Dear me - you lot were lucky with your school dinners...
We had (a) Gipsy Tart, (b) Stewed Plums, or (c) Old Ma Morris' Special.
Old Ma Morris was the Cook, but her Special cannot accurately be described, nor the ingredients named. I think that something which might possibly have been the skin of an unknown fruit may have featured.
Does anyone remember the lemon sauce served with school ginger cake that always tasted like washing up liquid was one of the ingredients?!
The new caterers at the school appear to serve biscuits and muffins rather than the hot puddings of yore.
We had enough snow yesterday to make a snowman. We had to wait for 4:30 for it to stop snowing though, so it was only a little one.
As of course the school is remote learning, although today was a "snow day" they still had lessons. Apparently the nursery teacher didn't have snow at home, but it was a case of unless you absolutely have to send your children in due to no-one being around to care for them, even keyworker children were asked to stay home due to being very short staffed and the site being icy underfoot. Some local schools did shut completely though, especially the ones in the hillier bits of town.
The haggis is in the oven. Due to a lack of neeps we will have to have carrots tonight.
Ah, chocolate pudding (we didn't call it concrete) and pink custard - or chocolate sauce. It was a real treat, which is not something that could be said for most of the school dinners in my childhood experience. In more recent years I was a dinner lady at my children's primary school (the "Do you want gravy on that, love?" sort, not the "I don't care who started it, you mustn't push each other over in the playground" sort) and the dinners were much improved. One of the perks of the job was to have a dinner with the other dinner ladies, after all the children were fed and watered and all the halls cleared and the washing up done, and they were without exception delicious. The cheese pinwheels were to die for.
I've been for a chilly walk and it was treacherous underfoot, even with grippy walking boots.
Our school dinner main course was (alternately) Spam with Salad, or Hungarian Goulash, with the aforementioned Gipsy Tart, Stewed Plums, or OMM's Special, for afters.
There must surely have been a third sort of main course, but I can't recall what it was, so it might have been completely (and mercifully) forgettable.
I can't remember what the dish that brought it about was now, but at my school, so many people asked what one particularly unidentifiable meal was that the cook lost it and shouted "It's shit with a flag on top!" and stomped off into the kitchen! Ever after, anything hard to put a name to was always "Shit with a flag on top"!
Our keen music teacher insisted on a sung grace, a round, or is it canon?, in three parts, of Non nobis Domine, so the first course got cold.
Pudding was any of the cook’s 24 varieties of Stodge, including spotted dog, and chocolate stodge with pink custard, or semolina or tapioca with rose hip sauce.
Our school kitchens rejoiced in an offering that was generally known as "some brown things in some brown sauce". Best not to ask exactly what was in it. Popular rumor suggested that it was at one point intended for canine consumption.
Until Puzzler's post, I had mercifully excised school tapioca from my memory. The only thing worse that that was stewed gooseberries.
My fondest memory of concrete choc pudding is of gales of giggles as pieces of it ricocheted across the hall as we dug our spoons in (even better if some of the pink custard was attached 🤣)!
My fondest memory of concrete choc pudding is of gales of giggles as pieces of it ricocheted across the hall as we dug our spoons in (even better if some of the pink custard was attached 🤣)!
I've been reading this thread to my husband and his memory of chocolate concrete is it flying off onto a teacher's plate as he dug into it. He doesn't remember getting it back. Was that the chocolate pudding that stuck to the roof of your mouth, as that is my main memory of school dinners. That and the sausages that looked like turds.
Our dinner tonight on the other hand was a dahl with tomato sambol and Madhur Jaffrey's Hydrabadi rice.
I was lucky in that I lived close enough to the school that I could go home for lunch; the only time I had school lunch was on choir practice days. As so recall, the food wasn't all that bad; we occasionally got really good doughnuts or digestives and cheese in lieu of pudding, which suited me just fine.
Talking of puddings, I dropped into M&S on the way home, and finding that they had single portions of ready-to-microwave haggis with neeps and tatties, I bought one and had it for supper. If I were making my own, I'd serve Branston pickle on the side, but as I didn't have any, I substituted some fig chutney that came in a box of goodies that I got for Christmas, and it was lovely.
