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.

When I was growing up in California, I noticed that chicken-fried steak seemed to be a popular item on school lunch menus and in dormitory dining halls. I never actually knew what it was, so I never ordered it. Was it really chicken? Was it steak? Every time I came across it, it was round, flat and breaded, with what appeared to be dark-colored meat inside. The "steak" also never looked appetizing.









