Aibu to think the school lunch DD had today was a joke?

[ICameOnTheJitney]

Seriously....noodles and a beef burger with no bun...the other veg on offer was potatoes and cauli....followed bu "A cookie as big as my face" according to DD aged 5. Is that crap or am I fussy? She usually has a packed lunch....

[redshifter]

I agree with Frogspoon and Kewcumber

[coraltoes]

My mother cooks school dinners in another European county. Every lunch has a soup starter packed with veg. Main meals include fish stews, grilled meat etc with their PROPER accompaniments. Pudding is always a piece of fruit. such a shame the UK is so lagging in this area.

I is inexcusable to feed children crap meals when we would not eat them ourselves. I wouldn't give a shit burger , noodles and cauli to a fucking dog and I mean it. If my dd had been fed that I'd kick up a fuss.

[Wheresmycaffeinedrip]

I just think this "it will do" attitude is very sad. Those of you who have a choice in the matter should care more about what schools are serving their kids and less about whether in theory it covers the food groups. They are you children eating this food, why arent you more bothered about standards.

[luxemburgerli]

I'm with frog too.

If I was running schools I'd give up on hot lunches entirely, you simply cannot please people. Everyone brings a packed lunch, packed lunch provided for FSM.

[englishteacher78]

Another silly thing Gove has done (that many people don't seem to realise) is remove the nutritional standards from school dinners that Jamie Oliver fought so hard for.
We are fortunate in that our meals our cooked on site by an excellent team who take real pride in their work (yum).
I'd be concerned by the lack of 'colour' in that meal - colourful plates are nutritious plates.

[JulietBravoJuliet]

Yesterday ds had stir fried noodles, sugarsnap peas and meatballs, which sounds perfectly fine, but is actually not that much different from noodles, burger and cauliflower! Meatballs are just a smaller version of burgers, yet seem to "go" better with noodles. What bugs me is when they run out of the main option and only have the veggie option left, which invariably ds won't eat, so he fills up on bread then has a pudding!

[ICameOnTheJitney]

The meals are cooked on site....and the HT is always bigging them up and trying to get more to take part.

I see that some people think it s a perfectly reasonable meal to offer....however many, like me don't! I can't change my views...it's a disgusting meal and I plan to pop in and ask to see a menu today...I'm then going to ask the HT what she thinks could be changed if it's all as bad as yesterday's.

If it's not....then fine!

[Lililly]

If like my school a meal like that costs £2.40, I would say that us unreasonable. I pay the same at the work canteen for a lovely big portion if meat/fish/pie and 3 big servings of veg. I can't understand how my school meals are considered value for money. Actually I do know, the cost is the transportation from 40miles away, and the equipment to keep them hot.

When universal school meals come in, we must remember they are not free they are payed for our tax, and we should demand good value!

[jamdonut]

Our school has a rolling menu (which is county-wide) ,but most of the stuff is cooked in the kitchens from scratch.
Yesterday I had a school meal. It was the most gorgeous pepperoni pizza. But you could also have plain cheese and tomato if you preferred. There was a choice of chips (which I had),baked beans,or some vegetables (can't remember but I think there were some sliced green beans and one other thing). The pudding was a treacle pudding with custard,but you could have yoghurt or fruit if you prefered.
There is also always salad and some fruit available on a side bar. So with my pizza and chips I had some salad, and with the pudding I sprinkled over mandarin oranges and dried fruit. Many of the children were doing the same thing. However,some were not. They were making very odd choices and refusing what was on offer. I think,in the end the dinner ladies would rather they ate something than nothing at all and give in to the odd choices.
Now, I know a lot of you think pizza with chips is wrong, but I don't and we happily have it at home, as do many others. It is filling.

As for packed lunches...you should see what some parents send..or don't send. I've seen a child with just a jam sandwich (one bit of bread folded in half) and penguin .
When it comes to FSM, when we go on trips out, cook does really nice pack-ups, but you should hear the complaints!! Don't like ham/cheese/yoghurt/fruit/etc,etc. Yes, there's no pleasing everybody. So what do you do?

[RhondaJean]

I cannot BELIEVE that anyone would say cauliflower must be served ?ith a cheese sauce

Btw noodles only congeal if you over cook them. If yours are doing that you may want to drain them a minute or two earlier.

Op did the child who actually ate this complain about it to you?

[jamdonut]

By the way...that's £2.20 for children, £2.40 for staff!

