How was your school's hot lunch?
On the trail of Michiganders awesome "what kind of lunchbox did you have?" question. It made me think of our hot lunch program in my school. Ours was pretty good, sometimes offering midwestern regional favorites like pork tenderloins (think pork schnitzel on a bun) and Maid-rites (loose steamed hambuger meat on a bun) and the always hotly anticipated, square-shaped-government pizza. I hated ALL of the veggie as they were canned.
So how was your school lunch? what did you love? what did you hate?
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46 Comments:
I went to school in the 50s when the school cafeterias all had sweet cafeteria ladies who COOKED. The standouts were the beef stew and the meat loaf and the amazing sugar cookies.
ocarol at 11:49AM on 06/04/08
I rarely ate school lunches, but I remember triangle pbj's and wagon wheel "pasta with meat sauce" being very popular. I always got those drinks (forget what they're called, but they're in the shape of a barrel and you pull the foil top off?)
If I didn't bring my lunches I ate from the vending machines. I know, I don't even want to think about it.
High school got a little more choices, there was Domino's pizza every day (SUCH a luxury) and fruit smoothies, but I got a chunk of mold in my smoothie once, and that was the end of that! I think I subsisted on pizza (when I had the money), Frito's (we figured out how to jimmy the vending machine, I know, so badass) Fruitopias, Oreos, and Snickers bars. Ah, to be young.
embolini9 at 12:03PM on 06/04/08
The beef barley soup was pretty good. The pizza was standard and always available on Fridays, as I attended Catholic school. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches tasted weird...I think it was industrial peanut butter because of the horrendous aftertaste. We also had French fries and there were many lunches that consisted of fries and chocolate milk...I have the waistline to prove it. We were also allowed to have Snapple, but I can't really remember any other foods.
fatitalianbroad at 12:45PM on 06/04/08
The food I had was great! From the little private school I went to up until 3rd grade with "aunts" making lunch and snacks, through high school where "moms" were making our lunches. In high school, we all had to help dish out the food in a daily classroom rotation. Perk was that lunch would be free that day. Most people served themselves, so you know how big some of those servings were!
In high school, I liked the processed riblets. LOL My mom never served food like that so it was a treat to have it. I didn't know until this year that they were supposed to be riblets. All these years, I just thought they were teddy bear shaped meat. I didn't eat American style ribs growing up until college when I went to Tony Roma's for a work dinner party, the one and only time I ate American style ribs in Hawaii. $25/plate 15 years ago was rather steep for me.
I really enjoyed the fish filet and rice. The rice was lightly seasoned and had slivered carrots and green beans in it, similar to chirashizushi. The fish had some kind of batter and then baked. The best part was the roll. It was some kind of buttered roll that was abnormally sooooft with a stick of cheddar(?) in the middle.
My favorite fruit was prunes. They had to be canned because of the syrup. No one would eat theirs so I used to eat all of my friends prunes.
I even liked the spinach. I'm sure most ppl hated the green slop.
Chili with rice was pretty cool until they switched to the unmeat. I stopped eating it after that.
I can't think of anything I hated since they never served onions, garlic, cilantro, etc. :P
Cassaendra at 12:47PM on 06/04/08
QUOTE OF THE WEEK :"I didn't know until this year that they were supposed to be riblets. All these years, I just thought they were teddy bear shaped meat."
priceless :)
bobbob at 2:00PM on 06/04/08
My elementary school had neon yellow tater-tots; jell-o that would stick to your hand, even to a flat palm held upside-down; and hard-as-rock french bread pizza. The veggies were always of the canned variety, but I kinda liked them and to this day can eat peas with a fork straight from the can. I liked Hoagie day b/c it meant I could take my sandwich and pile on tons of lettuce, tomato, and pickles. I'm a big fan of those things. The ladies were nice, and I know they had to make due with what they were given. When in doubt, there was always the possibility of getting a PB&J, something that just wouldn't fly in today's schools. How sad is that?
I can't remember much about middle school lunches except that they were seriously unhealthy. I usually got a pizza bagel and an iced tea for lunch. (By usually, I mean every day.) My friends seemed to survive on a steady diet of "pizza fries," chocolate milk, and Tasty-Kakes. The school had hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs, but I never got them as there was nothing veggie-like to put on them. I can't even remember if there was a healthier option. I don't think so.
