Riz au Lait: The Frenchman's Ultimate Comfort Food
Famous Death Row Last Meals
Last year I picked the 8 best school lunch items I remember from my school days (admittedly, a long time ago). But what about the lunches that a lot of kids hate? Here are my choices:
1. Mystery meat: What exactly was this? I'm trying to go through my mental Rolodex and I can't remember. Was it meatloaf? Salisbury steak? I'm not sure, but it just seemed to be this mass-produced glob of grayness topped with lame gravy. The days I saw that this was the lunch were the days I just had something to drink and maybe a bag of chips.
2. Chicken Stroganoff. Again, I'm going by memory here, and it might be just wishful thinking that this was chicken stroganoff and not just a mass of chicken pieces smothered in gravy and noodles. If I saw this today I might try it, but back then as a kid it just equalled vomit.
3. Chili. I love chili, but the chili I got in my school was terrible. It was more like cans of mushy beans thrown in a giant pot with some beef and spices. A great chili isn't easy to make, even though it seems pretty damn easy. A good chili isn't that hard. A bad chili is really easy to make.
4. A drink and chips. While this was one of my "go-to" meals when I didn't like what was being served for lunch (see #1), it doesn't mean I liked it.
5. Soup and sandwich. While this is something I love as an adult, it always seemed kind of lame to me as a school meal. I'd eat at home with no problem though. Maybe it was because the tomato soup served at school was lame, and certainly not something I'd dunk my cheese sandwich in like I did when mom made it for me.
6. Tuna fish sandwiches. Again, I'd eat them at home but it just looked gross to me at school.
7. Jello. What, is this a school or a hospital? Again, mom made great Jello desserts, but it just didn't taste the same at school. I did love that fluffy, sweet pink dessert stuff that I still don't know the name of.
8. Cereal. With apologies to Jerry Seinfeld, cereal as a lunch meal (especially at school) is kinda sad and lonely.
These American Companies Refused To Sign The Bangladesh Safety Accord
Chili's Waitress Fired Over Facebook Post Insulting 'Stupid Cops'
Former OJ Attorney Gives Shocking Testimony
Billboard Music Awards: Worst Dressed (or Most Daring?) From Past Red Carpets
HSBC Plans 14,000 More Job Cuts
New Leads In Case Of Missing British Girl
Forbidden America: Cold War-Era Map Shows No-Go Zones For Soviet Tourists
Man Takes Dump In Background Of Instructional Workout Video
LOOK: There's Something Wrong With This Picture
Tenants: Stench of Death Makes St. Louis Complex 'Unlivable'
Famous Roadside Attractions
Waitress Surprised With HUGE Tip On Tiny Bill
Taylor Swift Q and A: What Does She Splurge on in Las Vegas?
Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S 4 running stock Android 4.2
PREGNANT!
Bill Gates regains title of world's richest person as Microsoft stock hits five-year high
Victim's Sister To Arias: 'Our Minds Are Permanently Stained'
Jodi Arias' Lawyers Want Out
Will Smith, Jaden Smith Get Photobombed
Pictures Showing Pregnant Teens' Bumps Banned From Yearbook
The Afterlife Of Andy Kaufman
LOOK: Khloe K Shows Curves In SKIN TIGHT Dress
And Your New 'American Idol' Is ...
Chef Allegedly Killed Over Noodle Dinner Gone Wrong
Televangelist Claims It's The Wife's Job To Keep Men Faithful
LeAnn Rimes, Brandi Glanville Feud Reignites
Hero Hitchhiker Arrested For Allegedly Beating Man To Death
Bombing Suspect Allegedly Left Confession: Report
LOOK: Mind-Blowing Optical Illusions
'The Voice' Shakeup
5 Ways You're Wasting Money At Restaurants
Deadly Tornado Hits North Texas
9-06-2007 @2:57PM jrt said... I always hated the breaded and baked rectangle of dry white fish topped with a rectangle of orange government cheese. It was served with a minute scoop of the blandest tartar sauce ever.
Reply
9-06-2007 @2:59PM Chad Yerrick said... At least items #5-#8 would help fight the uphill war against childhood obesity in this country. This opposed to what children mostly prefer in a bottle of Coke and some french fries.
Reply
9-06-2007 @3:11PM Brian said... My grade school had excellent, excellent lunches. Except for the chili. Actually, it might have been good. I don't know. In the second grade, I found what I'm pretty sure was a booger in a big bowl of that chili and never ate it again.
Looking back, it was probably an onion.
Reply
9-06-2007 @3:51PM Patricia said... Porcupine Meatballs--tennis ball sized wads of hamburger with undercooked grains of rice mixed in, served in a watery, unseasoned tomato sauce. Gross.
Reply
9-06-2007 @4:09PM Susan said... Fluffy sweet pink dessert is one large container of Cool Whip, one big can Eagle brand sweetened condensed milk, one large can cherry pie filling, one good sized can of drained crushed pineapple. Mix together and refrigerate. My kids liked it frozen and still will eat it at age 42 and 43 if someone prepares it.
Reply
9-06-2007 @4:15PM thefishie said... I didn't like it when my mom sent me to school with a pimento cheese sandwich. What made it bad was that she sent me to school with it for about the entire year I was in 2nd grade. Eventually she found out I was trading it off for anything at all I could get.
