Your school dinners

[FridgeJenga]

but really, this thread is about school cake!

The only thing I really liked from my school dinners was school cake, but no pink custard please.
Well, maybe their fish cakes but these were made with a batter coating, rather than the usual breadcrumbs.

Did you enjoy school dinners as a kid?

Gipsy or butterscotch tart. Rice pudding with jam.

I was a strange child i loved ploughman's lunch and oxtail soup when I had my school meals

Forgot to say I didn't like the puddings except Christmas pudding it was black not dark, BLACK like seriously black never tasted anything like it since

Primary school I actually loved the cabbage (with lots of salt) and a couple of slightly weird lamb (allegedly) things - one minced in gravy with a really short pastry top, and the other shakes like a cutlet and coated in fine, bright orange breadcrumbs.
Weirdly the pudding that I loved most was mandarin yoghurt with shortbread fingers.

Middle school I mostly had packed lunched but remember sausage and mash with tinned tomatoes, 'caterburgers' and pink semolina with grated milk chocolate.

Not sure I ever had school dinner at secondary but vividly remember getting hot Ribena and a kind of toffee rice krispie concoction on a thick shortbread base frequently at break.

Pink custard ..gads
Tapioca ..with jam..gads
Mash tattie ice-cream scoop style
Hot on the outside
Freezin cauld in the middle..gads

Ne Scotland 1970s.🤮🤮

I loved Primary school lunches. Steak pie, cheese pie, all the puddings - I'm from Kent so we had proper Gypsy tart with an apple slice. Jam sponge with custard. I am odd that I love semolina and overcooked cabbage :)

Loved mine. Steak and kidney pie, toad in the hole, fish cake and chips. All things I had to pretend to hate because it wasn’t cool to admit to liking them. Ice cream with the paper wrapper a chocolate sponge, arctic roll, apple and blackberry crumble. Good stodgy comfort food.

Our school dinners were uniformly vile. I think they are what started my loathing of custard and rice puddling. That horrible skin!

When I was teaching, at one school we had a delicious cheese flan and I loved that.

We didn't have school dinners when I was a child in Ireland. In primary school we brought in a packed lunch and in secondary school we went home for lunch (school was a 10 minute walk and we had an hour for lunch).

Ohh I wonder if that's it!!! Thank you!

Chicken and mushroom pie
chicken curry with rice
battered fish, chips and parsley sauce
chocolate concrete dry no custard
sponge with coconut
butterscotch tart
cornflake tart
something that was apples cornflakes and whipped cream layered in bowl

Yes we had chicken fricassee with a scoop of mash potatoes and peas

I was vegetarian in secondary school (many decades ago). The cook didn't approve, so I had two scoops of mashed potato with spaghetti hoops every day for three years.

I was on free school meals so no packed lunch available.

I wonder if Manchester Tart was local to Lancashire (at that time, early 70's )?
Loved it and loved school dinners.
I remember being served milky coffee in a glass cup about once a week 😂
Same with Strawberry milkshake.

When the metal jugs were coloured and not silver that day, we knew it was a change from drinking water.

I grew up in Stafford, we had Manchester tart at school. I also remember having it in a London restaurant once!

We had Manchester Tart in the Midlands in the 60s and 70s.

The nun made sure that cabbage was available with every lunch. 🤢

Many years ago, the school cook/manager had a large team, devised their menus according to strict nutritional guidelines (and what the kids would eat) and everything was cooked from scratch. Pretty much everyone at my primary school loved the meals. Except, most of of the time, me. This was a bit embarrassing for the cook who was my Mum. But I remain a very picky eater.

By the time she retired in the 90s things had changed - and she was bringing her own packed lunch.

We had Manchester Tart in Kent in the 70s - one of my faves. I've even tried making it myself.

We also had this, possibly with cocoa powder or chocolate flavour sprinkles on top.
All school puddings were cracking though.
Ironically, what we now call School Cake, was never served at my school!

I was a little weirdo (or perhaps a baby vegan in training!) and I loved the veggies that no one else wanted, especially the cabbage!

Did anyone else get the square of marble cake with brown chocolate custard?

I'm as far south as you can get and we had Manchester tart, I loved it. 😍

I hated primary school dinners. They used to make me cry. You weren’t allowed to leave the dining hall unless you’d eaten everything. I have vivid memories of sitting in tears in front of my plate for an entire hour and 15 minutes, which was what we had for lunch. I was 5 and my mum, not exactly the most maternal advocate for her own child, absolutely refused to allow me to take packed lunches.

Desserts were smothered in custard which I have always loathed. As an adult I discovered I have a mild lactose tolerance and I wonder if the reason I hated anything like that (see also rice pudding) is that it made me feel very sick, but I didn’t put two and two together.

Mind you, I was seldom allowed to even attempt the dessert because I wouldn’t eat the main. The dinner ladies would turn your tray back round. My biggest nightmare was Scotch egg. I physically cannot eat boiled eggs - the texture makes me gag. I’d be there gagging for over an hour on microscopic morsels of boiled egg.

Sometimes, you finished your main, you’d get a sweet as reward which I think said it all.

This resonates with me. The ice cream scoops of tepid, claggy mashed potato were my nemesis. Being forced to eat in this manner, is the fastest route to disordered eating in later years fr some people, sadly. 💐

I wasn’t allowed school dinners because my mum said they were made of shit like pigs trotters 😂 I always gazed at the longingly and then got one over on her because the teachers would give me a pudding if I tidied the whole library.