What did you dislike about school dinners?

[Shandan35]

I think my only complaint was that the sweetcorn was tasteless

You always knew how good or bad the day was going to be based on the smell coming from the school kitchens in the morning. Powdered mashed potatoes, cheese wheels, bland veg that was over-boiled to a greyish mush. Those horrid plastic trays and the beakers that always smelled of damp inside. Shudder.

Custard with a thick skin, potatoes like wax and horrible white fish

I quite liked the chips and apple crumble though

I loved them as my stepmother thought belly of pork covered on cream with lemon juice was a good meal.

Meat. I hated being forced to be a meat eater, I threw a tantrum virtually ever dinner time as I didn't want to eat a dead animal and so nearly every day I was sent to the head mistresses office where more than once I was caned for it :-(

I was never a picky eater (still true) but I HATED the big flat metal trays of mystery meat in gravy. I think it might have been pork - whatever it was it was grey, flavourless, had a tough outer rind of some kind on it and had a really peculiar chemical smell to it that i can still remember 35 years on. Blech.

DH has dreadful memories of soggy, boiled-pale cabbage.

On the other hand, once a week we'd get a little, scoop shaped rock hard chocolate rice Krispy cake and a beaker of pink milk which was basically the highlight of the week

Nothing, our school dinners in the 70's were delightful. Mouth would be watering from 10am at the smells coming from the kitchen...
Roast dinners, amazing roast potatoes, the steak pie was lush...and the puddings even better.

Half melted ice cream with a horrible pink sauce

Grey squares of Mystery meat served as part of a roast, if you asked what it was you were told ‘meat’. If they ran out of veg you had ice berg lettuce, still served with gravy.
Sweetcorn mixed into all sorts of dishes where it really had no place.
You were only allowed the vegetarian option if you were veggie.
The salad cream was bizarre.
Cornish pasties with raw pastry and a weird grey mush inside.

I also remember awful food on brownie pack holiday. Chicken supreme which had a close resemblance to dog food, powdered vegetable soup, Irish stew, chicken casserole which was all chicken on the bone which I have never been able to eat and made me cry. I loved Brownies but I hated the food.

I loved school dinners.

Especially pink custard.

Vinagered beetroot🤮
We used to regularly have liver and bacon casserole at home.
I've never tried tapioca or even seen it. My dad put me off it by calling it frog spawn
We also had semolina at home, best with lemon curd in.
Cold custard/blancmange🤮 I cant get beyond the skin. Thank god for the likes of Devonshire custard.

My family returned from living Japan in 1979 and I went to primary school for the first time and experienced school dinners for the first time. Brought up on sushi, tempura, noodles, chicken katsu, sashimi and all manner of wonderous Japanese food. My sister and I just wept, everyday, into the slop that was served up. I don't think we ever had playtime as you weren't allowed to leave before you had eaten what was on your plate. We just sat there, trying not to breath in the cabbage and ravioli fumes, until lessons resumed and we were allowed to go back to the classroom. I remember the dinner ladies calling us spoilt little girls

They weren’t that bad actually but they did serve mashed potato with everything.

Lumps in the mash and thick skin on the custard. Plus it was very over cooked.

Secondary school I was a appalled with the state of the canteen on our day visit in year 6 that I vowed I'd never eat anything cooked there. Never did.

I can’t really comment. I always had packed lunch. We weren’t poor enough for free school meals, but not rich enough my parents could afford to pay.
I was always sooooo jealous of the kids (rich or poor) who had school dinners ...

semolina
blancmange
lumpy mashed potato
custard with slimy skin
rice pudding
liver
"chocolate" sponge that was brown, but didn't have the vaguest hint of chocolate flavour
"chocolate" custard that was brown, but didn't have the vaguest hint of chocolate flavour. usually served with the "chocolate" sponge.

& I only had school lunch for a single term

i forgot to add cabbage in previous list - slimy and smelly.

Yes can I add semolina - like wallpaper paste!

Boiled white rice that looked like maggots.

Actually the school dinners at primary school were generally OK, apart from the boiled fish and the mashed potato. The school had its own kitchen and everything was freshly cooked.

The DDs briefly went to primary school in U.K. where the food was brought in. It was generally inedible, and put together on a prison tray, so you had a slop of yogurt or custard right next to spaghetti bolognaise and a plain slice of bread on top. We used to pre-order the week before and they would regularly run out of stuff - not just run out of what you had ordered, but run out of food. Either the teachers dashed to the Spar to pick up some sandwiches or the children went without. We went onto packed lunch fairly swiftly.

Rice pudding and lemon meringue pie. After watching a boy 2 years older than me stuffing his face with 6 portions of lemon meringue pie because 5 kids on the table of 8 didn't like it and seeing his triumphant, hamster cheeked, freckled faced grin put me off the stuff immediately. I was 8.

Everything (the 1960s ) .... I can still remember them to this day.

I think a lot depends on what sort of meals you had at home, my DM was (still is at 87!) an excellent cook and we had wonderful meals at home ... my friend's mother was a terrible cook - I refused to go to tea at her house - and she remembers school meals with fondness.

Friend's mother (also late 80s) is still a terrible cook, my friend doesn't often see her DM for complex reasons, but last time she went she actually phoned me to say the cooking never improved .

Everything. Mashed potato with stones in it. Chips that were actually parsnips. Faggots. Vegetables with no gravy or sauce. Dinner ladies standing over you making you eat everything. I once forced a lemon curd jam tart down my gullet and then threw up in the playground.

@speakout

Nothing.

My mother is the worst cook in the world- school dinners were heaven.

Snap

The horrible dinner ladies at my primary school. I got free dinners and I was made to queue separately and served last given scraps and looked at like I was trash.

These fuckin bitches should be ashamed of themselves treating a five year old like that!

Stew with very fatty meat, with lumps of white fat hanging off it. Yeuch.