ION, I have now had hearing aids fitted, and every little noise is REALLY LOUD! I hope to goodness that once I'm in company with people who are talking, their voices will be as clear ...
My fondest memory of concrete choc pudding is of gales of giggles as pieces of it ricocheted across the hall as we dug our spoons in (even better if some of the pink custard was attached 🤣)!
We learnt fairly quickly to use the fork to break up the chocolate concrete, and to hold the spoon sideways on at the back of the bowl to ricochet the chocolate concrete back into the bowl.
The absolute worst of school dinners was liver and onions. My school didn't have its own kitchen (I blame Thatcher) so the food arrived in trays and was kept hot all morning. Liver isn't very nice when it's been cooked for three hours
For years after that I thought I didn't like liver. Actually, cooked well, calves' liver is one of my favourite things these days.
We didn't call it chocolate concrete but it existed on the school menu,as did tapioca with a splodge of some bright red sugary substance. I don't remember choosing either given the option.
The best bit of secondary school dinners was when we moved up to the upper school and the dinners were served cafeteria style, which meant a choice. I could often find cheese salad and baked potato as an option, which I'd invariably choose if it was available.
Salad was usually on offer stacked to one side, ready served on plates with those metal rings. The protein varied, including spam, which usually had me looking for a better alternative, like cheese and onion flan. Usually, if you requested carbohydrate with salad, the options were chips or mashed potato, but occasionally we were given baked potatoes in their jackets.
I have never really liked meat and I suspect school dinners were the death knell, particularly when there was no choice in lower school and what was served up was brown lumps of something gristly in brown goop or spam fritters with chips and mushy peas. I took in a packed lunch for most of lower school having refused to eat the set dinners for the few days I was down for it because it was so horrible.
I love tapioca and regularly make it at home. I really should serve it like milk puddings were served at my primary school, with a heap of grated chocolate.
One of our teachers used to walk round the dining room checking what we had left on our plates eg the skin and bones of fish, or the gristle that was meant to be meat, and insisted it was “the best part”.
All my life I have been a fast eater, for which I blame school dinners. We had three formal sittings to be got through in an hour. That included the sung grace mentioned above and the “waitresses” from each table going to fetch the food in its containers from the hatch, then serving it out. Just as well that the portions were so small that they didn’t take long to eat.
Food at my primary was good, if dull. Secondary, the standard of food varied from house to house; the few day boys, including me for a year, ate lunch in house and tea in the staff canteen.
For boarders if the house cook is dreadful you're in deep trouble. In my first year the house cook was terrible - on a par with my mama 😨. However, she left (TIAG) and we had a really good cook thereafter.
When I started teaching in a primary, I was in a building shared with a kitchen feeding a local secondary school which used part of the building. The cook was brilliant and the place filled with delicious smells all morning. We trekked over to a second building, where the primary meals were delivered in large metal containers from another kitchen the other side of town. Gristle, dark green thick stemmed cabbage, horrible stuff. My insides were mightily confused.
And then there was reorganisation, the secondary school left, and we got the cook. Bliss. In summer, she used to take the staff out one morning to the local Pick Your Own strawberry fields, and serve up "gateau" at lunch.
Then some politician thought outsourcing to a catering company was a good idea, and all food had to be supplied by them to be used in their menus, and it all went to pieces.
ION, I have now had hearing aids fitted, and every little noise is REALLY LOUD! I hope to goodness that once I'm in company with people who are talking, their voices will be as clear ...
It will take a little while to become used to that, but there may be a need to adjust them. When I first got my aids, listening to classical music caused a whistling resonance, as the aids thought the high notes were feedback. The audiologist made the appropriate adjustment to the range and all was well. At night, I can hear the crickets chirping in the garden under our bedroom window until I take the aids out, and then they disappear.
I am now generally comfortable, but sometimes in large crowds the sounds can be a bit overwhelming. This happened just before Christmas at dinner with a group in the local lawn bowls club, with lots of groups at other tables and loud PA announcements making it almost impossible to follow a conversation.
