Grade school (1-4): Elio’s pizza.
Grades 5-12: went to a private school, where at the time the Grade K-6 kids all ate bring-from-home lunches at their desk (with milk deliveries if you prepaid for it) and the Grade 7-12 kids were subjected to godawful lunches in the cafeteria (if you dared to buy). No menus published ahead of time, so you never knew what they were serving. I distinctly remember the greasiest hamburgers ever and chicken soup that was a salt lick. The best things there were the packaged snacks. The food has gotten much, much better since.
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I went to school in the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) and the GUSD (Glendale Unified School District). Both had this coffee cake which is still the best I’ve ever had…and that’s saying something since I LOVE coffee cake and am going to be 60 in less than a month!
https://www.gelsons.com/recipes/view/la-school-districts-old-fashioned-crumb-cake
However, only GUSD had these peanut butter crunch snacks which I loved, too. I’ve never made them because the number of carbs from the combination of all that sugar/corn syrup/peanut butter/corn flakes absolutely scares the bejeezus out of me. I have made something similar which only uses melted marshmallows instead of the sugar and corn syrup. But for those who aren’t afraid of so much processed carbs, here’s the original recipe:
GLENDALE SCHOOL PEANUT BUTTER CRUNCH
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups white corn syrup
3 cups peanut butter
1 1/4 (12-ounce) packages cornflakes
Combine sugar and syrup in saucepan. Bring to fast boil, stirring constantly while being extra careful as to not overcook.
Remove from heat and add warm peanut butter. Stir until well mixed.
Pour over cornflakes. Mix well, working quickly. (←this is VITAL❗️)
Pour into well-greased 15 1/2x10 1/2-inch pan, pressing lightly. Cut into squares before the mixture gets too hard (←also VITAL❗️)
Makes about 30 pieces.
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Friday lunches - breaded fish sticks, macaroni & cheese. I don’t remember what was served with this - likely peas and canned peaches.
My grandmother was a “school lunch lady” in a tiny town about 60 miles from where we lived, so I never got to eat her school-day meals. But she frequently made their simple white flour yeast dinner roll recipe for our Sunday family lunches. Good memories.
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Thanks for posting this! What variety!
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Thank you for explaining ‘Gravy Train’; so many ‘youngsters’ have no idea! One time having dinner at a friend’s house, the mother announced dinner was ‘gravy train’. My stomach turned rapidly and I had to leave the table. The commercials for the dog food had been aired regularly on the tube by then.
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In my California grade school (grades 1-6, kindergarten was an am or pm half day adventure, no lunch service). If you wanted a hot lunch you had to have a prepaid lunch ticket. You ate this in the multi-purpose/cafeteria room on ‘Murphy’s tables’. All others ate their bag or lunch box lunches in the classroom. I was lucky to have good boxed lunches from home supplemented with a pre-purchased milk ticket. Later, a lactose issue took hold and mom packed me those small cans of fruit juice. Pineapple-orange was my favorite and remains so to this day. V-8 in small cans wasn’t available to us in those days.
I mentioned most my faves in the MacDonald’s thread, but I just have to mention a few others: incredible sheet cakes: white with a whipped vanilla frosting and chocolate sheet cake with that flat chocolate icing like on a Texas sheet cake. Then there were the huge, oatmealy-brown sugary cookies, still a favorite of mine today. The ‘pizzas’ (more like a focaccia with a wash of seasoned tomato sauce, cheese and green onions) then were rectanglar, and I think that was mentioned in a previous thread, too. Many, many ‘vile’ foods occurred on those menus. I dared not try them!
Middle school and high school had in addition to the dedicated cafeteria, the ‘satellite’, two window food huts with things like greasy, limp french fries, dinner plate size iced cinnamon rolls, and shortbread squares, the latter two which were available for breakfast.
