time and home time I had to fetch the bell and run around all four corners of the junior school, ringing the bell!
There was no end to my talents

I also remember the little bottles of milk (1/3 of a pint) which the milk monitors brought into the classroom at 9 am. They sat in the crate next to a central heating radiator most of the morning and the milk was lukewarm when we had to drink it with straws. I also remember a fellow pupil sucking up a beetle from one of these bottles....YUCK!

Mock cream in our family was made with milk, butter and cornflour with a dash of custard powder. Can't remember whether there was icing sugar or caster sugar in it.

Love mock cream doughnuts

Mock cream was made with milk, margarine and cornflour according to one site; it must have had sugar in it too, as it was very sweet.

I was a very nice prefect!!
(somewhere in the attic I still have my prefect's badge from primary school!)

And the head of table at the High School (a sixth former) was lovely and kind.

DM used to send me to the local bakery with a very large jamjar to buy the synthetic cream for the top of the trifle!! (probably made of lard with flavouring, yuck).

Yes, Maggymay! Our local bakery used to sell mock cream doughnuts which were long like an eclair and filled with the 'cream' and a bright red jam substitute. Only ever had them for a special treat. I wonder what mock cream was made of in the 60s?

I remember my favourite was minced meat open pie with crisps on the top,,followed by rhubarb flan topped with mock cream anyone else remember mock cream.

My favourite school dinner was spam (sliced, not fritters) mashed potato and baked beans. Yummy!

Jalima school prefects used to act as table monitors and some of them were worse than HTs, quite freely handing out lines or other penalties if you didn't eat quickly enough as there was always a 1st and 2nd sitting in the refectory. Fortunately for me, my friend had a healthy appetite and would eat just about anything...including the frog spawn!

I used to sit with tears dripping down my face and my throat closed up because they were all waiting for their pudding and I couldn't finish my dinner ....
But I did learn to eat quickly (not really a good thing).

I remember a time when we had a slice or two of white bread with our dinner because there was a potato shortage for some reason. Can't remember why (not, it wasn't the Irish Potato famine of 1847, I am old but not that old).

Most of ours was just boring plain fare and I suppose it was nutritious - always with some sort of potatoes (never chips) and at least two veg. I liked the fish and the pies - corned beef or cheese, and yes, I loved the puddings, apart from the frogspawn (was it sago?). But oh, the gristly, fatty meat and the liver with tubes in No choice at all, not even about eat it or don't eat it. Forcing that fat down used to make me heave. I once sat all afternoon staring at my plate till home time when I was told I couldn't leave without eating the demon liver. That's probably the day everyone else had algebra explained to them...

Sago and tapioca Yuk, yuk
Frogspawn!
Although I did (and do) like semolina

DH went to boarding school and was barely fed much at all. At least I went home to Mum's food.

No, you are not exaggerating Linsco56
I was table head in the last year of primary school. Some of the food was inedible but we struggled through it - apart from the gristle and lumps in the custard. The HT used to patrol the tables inspecting the plates to see if anyone had left anything. She told me that, as table head, she would make me eat everyone's leftovers. I was very upset. However, DM said that if she said that again she would go into school, scoop the leftovers onto a plate and make her eat them herself.
Dinners at the High School were much better, but no-one was allowed pudding until everyone on the table had finished their first course. I found that excruciating, because I was a very slow eater and everyone used to finish quickly then all stare at me.

c