Regarding hearing aids -I find the wee buttons that control the volume really useful. especially as some of the bus drivers have (to my ears) appalling taste in music. I specifically asked that my hearing aids be tuned so I can hear birds.
Piglet when you are able to eat out again try to get a seat with a wall behind you. That way you will be less distracted by conversations from other tables.
I don't know how your audiologist works, but give yourself time to adjust to the extra sound in your life and ask for a follow up appointment if you're not happy. My audiologist does this as a matter of course and I have one tomorrow when I am going to ask for them both to be turned up.
I can't remember what the dish that brought it about was now, but at my school, so many people asked what one particularly unidentifiable meal was that the cook lost it and shouted "It's shit with a flag on top!" and stomped off into the kitchen! Ever after, anything hard to put a name to was always "Shit with a flag on top"!
I've no particular memories of the quality of the food at my secondary school (it was just at the start of allowing pupils to choose what to have, so it was chips with everything - except once every six months when the little plastic packs of cheese and crackers held for using the school as an emergency evacuation centre were renewed, and the old stock became the only option for school lunch) but the chief cook was a memorably unpleasant person. Eventually she came to retire. As was usual practice a card and donation envelope was sent round the sixth form. No one signed the card or made a donation: so we were collectively summoned and advised that a voluntary signature and donation was compulsory...
I remember (shudders ) Manchester tart - pastry with a jam layer topped with custard. I don’t like custard, I think memories of school custard have a lot to do with that.
Mind, I must be one of the few people who actually liked school rice pudding.
In the 60s, my School dinner liver curled up to make caves into which the gravy flowed, with peas floating on top.
Always we had swede - I guess it was cheap and readily available.
And gipsy tart at least once a week, usually with coloured custard but sometimes synthetic cream. My favourite was tapioca with a blob of red jelly.
Gypsy tart had nothing with it. It needed nothing. (For those ignorant of this Kentish originated delight, it has a pastry case in which is placed a filling of evaporated milk whisked to thickness with soft brown sugar, possibly muscovado, and then baked in a slow oven - probably using the heat from the main course cooking.)
Pink custard was probably intended to taste of strawberry. sometimes we had it much thicker and blancmange like, possibly accompanying reconstituted dried fruit, but going under the name of facecream.
I liked Manchester Tart!
I remember (shudders ) Manchester tart - pastry with a jam layer topped with custard. I don’t like custard, I think memories of school custard have a lot to do with that.
Mind, I must be one of the few people who actually liked school rice pudding.
Are you sure you're not my double? I hated Manchester Tart (and remember it with shudders too), and I liked school rice pudding. And semolina. And tapioca. Though having said that, hot custard is an entirely different matter - I like that.
@Penny S is quite right in saying that Gipsy Tart should NOT be served with anything else. In fact, it should not be served AT ALL, to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
(I didn't know it was a Kentish speciality. Something else we need to be forgiven for, like Farage-Garages, Chatham, and Wat Tyler).
The last school I worked in had, when I started, a seriously good cook. Staff inset days were a delight. @piglet, so glad you've got the hearing aids. @Huia advice about adjusting the volume and sitting with a wall behind you are spot on. Mine have a setting to make ambient noise less, and a t-switch. I was sent some new ones, but they need to go back for some serious working on as I can hear less well with them, than my current ones and there is no t-switch setting enabled. Trouble is I have no desire to visit my local hospital at present.
I wonder if my school's prospectus said the same? I doubt if Old Ma Morris could be said to be good for anyone's health (with the possible exception of that of Old Pa Morris, but history is silent on that point).
IIRC (and it's a Long Time Ago), we were served semolina with red jam at primary school. If anyone tells me that they did NOT stir the jam into the semolina to make pink semolina, I will know them for a teller of Hideous Fibs.
I didn't stir the jam into the semolina to make pink semolina. After the first time of trying it I refused to eat any of it and shunted it all into the pig swill buckets. Primary school I lived near enough to walk home for dinner, and did.