In high school, ‘Nutrition Break’ was instituted as twenty minutes of recess for eating something or smoking cigarettes or both. I brought food from home for ‘nut break’ and if I had any left over, I ate it for lunch. I usually supplemented the leftovers with better fries and a grape Italian Ice bar. Never set foot in a cafeteria line in junior or high school. We had 20 minutes to eat followed by a half hour of lunch recess in elementary school. Four square, tetherball and kickball games burned off every single calorie. One half hour total lunch time in junior high and high school. Ah, nostalgia!
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This thread reminded me of that rectangular pizza, which I hadn’t thought about in years. I swear I can smell it now!
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This is what I enjoyed at the high school cafeteria. . The square pizza now and then. Mom would provide me with a great lunch with a PBJ sandwich. Bless her heart . I haven’t eaten one since 1974 .
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How I loved those rectangular slices of pizza! Our local paper used to publish the next week’s school lunch menu (“As a service to mothers” - gag!), and though I rarely read the paper when I was elementary age, if I happened to notice that pizza was on the menu for any given day, I would clip it out, stick it to the fridge, and remind my mom I wanted a hot lunch that day. I don’t recall ever eating anything else in the cafeteria, although I know I did at least a few times, mostly when we lacked things at home for my mom to pack a lunch for my dad, brother, and me.
When Spawn1 and Spawn2 were in elementary school, I would volunteer once a week to work in their classrooms, and would usually get invited to join them for lunch. One day I saw “BBQ beef sandwich” on the menu. Now, I love me some good barbecue. I love mediocre barbecue. Barbecue has to be really bad for me not to like it. So that day, I decided to eat with a bunch of first graders. As lunchtime approached my anticipation of “BBQ beef” was building and building until my stomach was growling so much the kids heard it. I helped the teacher herd the kids into the cafeteria, got a tray for myself, and was treated to…a Sloppy Joe. Imagine my disappointment!
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I went to school in the 70s and 80s in a small Central MA district. Charitably, I would describe the hot lunches as “cromulent”. I was constantly baffled by the staff’s ability to somehow overcook the cheese on the square pizza and, yet, under cook the dough. Bringing a lunch would have been a better option had I (or my mother) been organized on that front (as I was the one responsible for making dinner by age 12 most nights, I’m not sure why this never occurred to me). I remember the relief I felt in junior high when salad plates were an option. The lettuce was at least fresh and it was hard to mess up a scoop of cottage cheese or tuna salad on top.
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You made me run to the dictionary for that one!
I would bet that the pizzas started out frozen at the central distribution site but slowly warmed in transit to your school, so the cheese was thawed but the core of the dough was still frozen.
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Corn Chowder (in a 2 room school house in Vermont 1963) I must’ve been hungry to even try it that first time & went wow!
The beef & mac back in greater NYC. It was nothing so grand as American Chop Suey.
Jr H & HS I have no memories of food there.
College-- Lamb burgers, Hot Cinnamon Rolls grabbed by me & fellow student cafeteria worker before the godawful icing was applied, the salad bar.
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Whistle dogs. Hot dogs with processed (American) cheese and bacon.
Hot turkey sandwiches
Fries and gravy. That was very popular in 1988 in southwestern Ontario high school cafeterias.
My grade school didn’t have a cafeteria. We had a hot dog Friday once a month. Lunch was a hot dog, a glazed / honey-dipped yeast donut, and a carton of white milk/ chocolate milk.
You guys got chocolate milk?!?
Decadent.
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Oh yes, hot turkey sandwiches. I liked those. Slice of white bread, slice of turkey, gravy. Stuffing on the side, scoop of mashed potatoes. This was in the 70s and 80s in PA. All the food was made in the cafeteria by lunch ladies.
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You’d think after a tuna on wheat almost every day in high school I wouldn’t still like a tuna sandwich…… but I do.
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I did. And thank goodness that I did, too.
Cuz, I needed it to trade for more scoops of spaghetti.
Two just wouldn’t do.
I was a growing carbon life form, after all.
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We had to pay 2 ¢ extra for chocolate milk. What a racket.
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