9 Nasty Truths About Your Favorite Foods
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.
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9-12-2007 @12:50AM military kid said... My first three years at school were in a DOD (DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE) school on Okinawa....The lunches were FANTASTIC! Our lunch was prepared by the Japanese ladies that worked in the lunch room..it was American style food and yummy. We had turkey cubes, real mashed potatoes and great tasting veggies...chocolate milk to drink!
Then my Dad was reassigned back to the states....that was the end of delicious lunches for the next 9 years. The food was so gross that I rarely ate...once in the 4th grade Mrs. Jennings decided that I should eat and forced me to take a spoonfull...I started gagging and nearly threw up all over her, she allowed me to spit it out (I WASNT GOING TO SWALLOW IT!); I think it upset her and she saw that I was serious and never did that again. I remember they had on the menu "waxed beans" I honestly thought it was floor wax and they smelled awful! During 7th grade, I'd go to the laundry mat across the street from school and get a candy bar and coke for lunch. I guess you could say school lunches were so bad that it encouraged me to make poor food choices. I graduated in 1974 and it has been a pleasure not to endure "school lunch" for the past 33 years.
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9-12-2007 @12:57AM military kid said... I have a hilarious one for you...once overseas at school (foreign workers in the lunchroom), we asked for "CHEESECAKE" Well they served "CHEESECAKE" the very next day...a slice of chocolate cake with a slice of cheese on top! LOL.
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9-12-2007 @1:20AM Michele said... Lunch Lady here :-) In our school, we try to make good tasting food, but we don't have the say so in what is ordered or decided for the menus. Kids complain to us alllll the time, but we're not the managers etc. I always tell them, if you aren't happy go to some PTC meetings etc. Their latest gripes are because the prices have increased. Inflation my dears......inflation
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9-12-2007 @4:37AM Julie said... I remember the pizza!! We had it every friday. It was a life saver.
My school cafeteria used the same meat all week until friday when we got the frozen pizzas.
Monday- Hamburgers
Tuesday-Meatloaf
Wednesd-Sloppy Joes
Thursda-Spaghetti
then the pizza on friday
on ocassion the made fried chicken or subsituted frit pies (never could bring myself to eat this) for the sloppy joes.
They did, however, have the best rolls ever to be eaten.
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9-13-2007 @4:47AM carol said... You guys must be "getting old" At this point in time most school districts are Fat free zones. No trans fats little or no salt. Take time and vist a school cafeteria and see what's up. How do I know? I've been a Food Service Manager for 32 years and have seen all the changes. No more mystery meat. And the Miami-Dade County Schools has free breakfast for all. This includes scrambled eggs, french toast, bagels, turkey ham just to name a few. Oh yea, we have cereal and cereal bars. Kashi cereal as well as no or reduced sugar products.
Come try our Breakfasts and lunches, you'll change your mind!
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9-12-2007 @6:08AM knthep said... milk bags were awesome, they saved me $ for breast implants!
Worst- oklahoma fried bologna sandwich it was green!
What about food that's expired?
Love the tator tots and the big cookies for a dime!
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9-12-2007 @6:12AM Charity Sheehy said... To be honest, I cannot recall a bad lunch at school. We had excellent lunch ladies! I have never been a picky eater, and there are only a few foods which I hate--eggs, jello, beets, liver, and marshmallows. So, my choices were pretty broad. My faves were cheeseburgers w/ homemade buns, mexi-melts (soft taco quesadilla-type thing) and ham and beans w/ cornbread. The pancakes in the mornings were to die for. Our lunch lady would melt the butter and we could ladle it on. She would boil the syrup with butter and add pecans. It was delicious! I went to small schools so maybe this makes a difference. My elementary school had only 40 kids in the entire school, and my middle school only 200. Our high school didn't have a cafeteria, but I often went to the middle school to eat. Even today, I still enjoy school lunches. I occasionally eat at school w/ my kids.
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9-12-2007 @7:08AM todd said... we had the best pig-in-the-blanket....made with homemade bread...really good. also remember how we always had "spinach"... after the grass was cut...huummm????
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9-12-2007 @1:11PM Dj said... This was from a nursing home where I worked, not a school, but it was an institutional meal nonetheless: liverwurst, a gray, greasy glob of ground liver shaped by an ice cream scooper and slapped on a slice of stale white bread? I asked them to leave off the liverwurst and just give me the bread!
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9-12-2007 @4:02PM catriona said... this has just reminded me how sad i was when i went to school i used to have bananna sandwiches and alwsyas begged my mum to let me have 4 rich tea biscuits sandwiched with butter - yum yum but i wouldnt dream of sending my kids to school with that lunch now!!
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9-12-2007 @4:29PM Mrs. Durbin said... My favorite lunch was in high school. We had the choice of the "hot lunch" God only knows what was in Daisy Cassarole! or we had a really good salad bar with the sopftest, best rolls I had ever eaten! The worst lunch I ever had to endure was in the 3rd grade. It was called 1st grade vomit by the rest of the school, not to sure what was in it to this day. But we all tried it at least once. Sure enough, it was sickening. As a matter of fact, most of us ended up in the nurses office!
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9-12-2007 @5:49PM Sue said... When in doubt mashed potatoes with yellow gravy (melted butter). The best thing on the menu.
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11-08-2007 @2:16PM Ame said... I kinda enjoyed most of the meals my lunch had but one item i loved was Turkey On A Stick!! Man I would love to know if they are still around I know at one time I was finding them in stores but that was long ago.
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