You've all reminded me of the horrible school liver and onions and the never ending swede, which is another thing I avoided for years, only eating it again when I was an adult after it arrived in a veg box.
@Curiosity killed - under the trying circumstances to which you refer, I will refrain from calling you out as a Teller Of Hideous Fibs.
I will, instead, commend you for your ingenuity in disposing of the semolina. I am sure that no harm came to the Pigs, as they are able to eat (and digest) pretty well anything known to science or nature.
Reading some of these school dinner horror stories makes me wonder how we've managed to live as long as we have...
My school prospectus actually recommended that students had school dinners (rather than packed lunches) as it would be "good for their health".
I don't remember whether I read my school prospectus, or the content thereof if I did, but I certainly remember being left in no doubt that having school dinners was a non-negotiable. I was therefore very surprised, in the dinner halls, at the presence of The Packed Lunch Table where those whose parents had either not read the prospectus or who were more willing rebels than mine sat with their sandwiches, crisps and chocolate bars.
Yes, I stirred my jam into the semolina. It was the only way of making it remotely edible. That and to "ask for a small" - ie, pass the message up the table that you'd like a small portion of something.
In other news, Mr Nen and I have been for a damp, grey, chilly walk and I'm doing a midweek chicken roast for our tea.
Yes, I stirred my jam into the semolina. It was the only way of making it remotely edible. That and to "ask for a small" - ie, pass the message up the table that you'd like a small portion of something.
We were only permitted to ask for "a small" of everything. Many people would try to ask for a small of, for example, parsnips (even for people who liked parsnips, school parsnips were a bit of a challenge), but they were invariably told that either they weren't very hungry, in which case they could have "a small" of everything, or they were normally hungry, in which case they'd get a normal portion of everything and like it.
It was acceptable to have a normal portion of main course, but a small of pudding - a strategy that was invariably employed whenever gooseberries were on offer.
I loathed school food with a passion. Lumpy mashed potato, served in unappealing round balls from one of those scoops that had a metal thingy to detach the mash from the metal and dump it on the plate. Rubbery liver with tube-y bits in, chewy and utterly inedible. Vegetables that were boiled into submission. And school custard. Thin, lumpy and tepid. And fearsome dinner ladies, extolling the virus of eating this stuff...and we had to say a grace which went something like "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful"
I like veg cooked with a bit of bite. The DH doesn't like mashed potato so we rarely have it, but lambs liver and onions served with creamy mashed potato on a hot plate at the correct temperature is divine.
But I loathe custard of any kind.
I suppose if you had a small portion of cabbage* and a normal one of everything else it would bugger up their portion control.
The description of chocolate concrete sounds suspiciously like a brownie to me - not a confection of which I'm particularly fond.
* If the cabbage has been boiled, there is no portion that's too small.
Really duff commute this morning - despite the train being on time, I had to wait nearly half an hour for the bus, making me late for my first staff meeting (I phoned my boss to let her know, and she was fine about it, but I'm still cross with Lothian Buses).
So much for the announcement that was being trumpeted on the screen that they were adding extra bus services in the mornings for the benefit of "key workers" (presumably like people who work for the NHS).
The absolute worst of school dinners was liver and onions. My school didn't have its own kitchen (I blame Thatcher) so the food arrived in trays and was kept hot all morning. Liver isn't very nice when it's been cooked for three hours
For years after that I thought I didn't like liver. Actually, cooked well, calves' liver is one of my favourite things these days.
My school dinners were excellent. Best meal of the day for me.
Sorry Kingsfold, I can’t remember sago or tapioca at school, but my grandpa used to make tapioca pudding. Looked like frogspawn, and I couldn’t stand the texture. (I don’t like the texture of liver either, which is why I don’t eat it)
We had one kid who was well known for liking sour milk. So when the morning milk (third of a pint bottles, IIRC) had turned, we'd take turns casually walking up to him in the corner and exchanging our full one for his most recent empty.
