French school meals

[AuxArmesCitoyens]

My kids went back this week (bog standard state primary, rural France). They were moaning about the canteen so I thought I'd check out the menu. Tomorrow they're having a melon starter, free range chicken tajine with raisins and organic couscous, a cheese course and apple and quince puree for dessert 🤯 sign me up please! Makes me feel better about giving them dippers for tea tonight, anyway.

Japanese school lunches are amazing too

@AuxArmesCitoyens

Regarding the French refusal to allow girls to wear their cultural dress.

I believe that the figures show more than 300 attempted to go to their schools wearing their abayas., Of those, it's reported that more than 200 were 'persuaded' to remove it, leaving the 70 you've stated.

I'm sure there are many more who haven't even gone to school because of it and therefore no counted.

Not something to be dismissed lightly.

France is culturally very different from here and unlike the UK is a secular country. This is a fundamental part of the constitution. You aren’t allowed to wear a visible cross to school either for example. There was an uproar about not being allowed to wear religious head coverings in the 1990s. People then came to accept it.

Yes, around 300 girls showed up in abayas. FWIW I think it's culture wars bullshit. But it's also a bit of a tangent.

What are you basing this on? My children were all educated in France and i found a lot of provision was made for ND pupils.

In reply to Clymene

I spent six months at school in France as a teenager. To be honest I didn’t know what I was eating most of the time or how it always worked in the canteen

tongue, rabbit stew and all my friends having cigarettes outside classrooms before lessons and zipping around on mopeds.

I just was not cool enough!

spent another three months on a teacher exchange and on the staff room side with mini bottles of wine and beer amused me greatly.

This whataboutery is ruining a perfectly decent thread.

And how hard is it to put a healthy and inexpensive food together, really?

Cottage pies, lasagnes, hearty stews, rotate them every 2 weeks, done.

I didn’t know what I was eating most of the time or how it always worked in the canteen

Probably horse.

A friend of mine teaches in a primary school in Spain and it's the same there - great 3 course meals cooked by a chef. She loves it when there's leftovers as staff get to take them home.

Yes food at our school is appalling. They arranged a taster session to reassure parents who had been complaining about the menu. Honestly it was vile and the nutritionist there went on about the good quality of the school's food. We ended up switching to packed lunches.

.

Nooo. Not my lovely horse!

Also I do not eat pork and I always had options for food in France.

Now in rural Japan there wasn’t always a palatable option and we had to sit in the Head’s office for dinner and they all cheered when I used chopsticks. I had one of the most delicious meals of my
life and nobody could tell
me the name of it: it was a tofu and minced meat stew. I’ve never found it since.

( PS I’m deliberately focusing on interesting school dinners rather than education and political systems in France as per OP’s post)

It was a good read, but it was also largely nonsense.

And now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to cleaning up all the food my French children threw at dinner time.

Maybe it would better that religions didn't encourage girls to wear garments that make them modest

@orturo Nooooooo!!!!!!! 🤣🤣

I had Frikadelle so probably.

I once ate an onion ring in Spain as my friends laughed and shouted “sesos”
I went home and looked it up in the dictionary and it just said ‘brains’. Brains of what, who knows?!

My kids don't throw food, but by god they spill it down their fronts!
Best bit about the book is the idea of putting down a bowl of cherry tomatoes / cucumber / carrot sticks while you're putting food on plates. They start chowing down on it quite naturally.

@Sodullincomparison LOL who knows?

Do different animal brains taste differently, I wonder?

I think the school lunches for ks1 look decent ish, ds had cottage pie today and lemon chicken with cous cous tomorrow. But really need help with packed lunches for ks2.. Dd only seems to eat plain cheese sandwiches, not even butter in them...

I went to school in France... i can still remember the horror of the Friday fish pie!!

Things seemed to have picked up from my 1970s French school dinners, which were heavy on offal and chicken in some kind of sauce that looked and tasted like Vick's vapour rub.

I remember reading about the good French food at schools in the book 'Why French children don't throw food' many years ago...

I am not exaggerating when I say my school WhatsApp group is full with parent rants about foods like pea risotto and Spanish chicken on the school dinners menu instead of sausages and fish fingers... They actually made the school change catering company, and are already complaining about the next one being too 'fancy' too... I think some people are trying to change food culture at schools here too but there's definitely a resistance because kids over here are brought up eating 'kids' foods'.

I really think your post was ill-judged Clymene. We all have our crosses to bear. There's a time and a place etc.

Are you going to seek out every thread about France and the French and post in the same angry manner?

Free-range chicken. How civilised. You can't even get it in most UK restaurants.

French food is brilliant. Even the service station and trucker cafes serve better stuff than our restaurants.