Stufsocker at 2:03PM on 06/04/08
My gradeschool lunch was pretty straightforward casserole/hot dish oriented- tuna noodle casserole, johnny marzetti (that was my favorite) , tater tot casserole,- with occasional days of chille, tomato soup with grilled cheese or bologna sandwiches, fish sticks or fish sandwiches on fridays. We always had some sort of canned vegetable (yuck), some canned fruit- mostly peaches, and a piece of bread with butter and every once in a great while we would get a teeny tiny green salad with french dressing to go with the "entree"! For the most part, it was all pretty good. AND we could have chocolate milk on fridays!
aungeinphx at 2:06PM on 06/04/08
We had no caf in grade school, but Monday was 'hot dog day,' (plain, mustard, or katschup choice) Tuesday was (plain only, one slice or two) pizza day, Thursday was sub day (a 1/4 or a 1/3), and Friday was McD's (6 chicken nuggets, hamburger, or cheeseburger).
Given my mom's cooking skills, McDonald's was king (I adored the consistency of the nuggets, how one of the processed gems always looked like a boot of Italy in the 6-pack, which I ordered with hot mustard or bar-b-q sauce, never honey or sweet and sour) . Also liked the mustardy tart dogs, and though the tomato-y, hard-skinned pizza even I knew wasn't as good as the place my family ordered from, I still ate it every week. Subs my teeth were too tiny to chew.
Ice cream and milk was .25. Ah, the days....
HeartofGlass at 2:06PM on 06/04/08
HeartofGlass reminded me (not sure how) of a novel entree that I had never seen prior to eating it in high school -- potato skins baked with beef, cheese, and potatoes on the inside. We would get 4 of them and I often burnt the roof of my mouth on the first bite. Because of this dish, I make all my potato dishes unpeeled -- potato salad, soup, stew, etc.
Cassaendra at 2:38PM on 06/04/08
My mom made lunch most days in elementary school but we would get to buy Fridays for the standard McCain Ellios esque pizza day and on days they served our favorites or she was too busy to make lunch. I was a big fan of the spaghetti lunch, it came with a piece of garlic bread and a small salad (iceberg w/ Italian dressing) and the tacos. Soups (chicken noodle or rice w/ saltines), bagels (butter or cream cheese) and buttered rolls, egg salad and tuna sandwiches were offered everyday and that's what I'd usually buy if it wasn't tacos, chicken nuggets or pizza. I remember these all being quite good. They also had giant chocolate chip cookies that were homemade and not cooked all the way throught (yum!). These were served in wax paper bags and you could see the film of grease but I loved them anyway. I always drank lowfat chocolate milk. These were the highlights. Most of the entrees were quite gross. I remember ham and cheese melts and hamburgers w/ rubbery meat, stinky fish nuggets, and mushy canned vegetables-never fresh.
High school was a bit better w/ a salad bar and made to order sandwich station but the hot food was still gross. Luckily we were allowed to go out to lunch in 11th and 12th grade!
KtMc24 at 3:52PM on 06/04/08
Everything was pretty awful except for hot dogs and beans. They served canned ravioli and the rest of the canned pasta assortment; very bland tuna salad and some other stuff I'm grateful for having forgotten.
chiff0nade at 4:38PM on 06/04/08
We had a lot of really gross hot lunches, but there were many things that I loved and still think about today -- a processed chicken patty with american cheese on a plain white bun, rectangular cheese pizza, mashed potatoes wtih gravy...They also introduced some really tasty (probably canned) soup towards the end of high school that you could get instead of the normal canned vegetable option. And we too had those delicious, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies in the wax paper bags. If you got to school early enough, you could have them hot right out of the oven for breakfast. Oh! And french fries with ranch dressing -- also very tasty. OK, I must stop now, I am pregnant and beginning to crave all sorts of disgusting food from my youth.
tracyd at 5:30PM on 06/04/08
I remember the "hamburgers" having things that looked like octopus sucker pods on them, and they never tasted like beef. I usually skipped hamburger day.
bisbee at 6:29PM on 06/04/08
Hello. I finally registered so I could join this thread.
My sister and I both remain obsessed with the grilled cheese that our school district served. It came wrapped in foil, obviously reheated, on dry white bread, with sharp tasting cheese. It seemed oddly grease-less. We have tried to reproduce the sandwich... we even tried freezing sandwiches in foil and then reheating them in the oven...