To this day I recoil at the remebrance of the smell of the school milk room, and detest both gravy and custard, without one of which no meal was served at my rural primary school. It was years later that I discovered I am lactose intolerant, which may explain at least the milk and the custard. The gravy was always over-thickened with flour, which made it a disgusting khaki colour. This would have been in the mid-late '40s.
When we moved later to a small seaside town, I was sent to a (day) convent school, My mother had taken one look at the junior school when it happened to be "big boys' playtme" and shuddered at the thought of her daughters going there. That was close enough for me to walk home for lunch. Except when my mother was in hospital having my baby brother, and then I used the lunch money I was given and spent it on whatever I fancied in town, not usually food, but I don't recall feeling hungry. I must ask my sister what she did then: although nearly 5 years younger, she has a far better memory than I.
[quote="Piglet;c-383420"
The description of chocolate concrete sounds suspiciously like a brownie to me - not a confection of which I'm particularly fond.
/quote]
Definitely not a brownie - brownies are supposed to be squidgy & soft & fudgy in the middle. Chocolate concrete definitely wasn't intended to be that - at my school it was was on the menu as chocolate crunch which might give you a better idea of the texture.
The semolina disposal trick I used was to ask for a small portion and smear it around the bowl so it looked like the remains of a large portion.
One of my worst memories is shepherds pie. I liked shepherds pie so asked for "large". Then discovered school shepherds pie had no cheese on it, rendering it inedible to my seven year old self who then had to sit in front of it until it was eaten or the bell went.
Comments
We had (a) Gipsy Tart, (b) Stewed Plums, or (c) Old Ma Morris' Special.
Old Ma Morris was the Cook, but her Special cannot accurately be described, nor the ingredients named. I think that something which might possibly have been the skin of an unknown fruit may have featured.
Or possibly not.
The new caterers at the school appear to serve biscuits and muffins rather than the hot puddings of yore.
We had enough snow yesterday to make a snowman. We had to wait for 4:30 for it to stop snowing though, so it was only a little one.
As of course the school is remote learning, although today was a "snow day" they still had lessons. Apparently the nursery teacher didn't have snow at home, but it was a case of unless you absolutely have to send your children in due to no-one being around to care for them, even keyworker children were asked to stay home due to being very short staffed and the site being icy underfoot. Some local schools did shut completely though, especially the ones in the hillier bits of town.
The haggis is in the oven. Due to a lack of neeps we will have to have carrots tonight.
I've been for a chilly walk and it was treacherous underfoot, even with grippy walking boots.
Our school dinner main course was (alternately) Spam with Salad, or Hungarian Goulash, with the aforementioned Gipsy Tart, Stewed Plums, or OMM's Special, for afters.
There must surely have been a third sort of main course, but I can't recall what it was, so it might have been completely (and mercifully) forgettable.
Our Headmaster Mr Creakle T****r would never have allowed language like that.
He would have insisted that it be shouted in Latin...
Pudding was any of the cook’s 24 varieties of Stodge, including spotted dog, and chocolate stodge with pink custard, or semolina or tapioca with rose hip sauce.
Our school kitchens rejoiced in an offering that was generally known as "some brown things in some brown sauce". Best not to ask exactly what was in it. Popular rumor suggested that it was at one point intended for canine consumption.
Until Puzzler's post, I had mercifully excised school tapioca from my memory. The only thing worse that that was stewed gooseberries.
Our dinner tonight on the other hand was a dahl with tomato sambol and Madhur Jaffrey's Hydrabadi rice.
Talking of puddings, I dropped into M&S on the way home, and finding that they had single portions of ready-to-microwave haggis with neeps and tatties, I bought one and had it for supper. If I were making my own, I'd serve Branston pickle on the side, but as I didn't have any, I substituted some fig chutney that came in a box of goodies that I got for Christmas, and it was lovely.
ION, I have now had hearing aids fitted, and every little noise is REALLY LOUD! I hope to goodness that once I'm in company with people who are talking, their voices will be as clear ...
We learnt fairly quickly to use the fork to break up the chocolate concrete, and to hold the spoon sideways on at the back of the bowl to ricochet the chocolate concrete back into the bowl.
