School Dinners

Ones, not Ines!! (Fat finger syndrome) ?

Ines, not Ines.

I rarely stayed for school dinners, either going home or occasionally having packed lunch. The Ines I remember, though, were pretty awful. As Jane10 says, they were to be endured rather than enjoyed: lumpy mashed potatoes with black bits, dark green over cooked cabbage, semolina pudding and tapioca pudding (nicknamed frogspawn by us kids). Yuk!

I do remember being very disappointed the year in secondary school that I queued over an hour for Christmas Dinner - but when I got to the front of the queue they had run out of Turkey and roast potatoes and were serving (very tough) ham with boiled potatoes and some sort of dreadful industrial piccalilli!

My kids went to school in Sweden where parents can eat for free (and spend time in class) if they want a couple of times each term. The food was pretty good with a huge salad buffet (around 8 different things) and homemade bread every day - and also on the buffet a choice of hot dishes and soup.

Gypsy tart, now you’re talking! Did you go to school in Kent Craftycat? Bit of a local delicacy there, can even get it in Bakeries now. I didn’t like many of the dinners, too much greasy gray mince. Liked the puds, especially GT and the stodgy ones. Hated tapioca, semolina, rice pudding and anything else that looked like something not nice.

I loved school dinners. The mashed potato was devine. We had lovely home made pies etc., and puddings were delicious. This was in the fifties and sixties. The dinner ladies cooked from scratch in those days.

The roasties at my secondary school were the best I have ever had and the jam roly poly...... !

I went to a few different schools and really enjoyed the dinners in all of them.

I remember very little of school dinners other than tapioca which i hated and once a week getting half a slice of brown bread (which I loved) with whatever was served. I only had school meals in Infant School, mum had my brother as I moved into Juniors so I went home along with my brother and Auntie, who is the same age as me and in the same class. Once I moved to Secondary School I used to go to my maternal grandma's for lunch as she only lived 5 minutes walk from my school.........Dinners there were delicious, especially Wednesday which was baking day.

Who remembers Frogspawn? Aka Tapioca!! Then there were the prunes, apart from those things, I seem to remember enjoying school dinners, especially the Concrete and Pink Custard! Happy Days!

I stayed for school dinners on the first week at being at "big" school and I hated it, so I walked the one mile to my mam's cafe and had lunch there. I never went back again because I have never tasted food so horrible in all of my life and I am not a faddy eater.

The only acceptable things at my expensive private school were Gypsy Tart and hard boiled egg and sardine salad. the rest was gross.

One Friday (didn't get meat on Fridays) when there was a national vegetable shortage we were given macaroni cheese, chips and bread rolls. So healthy for overweight teenage girls.

Pretty poor legacy given the fees.

My mum worked in my primary school kitchen when I was a child. School dinners were tasty then (apart from liver ?) .
If there were leftovers the ladies were allowed to bring them home. So occasionally I would get the same thing twice a day!! It was great. Who wouldn't love spam fritters twice a day, or treacle tart and custard again?? Yum yum!!

My mum worked so I had to stay for school dinners, which I loved.
She once asked me what my favourite dish was that I had at school. Mince, mashed potato and baked beans was the immediate answer. Things we never had at home. So she made it for me and I hated it! I’m certain she would have used butcher’s best mince, potato mashed with butter and Heinz beans rather than the dehydrated, industrial cheap stuff the school cooked with, but still her healthy, undoubtedly delicious food didn’t stand a chance.

Manchester tart was my absolute favourite, it also included bananas in it. I didn't see it for years after I left school but thankfully I can find it in a few places now! Loved chocolate sponge and pink custard, hated green snot pie (gooseberry tart) and liver?

Primary school time I went home for lunch and in fact my mum even had a couple of extra children to feed - both only children and faddy eaters, one a friend of mine, the other a friend of my brothers, both of their mums worked and funnily enough, they ate whatever my mum put in front of them !
From the age of 11, I went to school in the nearest town 10 miles away, and school dinners. Quite enjoyed them, especially the spam fritters and chips and the roast dinner - amazing roasties! Jelly and fake cream on a hot plate, rice pudding and chocolate crispy, semolina with jam and tapioca that stuck to the plate like superglue!
But the one thing I remember is something that is a Bedfordshire unique dessert - chocolate toothpaste - a pastry base with a chocolate mousse , topped by a swirl of fake cream ! Yum! My son has made it since and there is a couple of bakeries you can buy a slice from too !

The dinners at my primary school were ‘scrummy’; secondary school not so good, but certainly not awful. There was no choice, but it was all good food. My grandson gets to choose his school lunches, a week in advance! I would love a good recipe for Gypsy Tart.

hated school dinners at first primary school, the food was cooked elsewhere and brought in to us in large containers, many a mouthful ended up in a hankie. when we moved my new school had great food - manchester tart, cheese pie with lovely mash and many more favourites. then when at grammar school back to awful food, only stuck it one term. luckily my nan, who had been a school cook, a very good one at that,lived close enough for me and a friend to go to hers for our meal except on a wednesday when a group of us would go to the Cousins confectioners for a sandwich and cake or the local chippy. havent had manchester tart for years

Liver (ox?) that appeared to have a green tinge to it, disgusting.

Gypsy Tart is just a pre cooked pastry case with a filling of a large tin of Evaporated Milk &280 g Dark Muscovado sugar. You whisk the 2 together until it is all fluffed up & just pour it into the pre cooked pastry case & let it cook until set.- about 20 mins.
My son went all gooey eyed yesterday when he dropped the children off & heard we had that for pudding. Very unhealthy but as a rare treat it's OK.

Semolina and Liver the worst school dinner . It was thought I had a fish allergy and I can remember one year being on a table with a teacher who was a bit of a tartar, and telling her I couldn’t eat the fish. She was having none of it, you will eat it. When the school cook appeared with a fried egg on a plate, you mustn’t have fish must you dear! The teachers face was a picture.this was late 60’s. I was also in said teacher class age 6 on one particular day someone did a poo which ended up on class room floor, nobody owned up and we were all taken to the toilet to have our bottoms checked. To find the culprit. I did later become a school cook!

I always went home or to granny’s for lunch, but I remember pestering my mother so much, I was allowed to stay for school dinner ( which was served in the classroom).
Cottage pie with raw shredded carrot, followed by dry cornflakes with figs. No more school dinners for me.

When working in schools I loved the spaghetti pie, puff pastry topped with tinned spaghetti and grated cheese. My attempts to recreate it just don’t work.

We lived just a short walk from my son's primary school so normally he didn't stay to school dinners but took a packed lunch or came home.
But he craved the experience, so on one occasion I let him stay.

'What did you have for lunch?' I asked when he came home.
He wrinkled his nose, 'Some long orange things with tiny weeny bits on them but I enjoyed the salad.'

The 'long orange things' turned out to be fish fingers, something my 7 year old had never seen, let alone eaten.

In those days we were passionate wholefood adherents - we're just a little more relaxed now.

Thankyou all for recipes, definitely a baking day on the “to do list?
I was talking about school dinners with a friend the other day, and we both remembered “Toffee Cream Tart”, we seemed to think it was a butterscotch, toffee taste, very creamy and yummy ?

I seem to recall nice stoggy type puds like jam rolly poly made with suet.

Rice puds with jam.

Thick custard as well.

This was at secondary school , mind end of rationing may have made some change.

Mick