Reply
9-06-2007 @4:24PM David said... Remember- Monday's leftover hamburgers become Tuesday's Salisbury Steak (just add canned gravy), and Tuesday's Salisbury Steak gets rinsed off under hot water and ground up into Wednesday's chili...waste not want not
Reply
9-06-2007 @4:45PM Geena said... I think our school's worst was the "tuna suprise". A squarish baked tuna thing covered in fake cheese that smelled like cat food.
The best was that we always had the option of a turkey sandwich instead of what was being served in the main lunch line.
Reply
9-06-2007 @6:48PM --bdw said... I have you all beat. In Jr High they twice fed us spam, ground up with govt cheese, and served cold on a bun. No mayo, butter, whatever. It was every bit as delicious as it sounds. Being in an upper class white neighborhood, we had never before seen, let alone eaten spam, so the first time we ate it, but weren't happy.
The second time became legend. It started with a food fight between two tables, and spread over the entire cafeteria. Someone discoved that if thrown just right, with the top bun removed, the things would stick to the walls. Someone else discovered that they would stick to the ceiling. Within about five minutes, the place was decorated a lovely pink and orange.The lunch ladies were helpless, the teachers holed up in their lounge scrounging for anything but those sandwiches. We then moved on to throwing the red "fruited gelatin," and playing frisbee with the plates and trays. At that point, we deserted the room en masse and finished our lunch period on the playground.
Nothing was ever said, and spam and cheese sandwiches were never served again.
Reply
9-06-2007 @6:18PM Fash said... Hahaha...porcupine meatballs. I think the worst thing I recall from the cafeteria was the "spanish rice" - fatty ground beef and cooked Minute Rice, held together with undiluted (and unseasoned) canned tomato soup.
Reply
9-06-2007 @6:46PM Bill G said... Please tell me that knit frozen dinner in the picture is available for purchase!
Reply
9-06-2007 @7:58PM AY said... If school & airline food is that bad, how come everyone eats it? It tastes good...not healthy, but good.
Reply
9-06-2007 @9:39PM MJ said... I remeber the wonderful peanut butter cookies, they were so huge! Food in elementary school was fine. Middle school I ate ice cream with crushed saltines in them. High school i didnt eat! Now they have taken away the salt limited the ketchup, taken away any drinks but milk. Here they say 90% dont eat the caferteria food. I say bag lunch,. What they have always been feeding then and now is not healthy or appealing. But the ladies in the lunch room havent!
Reply
9-06-2007 @11:06PM Jason Levine said... I remember two items from my middle school's cafeteria. One was the meatballs. Kids would bounce them around. Yes, they bounced like small rubber balls. The other item was pizza. One of my classmates slammed her fist onto her pizza. When she removed her hand, the pizza slowly "recovered" from the impact until you couldn't tell it had been hit. Quite impressive, really, but not something you'd want to eat.
Reply
9-07-2007 @11:04AM Sharon said... My elementary school had great food... maybe that's because my Mom was the lunch lady, and made her own stuff. It was great, except that when other kids got sick, they got to go home...I got to go sit in the little room off the kitchen.
Reply
9-07-2007 @2:56PM Matthew Hilario said... am i apart of a new generation of school lunches?
does anyone remember the square pizza slices with the cube pepperonis? it wasn't quite pizza hut but it was certainly one of top tier school lunches.
the worst of all i must agree is the breaded fish square with the cheese that had crusty dark orange corners. i'd wait til 2:10 and spend 2bucks at the ice cream man just to eat something appetizing.
there's nothing like cheap mexican snacks in the late afternoon.
Reply
9-07-2007 @3:59PM Jennifer said... Jason L.: I read your comment and started craking up!!! Not sure I'd eat that pizza either.
Matthew H.: I remember that pizza....yum!
In 5th & 6th grade I didn't even have a lunch room. Mom bought us the thermoses that you heat up with hot water.... To this day she cannot tolerate the smell of spagetti o's...lol... In high school I remember the turkey for the salad bar being the same color as the cat I was disecting in advance bio...right before lunch!!!!
Reply
9-07-2007 @7:33PM beanspants said... our worst lunch was beef tips, which were just the fatty part of some sort of steak product, smothered in gravy, with nasty green beans and really hard rolls.
i was happy when, in high school, we could leave campus and i could go to a friend's restaurant everyday.
Reply
9-08-2007 @12:14PM Hali said... Worst school lunch item: the milk! That might sound crazy, but when I was in 4th or 5th grade, my cafeteria switched from cartons of milk to BAGS of milk. And when I say bag, I mean a 4 x 4 in square with no openings in it. That you had to try to stab with a straw without spilling everywhere. Everyone quickly stopped drinking milk at school because it didn't chill as well as the cartons did, was never mixed well and frequently past the expiration date.
I can only hope that the county eventually gave up on them, all they were good for was throwing at others during foodfights. The chocolate made the best splatter.
Reply
9-09-2007 @10:38AM Frances said... Well, at some point my grade school switched from milk in little cartons to milk in juice boxes that didn't require refrigeration.
Nobody would touch the plain one, and the chocolate had chunks in it. I think it would be fair to say most of us were scarred for life
Reply