For years after that I thought I didn't like liver. Actually, cooked well, calves' liver is one of my favourite things these days.
The best bit of secondary school dinners was when we moved up to the upper school and the dinners were served cafeteria style, which meant a choice. I could often find cheese salad and baked potato as an option, which I'd invariably choose if it was available.
Salad was usually on offer stacked to one side, ready served on plates with those metal rings. The protein varied, including spam, which usually had me looking for a better alternative, like cheese and onion flan. Usually, if you requested carbohydrate with salad, the options were chips or mashed potato, but occasionally we were given baked potatoes in their jackets.
I have never really liked meat and I suspect school dinners were the death knell, particularly when there was no choice in lower school and what was served up was brown lumps of something gristly in brown goop or spam fritters with chips and mushy peas. I took in a packed lunch for most of lower school having refused to eat the set dinners for the few days I was down for it because it was so horrible.
All my life I have been a fast eater, for which I blame school dinners. We had three formal sittings to be got through in an hour. That included the sung grace mentioned above and the “waitresses” from each table going to fetch the food in its containers from the hatch, then serving it out. Just as well that the portions were so small that they didn’t take long to eat.
For boarders if the house cook is dreadful you're in deep trouble. In my first year the house cook was terrible - on a par with my mama 😨. However, she left (TIAG) and we had a really good cook thereafter.
And then there was reorganisation, the secondary school left, and we got the cook. Bliss. In summer, she used to take the staff out one morning to the local Pick Your Own strawberry fields, and serve up "gateau" at lunch.
Then some politician thought outsourcing to a catering company was a good idea, and all food had to be supplied by them to be used in their menus, and it all went to pieces.
It will take a little while to become used to that, but there may be a need to adjust them. When I first got my aids, listening to classical music caused a whistling resonance, as the aids thought the high notes were feedback. The audiologist made the appropriate adjustment to the range and all was well. At night, I can hear the crickets chirping in the garden under our bedroom window until I take the aids out, and then they disappear.
I am now generally comfortable, but sometimes in large crowds the sounds can be a bit overwhelming. This happened just before Christmas at dinner with a group in the local lawn bowls club, with lots of groups at other tables and loud PA announcements making it almost impossible to follow a conversation.
Regarding hearing aids -I find the wee buttons that control the volume really useful. especially as some of the bus drivers have (to my ears) appalling taste in music. I specifically asked that my hearing aids be tuned so I can hear birds.
Piglet when you are able to eat out again try to get a seat with a wall behind you. That way you will be less distracted by conversations from other tables.
I don't know how your audiologist works, but give yourself time to adjust to the extra sound in your life and ask for a follow up appointment if you're not happy. My audiologist does this as a matter of course and I have one tomorrow when I am going to ask for them both to be turned up.
I've no particular memories of the quality of the food at my secondary school (it was just at the start of allowing pupils to choose what to have, so it was chips with everything - except once every six months when the little plastic packs of cheese and crackers held for using the school as an emergency evacuation centre were renewed, and the old stock became the only option for school lunch) but the chief cook was a memorably unpleasant person. Eventually she came to retire. As was usual practice a card and donation envelope was sent round the sixth form. No one signed the card or made a donation: so we were collectively summoned and advised that a voluntary signature and donation was compulsory...
Mind, I must be one of the few people who actually liked school rice pudding.
Always we had swede - I guess it was cheap and readily available.
And gipsy tart at least once a week, usually with coloured custard but sometimes synthetic cream. My favourite was tapioca with a blob of red jelly.
Pink custard was probably intended to taste of strawberry. sometimes we had it much thicker and blancmange like, possibly accompanying reconstituted dried fruit, but going under the name of facecream.
I liked Manchester Tart!
Are you sure you're not my double? I hated Manchester Tart (and remember it with shudders too), and I liked school rice pudding. And semolina. And tapioca. Though having said that, hot custard is an entirely different matter - I like that.
