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.

kids over here are brought up eating 'kids' foods'.

Ha, yes - that is a big issue.
I hail from a European country and kids’ food just means a smaller portion of what the grown ups are eating. And children eat with their parents, none of this nonsense children eating UPF at 5pm, parents eating proper home cooked meals at 8pm.

Well I’m British and do exactly this too 🤷‍♀️. All eat together and we all eat the same.

Nah, don't be daft. Isn't that illegal in the UK? We never give our kids bowls of cherry tomatoes either.

We are in southern Europe and every lunch my daughter has a soup course and this starts as soon as they can eat ( our school is 6minths to 9yrs). The children pretty much have to eat the soup and this is I gather a cultural norm in all schools. The main meal they can be fussy, but the vegetable soup is a must.
I think this is brilliant- why don't uk schools do this very cheap and easy option for school kids to get vegetables in them on a daily basis?
Start of school term this week and it's funny when my daughter judges the success of a new kids day by the soup consumption " oh yeah he did really well and had a great day- soup wasn't a problem!"

Don’t tell anyone my kids favourite food is tomotoes 🤫

'Autistics' 😆😆 wow

Also not the point of the thread but this part of the article stood out to me @Bubbles254. The wife and the husband both work full time, yet she’s the one planning meals, cooking, doing homework and sorting homework; all simultaneously of course.

‘This is not easy given that my husband and I both work full time and have no help at home. So it requires a little organisation and planning; for example, I make (and freeze) soups or stews on the weekend, and thaw them during the week. Slow cookers are also great. The point is that I don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking, and choose quick-to-prepare dishes that are healthy yet easy to make. I would estimate that I spend 15 minutes (hands-on) preparing the evening meal; things may take a little longer to bake in the oven, but during this time I’ll be helping the kids with homework or doing housework.’

I'm sorry you have an autistic child

Why?

Tbh the poster had a good point about MN attitude to anything French. It is weird.

In my (French middle) school the n⁰1 thing the kids complain about is the food, almost without exception every single ''conseil de classe'' begins with the pupils airing their grievances about it. The food overall is fine, there's a choice of starters, desserts, dairy product and 2 options for the main course (always a fish option for the Muslim kids and the vegetarians 🙄). We do have a veggie meal once a week, but it's not great as our chef doesn't have a clue how to cook a main without meat/fish apparently.
The highlight of the year is when they serve chips (about 2 or 3 times a year). Once a year we even get burgers and chips (used to get a glass of coke too but scrapped that as kids were (even more than usually) agitated all afternoon.
We had wine at the teachers' tables until about 10 years ago when a parent kicked up a fuss about it (the law was on their side so it stopped in our collège, but it is still tolerated in quite a few schools).

I suffered years of French school dinners. It was always a piece of fruit, a sinewy stew of...something and watery cous cous, sliced stale baguette and plain yogurt to finish. It was foul

My kid goes to school in Asia and I’m always impressed by their meals! All freshly made and healthy, vegetables and meat dishes with delicious herbs and spices and served with rice, nothing processed/ready made/beige. I’m so jealous!

I think the food bit is only a bit better than the UK and nothing else but there are other countries that actually serve proper food that is way better than the French!

What a strange post. Should every poster be wary of posting anything positive, because you have an autistic child?

Was that dish Mapo Tofu ? I'm not sure how the Japanese version differs from the original but it's very tasty.

Todays lunch at my kids primary school (state, east London). Fuck knows how it tastes but they don't complain about it and it doesn't sound dissimilar to the French menu! Though definitely lacking a cheese course.

Me too. I'm French living in the UK, the food culture is the only thing I miss but I miss it greatly!

The school menu is making me so depressed. As well as the food on offer at birthday parties. I have to force myself to provide beige food at playdates as I don't want to be "the weird family". It makes me sad, food should be one of life's pleasures!

I also was under the impression Jamie Oliver had "revolutionised" school dinners so I was really confused when I saw the menu mainly consisted of fish fingers chicken burger and pizza. What was it before?

I do have friends whose kids school menu sound better/slightly healthier than ours though, is it just a postcode lottery?

@Lotsofpots Mmm that menu sounds really good!

My kids are at school in Spain and although they get 3 freshly cooked courses every day, they don't get a choice (there is a veggie meal provided for those who don't eat meat). I do think it's helped them be a bit more adventurous in what they will eat. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have touched a calamari ring or blood sausage at their age in the U.K!!

Jesus. How to derail a nice thread

Sounds amazing OP.

As for the autism comment, SEN children aren't treated great in the UK either. My daughter has a severe speech disorder due to cerebral palsy, and learning difficulties and no school will take her besides a school which is 1 hour away. So she has to travel 2 hours a day for school, and when she's bedridden due to her epilepsy I get a nasty call from her headteacher threatening me with fines.
All this because there isn't enough space in SEN schools. 130 applicants this year and only 11 places in our local sen school.

Uk and France too busy laundering money in Ukraine no doubt.

My only experience of French school food was on a school exchange many eons ago and, if I'm honest, my teen self wasn't very impressed by the slab of unidentified meat smothered in some heavy, nondescript sauce surrounded by limp vegetables which appeared to typify the genre. That said, British school food was still mired firmly in the turkey twizzler and smash bracket so who was I to judge?

It sounds like both countries have moved on somewhat, even if progress is spread unevenly, which is heartening.

I also have an autistic child. I also appreciate that French children have great school dinners.

Stop being so negative

That does look yummy TBF, and lots of choice. Pleased to see it.

@Frenchfoodoptions No, don’t surrender to the junk food culture!

For play dates I offer stuff like fruit bowl, carrot sticks, cheese, nuts or sourdough toast with (proper, non-UPF) peanut butter or jam. I talk to visiting children like I talk to my own, e.g.:
”Eat the bits that you like and leave the rest”
”This isn’t an a la carte restaurant” (I don’t take food orders)
”Shoes off please”
”Wash hands when coming in from outside play”

My house, my rules.

In both the school I teach at and my children’s schools, lunches are just delivered in the morning in packets. No lovingly home cooked dishes. I have had 17 odd years of listening to my lot moaning about lunches( and is an inevitable feature of every back to school parent evening).
Grass is always greener.

In my DCs experience it depends on the school.

School 1 (primary) - generally the food was nice. The DC complained that there wasn't chips/burgers/pizza when they found out their English cousin had them at school. But the actual meals were nice.

School 2 (secondary) - the menus look nice but Ds1 complained every day last year. The meat was too fatty. The sauce was weird. The rice had "bits" (vegetables) in it. He also rarely managed to identify what he was actually eating...

School 3 - DS2 actually takes packed lunch (medical reasons) but he says the lunches look awful and hardly any of his friends eat them.

It is worth noting though that school 1 was in Paris. And schools 2 and 3 are overseas, and I struggle to get nice tasting food here for us so it's probably all linked. Plus food here is 30% more expensive than mainland France.

Here's September's menu for school 2