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I remember when I was really little everyone was having their yummy white bread sandwiches or PPJs or Bagels & Cream Cheese while I was having an ezikiel bread sandwich that smelt like rotten eggs filled with extra HEALTHY PPJ that tasted like smoothed wood - I would always throw it away and ask others for half of their sandwiches... then one day my teacher caught me throwing away my food and she made me sit with her in a classroom and finish all of my lunch and she even called my mother, whom was pretty mad about it...

My parents divorced when I was 3 and up till I was in 2nd grade I lived with my Mom, then she moved to another town an hour away and instead of moving me halfway during the school year my dad would come stay with me and on the weekends my mom would come home. Every morning my dad would try to do my pigtails (always lopsided and crooked, he was a welder and his hands werent made for little girl hairstyling) and pack my lunch. Always the same thing..fried thick cut bologna on white bread with ketchup wrapped in foil, a Little Debbie oatmeal pie and a quarter for milk. It was the weirdest lunch ever but very exotic since my Mom never allowed me to have white bread, she always made her own wheat bread and woul NEVER buy me any "snacks"

Cream cheese and olive sandwiches, or cream cheese and walnuts. Or the occasional Fluffernutter. A piece of fruit (apples, or sad bruised bananas), milk money, and maybe one more goodie, if it was my lucky day. Good stuff.

My mother almost always made roast beef for Sunday dinner, so I got roast beef sandwiches for school lunches, she also made me ham sandwiches which was on German style bread with butter, mustard, cheddar, sweet butter pickles and a hard boiled egg. Other samndwhes she made me was salami or thuriger and that was with wheat bread, mayo/ mustard and smoked gouda. Last but not least, egg or tuna salad on white. I also got a few chips,some pastry or cookie and a piece of fruit.

As a kid growing up in the 70s and having graduated from high school in 1987, when I brought lunch from home, it was usually Japanese or Okinawan food, and they were rarely leftover dishes, unless I specifically requested it.

It was packed in a Sanrio bento container of some kind. Of course, being typically Japanese, my mother made shapes, designs, and color coordinated items. When she'd make designs, the items would be made out of your standard design food items like egg (souffle/crepe), sausage, Spammm, rice, roe, nori, tomato, celery, cucumber, etc.

My lunches were yakisoba, shrimp tempura, champuru (no bitter melon but mustard cabbage substituted, yay!), unajyu, and somen. Sometimes, I'd bring in leftovers like sukiyaki, nishime, and occasionally lasagna w/ salad, the few times a year she made that. Depending on what kind of food she packed, my mother would sometimes pack everything separately in stacking bento containers.

If she sent me off with sandwiches, everythign was packaged separately so I would make my own sandwich when I was ready to eat. Of course, the edges were cut off my bread. :P

Back in the day, you could bring knives to school too. In high school, my friend and I would bring occasionally in our parents crystal goblets, silverware, and table cloth, and eat cafeteria food in the cafeteria. We'd drape the tablecloth over our section of the long bench. I'd set the crystal and pour milk or soda in them. We'd have cloth napkins. She'd set the silverware. It was hilarious. We'd have so much fun with that.

I remember fruit roll-ups! They rule!!
I remember my mom/dad packing me a genoa salami sandwich with dijon but then they would put cream cheese on it. Now that I make my own sandwiches I make the same but I use swiss instead :p
I ate ryvita crackers with home-made marmalade, and a container of pickles!! What a weird kid hey?
I also remember beef-a-roni...still tastes fabulous once a year!

@Cassaendra- I LOVE IT - the crystal, the sushi!
..... you are totally reminding me of Molly Ringwald in Breakfast club!

as for me, I remember getting frozen twinkies, little debbie oatmeals, and yuck. PB&J..which I still hate. oh and usually a crappy mushy red delicious apple.

I ate a lot of hot lunch. Thank god for our awesome lunch ladies!

By the time I turned 10ish I was making my own lunches. Sandwiches made with some leftover chicken, or lunch meat if I had to. Leftover steak, cold perogies! Oh they were glorious. I loved packing my own lunch, it was part of the after dinner clean up.

Then again, I also had to make sure the coffee was made, and prep my own breakfast in the mornings. Sounds terrible to make a kid do that sort of thing, but I thought it was great. I got to eat lunches that I wanted, and had regular chores to do. :)

My mom always made a ham sandwich with Miracle Whip on white bread and packed me some nacho cheese Doritos. Fruit would vary and I'd get a Little Debbie snack cake of some kind. Can't really complain!

I ate the exact same lunch everyday from ages 8 to 15. One half of a cheese sandwich (one slice whole wheat bread cut in half, 2 small slices mild cheedar cheese, no spread), one carrot cut into sticks, an apple, and a juice box of either apple or orange juice. I didn't graduate to a whole sandwich until age 15. No wonder I was the smallest kid in the class and had a delayed puberty! I wonder if my growth spurt made me hungry for a whole sandwich, or if deciding to upgrade provided enough fuel to permit growth. I basically still eat the same lunch now, with V8 instead of the fruit juice, and a yogourt as well.

our elementary school had a microwave and all the other kids would bring those chef boyardi lunch ravioli things to heat up and eat or lunchable packets. meanwhile, i had my stacked lunchbox of rice, kimchi, bite-sized pa-jun, fried spam, and a thermos of whatever soup we had leftover from the last night. during the winter, my lunch was often some rice and a thermos of curry and on really lazy days, cup ramen.
I remember one day when my grandmother didn't pack anything and gave me money to buy the school lunch. I was so excited to try out the school food and bought one those mini pizzas. needless to say, i was forever grateful of my packed lunches and never again did i envy those other kids who had to eat those pizzas that tasted significantly similar to the styrofoam trays they came on.

My mother was fairly clueless about the whole school lunch thing. She'd pack too much food, and she'd wrap it in aluminum foil so that I'd have no idea what was in there until I unwrapped it. The sandwich was usually pretty obvious, but the rest were mystery shapes that could have been anything. I was a slow eater to begin with, but all the unwrapping of foodstuffs that were packaged to withstand radioactive fallout made me even slower. I'd never finish the lunch, because there was never enough time, so I'd have to bring home the leftovers for mother to look at. It's what I now unfondly call the daily lunch autopsy, where she'd unwrap each item to see what was in there. "Oh, you didn't eat your dill pickle. You like these. Why didn't you eat it?" And she'd look sad, and say that we'd have to throw it out, even though I'd offer to eat it on the spot. I didn't eat it because it was all knobby and weird-shaped in its aluminum shroud, and I had no idea it was there, and no time to unwrap and eat a dozen odd items. "Oh, look, here are the three cookies I packed...and the handful of chips...and the carrot sticks...and the celery sticks...and the olives...and the cherry tomatoes from the garden...and the....." aaargh.

It was a happy day when she agreed to let me buy my lunch from the school for a whopping 35 cents a day. And when she realized that she could sleep in instead of packing my lunch in the morning, it was a happy day for her. After that, no more packed lunches, ever again.