No messing about in the queue! Tell me your school dinner order

[WomanhoodIsABirthright]

I'll have sausage roll, chips and beans please, with butterscotch tart for pudding.

And seconds of cracknell and custard.

Turkey drummer, chips gravy and carrots with chocolate sponge and chocolate custard for dessert

If we're talking packed lunches, I'll have a haslet sandwich, a trio bar, a carton of um-bongo and a packet of monster munch.

1960s/70s. What do you mean "order"? We sat at tables of 12 with a teacher (generally a Nun) at the head of the table. The person on Serving Rota went to the hatch and brough back the serving dishes and it was served to us.

I hope it's Friday - Fish, chips and garden peas (mushy peas unspeakably chavvy) followed by sponge and pink custard.

Best was Thursday breakfast though - Spam Fritters! Mmmmm!

@Rebel2023 oooh cheese pie. I remember that and loved it! It was quite deep filled.

We went up to the counter and chose what we wanted.

Pizza slice and a giant cookie for me!
The cookies were near enough the size of dinner plates!

Yes - you ate what you were given. My favourite was called American Bean Pie which was just cottage pie with a layer of beans. We took turns to serve custard from the jug and to pour water for everyone at the table. In retrospect it must have been dire for the teachers who sat with us but we all learnt how to sit at the table, have conversations and everyone was included.

Cheese flan and beans please miss. Chocolate sponge & chocolate custard for pudding but can you move the skin, please miss?

Meatballs in gravy and spaghetti please. Then sticky toffee pudding and custard.
Thank you.

The meatballs were white inside, I don't know how else to describe them. But they were the food of the gods ☺️

Sausages, rice, and gravy please.

The mash was rancid, and I rarely got rice at home. I ate that daily for four solid years.

Primary school..beef burger, potatoe croquets and those tiny diced vegetables, with a defrosted plastic moose pot with a pull off cardboard lid.
Secondary school..square of pizza in one of those plastic bags with greaseproof paper bottom and chocolate slice in also in one of the bags.
Not sure how how we didn't all get scurvy.

Cheese flan and greens for me please. Cherry yoghurt or Tottenham cake for afters.

did anyone else have to raise their hand for the dinner lady to check if you’d eaten enough of your main before you could eat your afters?

Oh my Christ how exciting.
ravioli and chips AND a corned beef pasty. I’m veggie now so none of this could happen now, but back in the day…BEST DINNER EVER

At primary; 'You'll have what you're given. No, you can't have the dry baked potato and a tablespoon of grated cheese, that's for the Muslims. No, you aren't allowed to have just the vegetables, there are Africans who would eat this and be grateful, you know, I'll tell Mrs Young you're being fussy again and then you'll lose your playtime. You're so ungrateful complaining that this stuff makes your tummy hurt when you're getting it for free. When your Mum gets a job and pays for your dinners, you can pick and choose'. (NB, turned out to be coeliac).

At secondary: If it was the right dinner lady 'Don't tell anybody and make sure to go to Mrs James to wave you through' (produces a giant jacket potato, four packs of butter and a mound of cheese or a giant plate of chips and two bananas from their hiding place under the counter). Do you want a drink as well?' (Puts a carton of orange juice on the tray). If it was the wrong one and I hadn't managed to steal obtain an early dinner pass 'Nothing left, can't give you stuff that isn't for free dinners, it's more than your token, you'll just have to get here earlier (when the lower school weren't allowed into the canteen and I'd then have to spent 15 minutes waiting in the Poor Kids' queue for a free meal token before joining the food queue five minutes before the end of lunch) if you want food tomorrow'.

Got used to going without.

Primary: cheese and tomato flan, or bacon and egg pie with chips and salad, then a bowl of pink custard(on its own), or a toffee yogurt please.

Secondary: I'm not touching the hot options!🤮 ill grab some bombay mix and a piece of shit cake from the tuck shop at break thanks.

Packed lunch - I'll have a roll with ham and 'thousand island' dressing, a can of Quattro and a Blue Riband, please. If I'm flush I might buy a bag of salt and vinegar potato puffs from the tuck shop.

Packed lunch:

Prem (kind of luncheon meat) & piccalilli or sardine & tomato paste on white bread
Salt & vinegar or sausage & tomato flavour crisps
Trio or Club biscuit
Um Bongo

I mostly went home for dinner in junior school and half of secondary. My nana made me a lovely hot lunch or she'd get mini Hovis loaves & dinky pork pies for a little ploughman's lunch type thing.

I’m old too, so the only options are take it or leave it.

Shepherds pie with baked beans in, served with extra beans on the side.

And for pudding chocolate mint square and custard - I've never seen this since, but it was like millionaires shortbread only instead of the caramel layer there was a layer of minty stuff coloured so brightly green it looked radioactive. The chocolate and mint melted off into the custard. I loved it!

Chicken dinner.
Concrete cake and yellow custard for pudding please.

The main with chips and gravy. So, pie, pasty, pizza slice, garlic bread. A barmcake and a fizzy pop.

How I was skinny in school I will never know.

I certainly couldn't get away with a diet like that now.

Primary school-(mid 70s). Ham salad , which was served in large metal trays with each salad component lined up and always included raisins. For pudding- Concrete pudding (hard chocolate pudding) and mint custard. One day I was sat opposite the headmistress at the octagonal tables we used. Dug my spoon into the pudding a large cuatard laden piece flew off my plate and hit the her in the boobs causing a massive green stain which she had to wear for the rest of the day.
Secondary school. I can't really remember, except that I started taking packed lunches after a term because they were so awful. I was a day girl at a boarding school and your parents had to pay for meals by the term. I felt sorry for the boarders because they had to eat school meals 3 times a day. Those of us who did domestic science as an o'level would give or sell the food we had made to them.

A B and H for 10p purchased whilst in full school uniform from the shop opposite the school and a diet coke. I always remember the amazing pizza puff thing I treated myself to occasionally. I work at a primary school now and the menus sound fantastic but in reality are identical to the meals in the nineties. 'Home made Lancashire cheese and onion pie with fresh local veg''- a flabby slab of stodge with no discernible cheese and some yellow wet broccoli. Still amazing though on a wet Monday lunchtime. My child's grammar school lunch menu online looks like something from the House of Lords restaurant and I have thought about asking him to bring it back for me in some tupperware. 'Chefs herby croutons with chilli flakes and Parmesan' on the second course soup after a 'selection of bread with dipping oils'. Normandy Pork chop, apple sauce and cream for the main course. The puddings always resort to good old-fashioned rice pudding and the like. He refuses any of these amazing and cheap delights and thus I have to make him a sodding peanut butter sandwich, as I have done for the last eight years.

Square pizza and a chocolate brick please 🤤

Packed lunch would be a cheese spread sandwich with salt and vinegar golden wonder crisps to put in it, a wagon wheel, a chocolate mousse and a carton of Ribena