I remember a lot of kids at my high school making "sandwiches" out of a buttered roll and "cool ranch" Doritos in the cafeteria. Horrible, I know. Just a regional thing?
bonnie at 7:08PM on 06/04/08
The food in my elementary school was dreadful. The women who cooked it not only were terrible cooks, they were also seemingly devoid of common sense. I recall one particular occasion when we were meant to be having jelly sandwiches (I know - rubbish), and they didn't have enough strawberry jelly, so they mixed it with a large vat of MINT jelly. Mint jelly is, of course, supposed to be eaten with stuff like lamb, not mixed with strawberry and slathered on a sandwich. It was beyond vile.
In high school I mostly didn't eat things, but if I had then I would have eaten very well at school. I went to a very posh place that once served soft shell crabs, and always had unlimited ice creams and biscuits. Later I was at a different school where I also never ate the hot food. But I recall many tuna sandwiches and peach melba yogurts bought from a vending machine that was filled by the kitchen staff, as well as delicious cake with a crusty, craggy brown sugar topping. That was, as I recall, lovely.
caley at 7:49PM on 06/04/08
I don't recall the elementary school lunches, but middle/high school was N.A.S.T.Y. As mentioned already, those rectangle pizza shingles with cheese that didn't really melt all the way and oozed orange grease, round processed chicken patties on hamburger buns (no cheese on ours,) and stone cold tater tots are the most memorable. And while technically we had a salad bar, it was not just rumor that kids would smuggle frog guts out of biology class and toss them into the salad fixins. I think I pretty much lived on cartons of chocolate milk (not good for a hypoglycemic...) I can't recall any school lunch that I got excited about then enough that I'd want it still today. I do remember the lunch ladies making a big deal out of it when "Thanksgiving Dinner" day rolled around each November, but dressing that gums up and sticks to the roof of my mouth has never impressed me.
@caley: seriously, soft shell crabs?!? dare we ask about the tuition at this place?
AliceBlue at 8:14PM on 06/04/08
From an interesting article on school lunches 'round the world from the BBC: "On the menu this week in a typical Parisian primary school in the 11th arrondissement is a mouth-watering menu: a starter of grapefruit, followed by grilled chicken with green beans, then a cheese course and rice pudding for dessert. The day's snack is a tangerine" (link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4298245.stm).
As a kid, though, I hate to say I wouldn't have eaten any of that--actually, other than the tangerine and the green beans, it still doesn't sound too appetizing...
HeartofGlass at 8:39PM on 06/04/08
People went crazy over chicken nuggets at my school. They were served with mashed potatoes and gravy-- me and my friends called them chicken "pluggets".
There was also 2 for 1 taco with taco meat that turned the tortilla this florescent orange color. My lunch lady always had some extra tortillas for me because she knew I didn't eat the meat ones! I will never forget her!
smile at 8:41PM on 06/04/08
Generally school lunch was to be avoided, but the yeasty, buttery rolls made by the high school cafeteria were divine. They were the size of softballs, made hot every day at 9:00 a.m. for the 9:40 "nutrition break"--fifteen minutes of noshing and hurried smoking-and-or-groping in the hallways--sold for only 40 cents in the early nineties and were incredible. I blame my sluggish performance in third period gym squarely on those rolls.
rosezilla at 8:48PM on 06/04/08
oh, god, the food at my grammar school cafeteria was sooo bad... industrial chicken soup and canned peaches. and the burgers. chewy and dry and nasty. blech! i can still torture myself by recalling the smell in the basement. after first grade i basically refused to eat lunch at school anymore and always walked home.
cybercita at 9:25PM on 06/04/08
Awful! I can't understand how my mother allowed me to eat that stuff, or how it was allowed to be served to children. That being said, I remember it costing something like $1/day. We had shepherd's pie (after having mashed potatos, corn and some sort of ground meat earlier in the week), cheese pizza, some sort of meat sandwich with gravy on top, cheeseburger, tater tots. The rolls were okay, and the ice cream cups.
dettling05 at 9:31PM on 06/04/08
Bullies would often steal my food, and then taunt me as they ate my food in front of me. We had thick plastic trays we used to walk thru the line and place our food items on. The bullies would sometimes beat me over the head with these trays, and spit on me, while cursing my name and family. Once I almost choked to death when a particularly mean bully shoved an entire meatloaf in my mouth, then held it shut while punching me in the throat repeatedly.
The food was OK. Nothing special.