[jamdonut]

I should also point out that was a coincidence that it was pizza (made at school)and chips yesterday! Cook makes the most gorgeous curries and pasta bakes and all sorts. Really delicious.

[SmokedMackerel]

Where I live, it's quite common to serve meat with butteres noodles. My mum does it too. More like pasta noodles than asian-style ones, but it's just a question of food culture.

I generally serve burgers with buttery tagliatelle, onion gravy and cabbage (which is I suppose related to cauliflower). Or I serve them with mash, or fried potatoes- which was the other thing on offer! I never serve burgers in buns, I think they're much nicer without - though I wouldn't get into a state if someone served dd a burger in a bun for lunch (though chances are she would take it out and eat the meat separately).

Anyway, people can eat what they like and feel comfortable with, point is, to me, burger noodles, cauliflower sounds fairly normal.

Nothing wrong with your daughter experimenting with trying different combinations - I fact I would say that should be encouraged!

[Wheresmycaffeinedrip]

rhonda surely it's no harder to believe that Cauliflour tastes better with something done to it, than what people honesty deem as acceptable for their money.

[whois]

I don't think the combination is too strange. I would serve a chicken breast or steak with buttery linguine type pasta (basically noodles) and cauliflower is a decent veg, is it not?

[whois]

Another silly thing Gove has done (that many people don't seem to realise) is remove the nutritional standards from school dinners that Jamie Oliver fought so hard for

Really?? Seriously? That is awful. I hadn't realised. Grove is the worst thing to have happened to UK education

[Soditall]

That's a crap meal and I'd be complaining if that was given to one of my Lo's.

Do the school your Lo attends not send out a menu?All of ours do.If not I'd suggest it to the head.It really helps,we can see what options there are for each lunch time for a few months in advance at our childrens schools.

Every day they have an option of a cooked meal,plus pudding(or fresh fruit if they don't want the pudding)there's a vegeterian choice or they can have a J/potatoe with fillings and that days salads or vegetables with it,plus there's always homemade bread available if they're still hungry.

[Bonkerz]

Our school meals are cooked at a local high school and bussed over. There is never enough delivered! I paid £2.05 the other week (I get paid £3 an hour BTW so this is a high spend for me) and because dd was in the last group into the hall she was given plain spaghetti (no Bolognese left) grated carrot and a small roll! No puddings either so teacher gave her a banana from class!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RhondaJean]

Whereas, that's a sad indictment if how shot to pieces most of our taste buds are from processed foods.

Cauliflower is lovely. It tastes, yknow, like cauliflower. No need to drown it in fatty high cholesterol processed sauce. Ok it's nice occasionally but cauli cheese to me is a meal in itself not a side dish.

[whois]

RhondaJean +1 re cauliflower.

Cauliflower cheese is a 'treat' when having a roast out in a pub or more of a main dish at home to me.

[monkeymamma]

Good grief, some of the comments on here! One person complains there's no burger bun, another gets hot under the collar because the potatoes make it too carb heavy. Glad I'm not a school dinner provider. Burger = meat, cauli = veg and noodles = carb. Plus a dessert cos little ones running around need extra cals. It sounds a million times better than 90% of packed lunches I've seen in schools. Can't wait to see what you lot think when your kids are students and living on pot noodles :-)

[Groovee]

Quite a few years back, the nursery I worked in, had full time children who got lunches provided. The meals used to come plated up and everyone got the same but there was a lot of wastage going on.

So the cook decided they would get to come and get used to school dinners. There were some odd combinations going on with the choosing themselves, but as cook said "They're eating it and there is little wastage going on from them now!"

It may not be appetising to us as adults but some children do like different things.

[curlew]

I'm going to add to the can't see the problem count. If the actual elements were individually crap, then it would have been a crap meal. But it still would have been if the elements were more conventional. If the food was good quality, while it's not a combination i would choose it was fine. sounds like something my ds would have chosen at that age- he didn't like bread, and like many children would always go for pasta in any form.

[GlassSlippers]

In Scotland we eat macaroni cheese and chipsm. I love it. Complete treat and nothing to do with this thread.

[Boaty]

If my child received 'what was left' and it didn't constitute a proper meal, I would demand a refund. I would expect to get what I pay for.
I too am of the generation of a hot meal at primary/middle(1970s) that was of the shepherds pie, veg and gravy/stew and dumplings/fish and chips and a pud style no choices. When it became choices at comp(1980) I was sent with packed lunch as my mother refused to pay for the food on offer.
My own DC had a mix over the years but the lunchbox gestapo hadn't taken over!