Thursday, May 17, 2018
May 17. School Cafeteria Food
Chicken rice stick to your ribs casserole. Corn from a can. Chocolate milk from a paper carton. Mandarin oranges in the fruit cocktail. I lived all over the country and it was all the same. And those rectangular pizzas, oh how I could write an ode to those hot cheesy slices of school food heaven.
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This made me smile. Dead on.
ReplyDeleteTalk of school cafeterias (or, in the UK, school dinners)is always interesting to me. We didn't/don't have school cafetarias*. Every day was a packed lunch day, or starve. We never forgot our lunch.
ReplyDelete*Though at high school, there was a takeaway stand where we could put in orders to buy certain treats on Fridays. (I think it was only Fridays. I now need to check with my old schoolmates.)
I always went to schools with inexpensive school lunches; my kids attended a school with a bring your own policy until we switched to a Catholic school with a cafeteria again. I've taught places with terrible cafeterias and ones with excellent cooks and ones with "culinary arts" programs that had kitchen gardens and student cooks.
DeleteThese days in most elementary schools around us the food is prepped elsewhere and the food is just heated. When I was a teacher I'd only eat in the cafeteria on fried chicken days.
ReplyDeleteHere too. My kids' elementary school just fell to the "food service" company. Prices went up and not much improved (except a daily salad option, which Maeve ate most days she bought lunch). At the Title One, 100% African-American, 100% free/reduced lunch middle school where I teach, the food is so unhealthy it crushes me to think about since it's often the only meals these kids get in a day.
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