FastFoodCritic at 9:57PM on 06/04/08
I didn't start having hot lunch at school regularly until high school, and it was awful. Mystery meat, foil surprise, you never knew what you were going to get when you opened that package. The worst was the liberal use of that awful orange government cheese. UGH. It was everywhere - shredded, cubed, sticked, you name it.
They had a junk food line and I ate mostly from that, but sometimes I chose the salad bar. Sometimes I'd save up my money and buy a grinder (they were expensive at $3.50 - my whole lunch allowance for the week) because they were at least edible. A picture of one of my grinder lunches made it into the yearbook senior year. :)
AdamH at 9:59PM on 06/04/08
In elementary school (K-6 in my town) the most memorable meal was square cardboard-tasting pizza. One girl use to peal the cheese off and lick, yes lick the red sauce off the "Cardboard". Along with the pizza, there would typically be an over-cooked, can-tasting, mushy vegetable, and a fudgey brownie with nuts (I'd pick the nuts off).
In high school, the cafe had pizza, bagels, fries, potato-puffs, and otis spunkmire cookies. Most people ate either the potato puffs with ketchup OR 3 cookies.
How could I forget the most memorable (but not tasty) thing served in grade school, middle school, high school, and college: Playdough-textured mashed "potatoes."
MeMeg at 10:40PM on 06/04/08
I much prefered bringing my lunch, but there were a few things I'd circle on the monthly menu and buy my lunch that day - pizza poor boy (pizza sandwich), brunch for lunch (eggo waffles which we NEVER had at home, and sausage), and turkey & gravy. It came with a lump of instant potatoes, and the cool way to eat it was to mix the whole thing up into a greyish stew.
That was elementary school. In middle school, the only thing I bought at school were corn nuts and sometimes pizza. In high school we went out to lunch once we could all drive, but staying on campus meant "welfare lunch." Which was not the proper name for the government subsidized lunch, and it was incredibly insensitive to call it that, I know now. Anyway, for a $1.50 you could get a tiny taco bell-imitation burrito.
And before my college cafeteria overhauled the dining program it was pretty common to see "rinsed" chicken. Over processed chicken breasts that had been, say, chicken almondine the night before, were rinsed and slathered with teriyaki and pinapple slices the next night. And then, there was the night the printed menu advertised "Prok fried rice." And that's their typo, not mine. Ever since, my friends and I have identified funky tasting meat as "prok."
LizNYC at 11:24PM on 06/04/08
My favorite was "Italian dipping sticks"...2 breadsticks with a bowl of meaty tomato sauce...Oo, and on chili days we always got a cinnamon roll...delish! And who can forget chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs?
emes1 at 11:44PM on 06/04/08
never had a real cafeteria until i got to highschool...pretty bland stuff, hamburgers and stuff. they attempted to do healthy things like cut up veggies to buy as snacks but kids still ended up buying cookies for breakfast when they got to school (ew). i always brought my own lunch, started making my own once i started high school too.
sweetpotato at 11:47PM on 06/04/08
One of our daily lunches in high school was, I kid you not, the "poultry bomb". It was essentially a chicken parmasean sandwich on a sub roll. The fact that it had the word poultry instead of chicken (plus us being 16) led to the rumor that it was actually pigeon in the sandwich. A real KFC isn't really chicken urban legend from the day.
jellytaco at 4:19AM on 06/05/08
in grade school I rememeber the hot lunches as being pretty good, I would get them about once or twice a week. In jr high and high school I would spend lunch hiding out on thestairs to the bell tower, closed and used for storage, I was a nerd so I'd be up there reading a book and drinking a diet pepsi.
huneybumper at 7:27AM on 06/05/08
I feel really lucky after reading most of these comments!
In grammar school the food was certainly edible, if not really good. In junior high the cafeteria administrator/head cook was the grandmother of one of my classmates. Everything was served in heavy-duty Melamine trays with five sections-- one for silverware, one for milk, two small compartments for side dishes and a large one for the entree.
I wasn't wild about the mustard/mayo blend that was slathered on the hot dogs. And then there were the vile tuna buns. Imagine, hot tuna, (hot) mayonnaise and grated American cheese melting through the sandwich-in-a-hot-dog-bun which was then rolled up in foil, twisted closed on each end and baked. Just the smell of the cafeteria on tuna bun days made me want to retch. Oh, and grated cheddar cheese on spaghetti is just, plain weird! The gigantic, yeasty and hot white rolls were magnificent! The dishes we looked forward to each month were the fish sticks, oven-fried chicken, and of course, pizza.
