So what did your lunchbox contain when you were a kid?

[DrNortherner]

Mine was always the same:

Cornedbeef or ham sandwich on white bread
Packet of 5p crisps
Apple/orange
Milky Way or a Mars Bar
One of those cheapy juice cartons where you stick the straw through the film on top of the cup.

I probably had pretty much the same too, but I just can't remember a single packed lunch apart from that one because I was sitting on the grass.

Actually, I think I had school dinners. I can remmeber school dinners.

I was at a deprived area school (the same one, actually, that ds1 is at now) and I rememebr one little boy and his sister flanking me at lunch time, as their lunch box contained a slice of bread and butter and some sweets, clearly, in hindsight, made by the sister (aged 7)

My mum reported it to the school when I told her, and she was always asking me if they had dinners or a lunchbox, (she was a worrier)

marmite sandwich and a penguin at primary school
butter sandwich and a penguin at secondary school. I used to put the penguin inside the sandwich and eat them together.
The packed lunch choices were not because I was a fussy eater or anything..just my mum's idea of acceptable.
We used to have very healthy cooked dinners at home though.

if my mum made lunch it was sensible things like salad sandwich, apple, piece of cheese and raisins. (all wrapped in clingfilm) and a flask of water.

if my dad made lunch it was cold toast with golden syrup on, or cold beans, crisps, one of those frozen mouses, but had defroseted intoa gross uneadable mess by lunch time and robinsons squash.

Not sure which was worst tbh, i wanted the cheese sandwiches with a packet of crisps and a club bar that all my friends were haivng. i think my dad thought he was being cool and rebellious by giving us those horrible things.

I really really wanted to like Club bars, but I didn't. I also loathed fizzy drinks and used to dread the last day of term when we were all given a free bottle of McDaids pop and I just could not get through it, but was too scared not to drink it for fear of being thought ungrateful...

It varied from sandwich spread sarnies to lumpy cool soup to half boiled eggs to the infamous smoked mackeral and lettuce clingfilmed to a plate. it used to slide down to the bottom of my bag in a greasy mess. It was a really nice try by my Mum but it didnt quite work.

No packed lunches at any of the schools I went to either. You could go home or have a cooked meal. The cooked meal was as per the weekly menu with no choices. In secondary a cooked meal usually mean't wandering down to the chippy with your lunch money for chips and gravy and a can of pop.

Sqaure eggs. I never normally do this but

We had a very smug mother of one boy at school ( I see with hindsight from my wizened harrased motherly perspective)

She used to bring in baskets of freshly baked bread rolls and pastries for the whole class at break time, warm from the oven with homemeade jam, and cape gooseberrys and raspeberries etc from their garden.

She also brought milk in huge ceramic jugs, from their own cows.

www.japancentre.com/?cmd=itm&cid=&id=2349

I saw this link on another thread, star and heart shaped eggs, oh the joy!

you to can have square eggs

Guess what - I dinnae want them

I think this highlights a point that many well meaning mothers miss - children don't want the best, they want the same.

The only time I ever felt embarrassed about my lunch was when my dad made it, and it was a beautifully made pasta and tomato cheese salad. As an adult, I really appreciate my dad's thoughtful and inventive way with food, as a child, I didn't want people to pass comment on my lunch.

My mum made a bog standard lunch, the same as all my friends.

A mum at ds1's school made the cake that I won in the weigh the cake competition, and when I told her, she asked me if the children had liked it..... and I had to lie, and say yes, because in truth, they never got chance to taste it.

Sorry, totally irrelevant.

I have vague recollections about packed lunches at secondary school (I had school dinner or went home at primary)

Plain white tupperware box, sandwiches wrapped in tin foil or the bread wrapper which was made from waxed paper iirc.

Hazelnut yoghurt, club or viscount, a packet of monster munch or skips, piece of angel cake - don't remember any fruit. I always had brown bread and juice or water though!

We ate quite healthily at home I think

Oh my dd got me to make her different stuff - she didn't want sandwiches and wanted pasta salad and chicken drumsticks rice cakes - as she liked the attention of having something "different" in her box.

My youngest though is of the same is best and don't appear to be different in any way.

So i just have to prepare odinery stuff every day - which is much more simple but a tad boring

So I livin my lunches up and may well get a square egg maker, to go with my melon baller

Lol at some of these, partic square eggs and orange tupperware.

I had an orange tupperware box with a transparent lid, but funnily enough my Mum called it my bait box. No idea why?!!

I can't remember the details but I DO remember that I only had granary bread and really wanted white sliced like everyone else. I also wasn't given chocolate until I saw a dietician aged 11 (was v v underweight) and he prescribed a mars bar a day!
I also remember not being allowed crisps and stealing a friend's packet once after she offered me one The headmaster rapped me across the knuckles with a metre ruler for that.

Corned beef sandwich on brown bread, still don't like the stuff though I love proper wholemeal.
Sainsburys crisps or Salt'n'Shake if we were flush, or Square Crisps (they were weird, thinking about it.
Club biscuit or Kitkat ... or Breakaway, forgot about those, or a Penguin.
Malt loaf (renamed bogeycake by my friend, or bogeykuchen if it was a German day).
Squash in a Roughneck flask.

One of my junior schools actively encouraged Cremola Foam for some reason. I think they'd got fed up with beakers of squash spilling in bags, but it was the 70s/80s and no one had yet figured children wouldn't die without a a daily dose of additive-laiden beverage. So we were allowed to take in these sachets of powder to add to the water provided at lunchtime. Very strange.

All in an ice cream tub, as my mum keeps reminding me whenever she catches sight of DD's ornate Disney Princess lunchbag.

Tinned spam or ham sandwitches on white bread with no pickle or mustard or anything else. Sometimes chedder cheese.

The alternative was soup in a flask with a single round of bread and butter