What did you dislike about school dinners?

[Shandan35]

I think my only complaint was that the sweetcorn was tasteless

Lumpy mashed potato with black bits through it. Watery insipid tasting cabbage that didn't look very green unlike the the lovely dark green and sometimes finished off in the frying pan after the bacon had been cooked that my mother did. Semolina pudding with a spoonful of jam and the "pink custard" no idea what was in it. Irish stew which was basically potatoes and carrots and if lucky a piece of meat usually with a large piece of fat attached. Not sure what year but would have been probably 6 a horrible teacher used to make you sit there until you had finished. I loved my food and my mum had no problems getting me to eat at home but school dinners were not nice though they did improve during my last years at school. I ended up alternating between school dinners and packed lunches.

I liked dinners at primary school apart from the mashed potatoes. I have never liked mashed potatoes anyway. I hated dinners at secondary school as the food was tasteless. Even the chips tasted like cardboard.

In honour of this thread have just added ingredients for updated non watery cheese and onion FLAN to my next delivery.
I also looked up a butterscotch tart recipe actually called ‘old school butterscotch tart’. Currently looking to sweet for me but have bookmarked it.

Baked Beans with everything and really cheap ones with added vinegar.
Crap fries served ice cold,cucumber chopped into the salad.
undercooked pastry on overcooked veg,little tubs of milk often out of date .

Food never hot
Baked beans
All the grim hot puddings with loads of vile solid lumpy custard

We used to get ice cream lollies in the summer, extra if they had too many! Had lovely food like really good quality canteen meals. If I was a teacher I'd I've got take out!

Had lovely food at my local hospital too! Took a recipe home even! Must have a decent catering college here.

Everything especially semolina. Yuk ! And getting put off by other kids and their revolting eating habits. Close your mouth when you eat ! Bleurgh!
I preferred to run home for lunch in all weathers.

I quite liked all of it and although I was not (and still am not) a big meat eater I could give my meat to someone else and have more vegetables. I was only taken off school lunches because I would come home absolutely starving (and I didn't even eat that much). My DF found out that some of the kitchen staff were sacked because they were stealing food so the portions for the children got smaller.

I’m a 90’s kid. In primary school they did a horrible curry, it was watery and the sauce was a see-through gelatinous gloop, with chicken and bits of apple and sultanas floating in it - served with watery rice. The curry sauce was sweet and gloopy and had no spice whatsoever. I was used to ‘proper’ curry’s at home as my dad (Welsh) had lived in India for a while as an adult and cooked lovely spicy curries that I adored, and this did not resemble them at all.
I did absolutely love turkey twizzlers, potato smileys and turkey drummers as my mum wouldn’t let me eat that sort of beige food at home

I was at boarding school so it wasn't just dinners I had to cope with it was ALL my meals .... And there was no choice - you either ate it or you didnt.
Totally disgusting - nasty pasties served with soggy cabbage, instant mashed potato and greasy gravy. Rolled breast of lamb, probably served with the same.
Really nice - steak and kidney pie and chocolate sponge with chocolate custard.
Breakfasts were a bit bit and miss.... The sausages were really bad but just about edible if eaten with marmalade, the bacon was laid out overlapping on a big tray and then put under the grill so it was always flabby, and the toast was stacked as soon as it was cooked so it was always leathery - but I quite like it like that.

Hated them. No choice then and they would dish up things like cheese flan and tinned tomatoes, took me years to persuade myself to eat quiche and still can't stomach tinned tomatoes (fine in stuff). Still can't eat peas either, dm says I liked them before school

My husband remembers gipsy tart being a staple of school meals in Kent. He doesnt like it.

O and in secondary school we had a separate kiosk from the canteen that was called ‘pasta king’ which was all I would eat for lunch! I loved it but it was just a pot of over-boiled soggy pasta that was never drained properly with a weird pasta sauce dumped on top- the bottom of the pot though was just about 3 inches of water where the pasta wasn’t drained properly. I still loved it for some reason though lol

Oh and rice pudding with jam, still don't eat it. Dp however eats everything because he went to boarding school which ruined his taste buds

Liver and onions. I remember it was ox liver which had a grainy texture with holes through it.

Irish stew made with fatty mutton and gelatinous pearled barley.

Baked cod so overcooked it was a mush of grey skin and silver scales (served with dry boiled potatoes).

This was early 60s when food was still scarce. I think they must have sacked the cook as school dinners did improve.

WilmaPantry: "I think they must have sacked the cook"
....
That was what Bill Clinton meant.

I generally loved school dinners. At home, we usually ate traditional food from my parents homeland (not UK) so it made me feel a bit more British , more integrated and just like my friends.

I remember feeling particularly mystified by whatever 'jacket potatoes' were

The only things I disliked were all custard (especially that cold pink custard), semolina, tapioca and spam fritters. Everything else tasted positively yummy to me - almost exotic

@possumgoddess
My husband remembers gipsy tart being a staple of school meals in Kent. He doesnt like it.
Also a Kent County Council school dinners child. I loved gypsy tart. But my taste buds must've changed because I dislike it as an adult. It's basically brown sugar & condensed milk.

Spam fritters were my nemesis.

We rented a cottage in Ramsgate a few years ago. It was a few doors down from a bakers who did Gypsy tart. H was delighted and kept ‘popping out for some fresh air’. He told me that once at school he had so many seconds of it that he puked everywhere and his mum had to collect him.

He didn’t go to school in Kent tho, but we do live there now and I’ve not seen it anywhere locally.

I see your gypsy tart and raise you......Manchester Tart.

Oh wow- just remembered gypsy tart! Yum!

And pink custard.

Proper slices of roast pork, or roast beef, cauliflower cheese, decent fresh veg, I thought I must have gone to heaven when I tasted school dinners.

We got Manchester Tart in Kent. Delicious!
I mostly liked school dinners, apart from spam fritters. And when the skin got in my custard.

MrsKoala the Co-op near my parents sell gypsy tart, & I've bought it from a bakery in Canterbury, where it was done for The Tourists.

@grassisjeweled
Green custard, meagre portions.
Was it mint custard? We had it in our hall of residence around 1990 with every pudding for about a term. It did at least make the sponge soft enough to chew.
And yes, it had a strange green tinge.

Semolina and cabbage (I think it was cabbage)