Ok, in high school the cafeteria was pretty awful most days. The hot lunch was edible about three days per month. The rest of the time I subsisted on tuna sandwiches and junk food from the snack bar. Until I got my driver's license.
Calichef at 7:48AM on 06/05/08
@AliceBlue, I know. It was a completely ludicrous place. I'm sure that if I'd been less of a self-absorbed, miserable teenager and had actually paid attention to what we were served, I would have many other such examples (the soft shell crab occasion I remember specifically because everyone thought it was especially over the top). Of course, they usually served the usual fare: macaroni cheese, toasted sandwiches, beef stew. But the soft shell crab anecdote is indicative of the tone of the place, which was pretty decadent and out of touch. It was a relief later to go to a large public school with tuna sandwiches in vending machines.
caley at 9:24AM on 06/05/08
@bonnie- welcome to SE! That dorito thing is not "regional," it's "institutional." Inmates make something similar in their jail cells. I believe it is called a chalupa, and is made from ground doritos and uncooked ramen noodles with a tiny bit of water to make it a paste. It is then spread on white bread ith mayo. Not exactly the same, but a similar idea.
BTW, I used to work for an alternatives to incarceration program. Some of the guys would bring their jailhouse eating habits with them. And yes, I have tasted this scary concoction. Not as bad as one might think, but I don't think I'll be having one for lunch today.
School lunches were horrible. All institutional food of the lowest quality. I can still remember the smell of the cafeteria. I wonder if anything has gotten better in typical public schools. Any parents out there?
Kerosena at 9:58AM on 06/05/08
@bonnie - I ate my first bag of Cool Ranch Doritos yesterday for the first time in years (found them in the storage room at work...bad idea). I can't believe I used to eat those on a regular basis! I definitely saw kids making sandwiches like that, but it always grossed me out.
embolini9 at 10:04AM on 06/05/08
As far as I recall, most of the food at my high school was pretty standard ...
with the very, VERY notable exception of the biscuits (45 cents!) they served for breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
OMG, were they amazing. Huge, flaky, moist, dripping with butter, with perfectly crispy crusts. Just salty enough. Un. Be. Lievable. I could live off them even now. Ten years later, those biscuits haunt my dreams.
At the end of my senior year (and this was before I had any notion of cooking whatsoever), I asked the lunch ladies for the recipe - and alas, they refused to give it to me! 'Twas a black, black day.
(And, by the way, if any of you happen to miraculously be in possession of the biscuit recipe used by the cafeteria staff at Clayton High School ... I beg you to share it!)
tacroy80 at 10:35AM on 06/05/08
Well, my high school hot lunches were nothing to write home about- the usual pizza, burgers, chuckwagons (which I once described on this forum) and fries - with and without (with gravy or without gravy - but no poutine!)
My daughter is nine and has a hot lunch program at her school 2 days per week. They alternate among pizza (cheese or pepperoni), chicken (baked or nuggets with mashed potatoes), subs, hamburgers. They all come from local places - nothing cooked in the school. Since my kid is fussy, she gets hot lunch only on the days with chicken or pizza. Won't eat the other two things. We live in a small town which may explain the lack of regular hot lunches or brekkies in the grade school level. I think they have both brekkie and lunch at the local high schools, although given how many kids I see in the fast food joints around the schools, I be thinking the quality isn't there (or it is, and these kids just prefer crap!)
Maureen at 11:04AM on 06/05/08
I don't remember my elementary school food all that much, but then again, I wasn't much of an eater when I was a child, so whatever it was, I most likely barely touched it, if at all. It probably also means that it was not quite memorable.:-)
Come to think of it, I wasn't much better in high school, but I do recall eating beef stew and mash, and toasted BLT sandwiches, these were quite good.
brooke29 at 11:07AM on 06/05/08
It's funny how all of us have the 'one thing that was actually good' memories too--in h.s. that would be the cheese strudel muffins, gooey from being under the heat lamps I used to have at breakfast, and the egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches...also the chocolate chocolate chip muffins...
I think the heat lamps are why those things taste good and the proximity of grease everywhere...