🙂
(I didn't know it was a Kentish speciality. Something else we need to be forgiven for, like Farage-Garages, Chatham, and Wat Tyler).
@piglet, so glad you've got the hearing aids. @Huia advice about adjusting the volume and sitting with a wall behind you are spot on. Mine have a setting to make ambient noise less, and a t-switch. I was sent some new ones, but they need to go back for some serious working on as I can hear less well with them, than my current ones and there is no t-switch setting enabled. Trouble is I have no desire to visit my local hospital at present.
I wonder if my school's prospectus said the same? I doubt if Old Ma Morris could be said to be good for anyone's health (with the possible exception of that of Old Pa Morris, but history is silent on that point).
IIRC (and it's a Long Time Ago), we were served semolina with red jam at primary school. If anyone tells me that they did NOT stir the jam into the semolina to make pink semolina, I will know them for a teller of Hideous Fibs.
You've all reminded me of the horrible school liver and onions and the never ending swede, which is another thing I avoided for years, only eating it again when I was an adult after it arrived in a veg box.
I will, instead, commend you for your ingenuity in disposing of the semolina. I am sure that no harm came to the Pigs, as they are able to eat (and digest) pretty well anything known to science or nature.
Yes, I stirred my jam into the semolina. It was the only way of making it remotely edible. That and to "ask for a small" - ie, pass the message up the table that you'd like a small portion of something.
In other news, Mr Nen and I have been for a damp, grey, chilly walk and I'm doing a midweek chicken roast for our tea.
We were only permitted to ask for "a small" of everything. Many people would try to ask for a small of, for example, parsnips (even for people who liked parsnips, school parsnips were a bit of a challenge), but they were invariably told that either they weren't very hungry, in which case they could have "a small" of everything, or they were normally hungry, in which case they'd get a normal portion of everything and like it.
It was acceptable to have a normal portion of main course, but a small of pudding - a strategy that was invariably employed whenever gooseberries were on offer.
There was a sweet boy who took my parsnips in exchange for .......something.
Lost in the mists of time
I like veg cooked with a bit of bite. The DH doesn't like mashed potato so we rarely have it, but lambs liver and onions served with creamy mashed potato on a hot plate at the correct temperature is divine.
But I loathe custard of any kind.
The description of chocolate concrete sounds suspiciously like a brownie to me - not a confection of which I'm particularly fond.
* If the cabbage has been boiled, there is no portion that's too small.
Really duff commute this morning - despite the train being on time, I had to wait nearly half an hour for the bus, making me late for my first staff meeting (I phoned my boss to let her know, and she was fine about it, but I'm still cross with Lothian Buses).
So much for the announcement that was being trumpeted on the screen that they were adding extra bus services in the mornings for the benefit of "key workers" (presumably like people who work for the NHS).
Grrrrr!
My school dinners were excellent. Best meal of the day for me.
We had one kid who was well known for liking sour milk. So when the morning milk (third of a pint bottles, IIRC) had turned, we'd take turns casually walking up to him in the corner and exchanging our full one for his most recent empty.
When we moved later to a small seaside town, I was sent to a (day) convent school, My mother had taken one look at the junior school when it happened to be "big boys' playtme" and shuddered at the thought of her daughters going there. That was close enough for me to walk home for lunch. Except when my mother was in hospital having my baby brother, and then I used the lunch money I was given and spent it on whatever I fancied in town, not usually food, but I don't recall feeling hungry. I must ask my sister what she did then: although nearly 5 years younger, she has a far better memory than I.
The description of chocolate concrete sounds suspiciously like a brownie to me - not a confection of which I'm particularly fond.
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Definitely not a brownie - brownies are supposed to be squidgy & soft & fudgy in the middle. Chocolate concrete definitely wasn't intended to be that - at my school it was was on the menu as chocolate crunch which might give you a better idea of the texture.
One of my worst memories is shepherds pie. I liked shepherds pie so asked for "large". Then discovered school shepherds pie had no cheese on it, rendering it inedible to my seven year old self who then had to sit in front of it until it was eaten or the bell went.
I think the bell won in the end.