HeartofGlass at 11:08AM on 06/05/08
When I was in elementary/middle-school, I really liked the veggie soup and the tomato soup and grilled cheese days. That is pretty much all I can remember liking. I'd bring lunches most days; my mom would make up on the weekends a large number of roast beef and cheese on hamburger buns and wrap in foil and then heat them then freeze them. That was one of the best lunches. In high school there was a potato bar, but we were too cheap and would just take the crackers, bacon bits and chesse and make little crackers sandwiches. There were tasty.
malenky at 11:46AM on 06/05/08
They sold It's - It! ice cream bars at my school in Sacramento. I would eat like four a week. I miss those things here in Texas...
HoustonJoe at 2:07PM on 06/05/08
My high school did hot breakfast in the morning (neon egg sandwiches) followed by hot lunch. Wednesday was always nacho day: ground beef with minimal seasoning on toastios with melted slices of kraft and jarred salsa. yum.
@bonnie: my best friend's favorite late night raid the kitchen snack at sleepovers growing up was toasted bread with margarine and cool ranch doritos. She was from the originally from the south.
liwinegirl at 7:07PM on 06/05/08
Chicken rings. They were chicken nuggets in the shape of rings, and they haunt me to this day. Best was Fridays, when you could order them with a softball sized buttery roll, mashed potatoes and gravy, separately or as a sandwich. I remember visiting high school during college just to try them again. So good!
Also, the best egg roll I have ever eaten was served by the junk food line in my cafeteria.
From elementary school, I remember the pizza, which came practically cheeseless (loved that) and carrot and raisin "salad."
xaire at 8:52PM on 06/05/08
Bisbee, I'm glad you posted this!!! As I read through the lunchbox thread (and having NO idea that it would evoke such memories) I thought about Wednesdays, the day that my 'lunchbox' Mom would let me buy lunch. Wednesday was pizza day. The dedicated lunch ladies in my school district made everything from scratch, including the incredible pizza. They served it with spinach, to make sure the dietary rules were adhered to. Anyway, the pizza was FABULOUS and I can still recall with anticipation, the deep-dish, homemade slices that were to come. The lunch ladies also made the best oatmeal/peanutbutter cookies. The cookies were so popular, people in the community would place orders for them on the day they were made! Imagine my surprise when I tasted the dorm food my first year at college, I expected it to be like the Lunch Ladies, NOT!! By the way, the Lunch Ladies made a killer salibury steak and mashed potatoes.
Michigander at 10:49PM on 06/05/08
Wednesdays were spaghetti day. Piles of misc. pasta and meat sauce (government surplus ground "beef") were served with totally awesome rolls (referred to as "yeast rolls") make by the lunch ladies. I flashed back to those beloved rolls the first time I had coco bread - tasted exactly the same (minus the beef patty).
tracker at 4:37PM on 06/06/08
I ate hot lunches in grade school and thought they were exotic, since it was stuff I never got at home. Looking back, I can recall canned Chef Boyardee ravioli as the amazing highlight of the lunch menu. In high school, there was a hot lunch, but after eating what they referred to as a hamburger, I gave that up in favor of the "cold lunch" line which offered such delectables as the ubiquitous bologna sandwich with butter globs, and on a good day, Twinkies and Hostess apple pies.
dbcurrie at 1:32AM on 06/07/08
I am so the outlier. I can say that most of what everyone describes was totally absent on my high school's lunch menu. I gruadted less than five years ago, so the whole "healthy lunch program" was just going into effect.
We had buffalo chicken sandwiches on Wednesday and chicken tenders on Thursdays. French fries, pizza and wraps too...sounds like standard fair, right? It was all air-fried, low fat and whole wheat. Mostly the least popular too...we had a sushi chef come in on Tuesdays, and we had a daily stir fry station. The salad bar was enormous, and they had a make-you-own smoothie bar. Grilled/roasted veggies were always an option and never soggy. The hamburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches and veggie burgers were also tasty. I do miss the make-your-own nacho bar with fresh salsa and avocado slices!!
I also went to public school, in case anyone was wondering. I've heard that they now accept credit and debit cards in the cafeteria and/or an ID card with stored dining dollars that's controlled online--and subsequently allows parents to SEE what their children are buying. Kinda Big Brother-ish.
sweethunibabi at 5:37PM on 06/16/08
My high school's food was unfathomably bad--rubbery chicken nuggets and pizza soaked in grease. College food, on the other hand, while tiresome, is much better. We have salmon, flank steak, ribs--all good stuff. :)
cochon at 1:59PM on 06/17/08