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I remember Tuesday was steak fingers and mashed potatoes, and Thursday was cheeseburger day - that was my favorite! Looking back the food was bland as hell and I couldn't wait for junior high food!

Going way back to the early 60's - the one thing that stands out is when I took an ala carte dish of what appeared to be boiled potatoes. Instead it was turnips - that was so bad, I remember it 40 years later. Also remember the little bitty small 1/4 pint cartons of ice cream. The rest is just a blur.

I remember the chocolate pudding with whipped cream (probably cool whip or some kind of non dairy whipped topping!) swirled in. Yum. I rarely got to buy lunch as a kid but loved that pudding.

Are you kidding this is my first taste of Sloppy Joes and I loved them then and I love them now even though I haven't had one in decades. I was in elementary school during the 70's and they had this squaare, French bread type cheese pizza I loved and I still crave them, also the tacos I loved them as well. The little chocolate milks and the ice cream bars. yum yum.

ugh, yuck, blech. industrial grade peanut butter and petroleum product grape jelly on wonder bread, chicken noodle soup from gallon sized cans with gummy, pasty noodles, warm milk, and canned fruit cocktail served directly on beige trays.

i just made myself sick.

We had no cafeteria (gasp) but we did have food brought in, for which we would give the teacher money in the morning.

Monday or Tuesday was hot dog day, with your choice of mustard, ketchup, or plain. Even then I thought the people who got ketchup were weird, almost decadent!

Wednesday was McDonald's day, your choice of one hamburger, cheeseburger, or 6-pack chicken McNugget with choice of sauce. I distinctly remember having a great fondness for the McNugget that was boot-shaped, like a map of Italy.

Thursday was sub day in which I did not partake--my mouth was too small to eat subs.

Friday was pizza day (not from a chain--I'm from NJ, so plenty of Italian places where I live).

Ice cream (Dixie cups grades 1-3, sandwiches 3-6) was a quarter, as was milk.

I have to say, given that my lunches were pretty 'eh' from home, I did kind of learn that fast food was 'yummier' than 'home stuff' which was a bad lesson, but except for inactive kids like myself (overprotective parents) most kids didn't get 'fat' on this diet. Although I'm a neurotic healthy veggie chick right now, I do kind of think that the 'real' reason kids are overweight in such record numbers is not enough time outside playing and riding their bikes, exploring and such.

I have to add that whenever I stayed with my Aunt and Uncle and had school the next day my Aunt would always pack me these elaborate lunches complete with dips or spreads and lots of Tupperware with all sorts of food. It was embarrassing. Don't get me wrong! The food was great especially compared to the aforementioned Cham Sandwich but it drew too much attention and I hated that.

my mom packed my lunch all the time. a blessing i didn't appreciate until i got older. but i did manage to get a few of my fav school lunches now and then. grilled cheese, taco day, open-face turkey sandwich! those were days of celebration.

I remember Square Pizzas fondly, but there was this one "lunch" that confounded us all, They took an ice cream scooper and plopped two scoops of white rice on our plate and then covered them with stewed tomatoes, none of us would touch it.

I went to school in the 50's in north Texas. The cafeteria ladies made all our food from scratch and it was wonderful. They made meatloaf and beef stew that I still dream about. The sugar cookies were the best I have ever eaten. One of the ladies was a neighbor and I kick myself that I never got any of her recipes before she went to that big kithen in the sky. I still think of her warmly.

in grade school I bought my lunch on occasion, and remember the "pizza" as being one step up from ketchup on white bread with a slice of processed american cheese food on top, wrapper and all. However I did love the fish sticks, my mom Never bought fish sticks, so they were a rare treat and I was very young and stupid. In jr hs i went to the cafeteria rarely and then only for a carton of milk. and in hs I hid out in the bell tower with a can of diet pepsi and read, just walking by the cafeteria once caused queasyiness that lasted 2 days.

Insanely buttery apple crisp; grilled cheese with tomato soup, and tuna melts. I loved my school's food.

Everyday, there was chicken nuggets served with a roll. There was something about that roll. It's smell. It was wonderful. The top of the roll had a salty, buttery shine. It was purely unfresh and unhealthy. But there are times when I just crave that roll.

Also, pizza day in elementary was awesome. I can still taste and smell the pizza to this day. I think the worst thing I ever had was in elementary they started a salad bar and they served slices of bologna in a cup. After one cup, I vomited the entire night.

We had something called hamburger sundae that other kids loved. I didn't. Chunks of ground beef in beef gravy over mashed potatoes.

We got lazy pierogi with our kielbasa - egg noodles mixed with sauteed onions and cabbage or sauerkraut. Lazy pierogi was and is awesome!!!

I loved the way the rice was so sticky they served it with an ice cream scoop. We always ate very fluffy rice with every grain separate in my house, so the sticky rice was a cool change of pace!

Whoopie pies are popular in New England where I grew up and we used to get those for dessert fairly often. Two chocolate cookies filled with marshmallow cream. Quick, get two before the lunch lady sees you!

We had a somewhat progressive elementary school (for the time) in Tennessee. We had the option of regular hot lunch or the bar. The bar was a make your own salad and potato bar.

I usually had the salad bar, but whenever there was fried okra involved on the hot bar, I switched. I also loved the chicken nuggets dunked in honey served with green beans and a biscuit.

I think I was one of the few who didn't actually like the square pizza. But the hamburgers were glorious and served on a yeast roll with crispy tater tots.

Everything changed in middle school when I moved to Ohio. They served fish every friday and every menu item was served with french fries. They also had taco bell, mcdonald's, and spooner's pizza carted in different days of the week.

I loved my elementary school cafeteria. The lunch ladies were always so nice. There was frequently cake for dessert, and I remember this thing called "candle salad" which was half a bananna standing up inside a pineapple ring, with a maraschino cherry stuck on the tip. They made this pasta dish that we went insane over, which I now know to be American Chop Suey.

Wednesdays was "beef strip" day, and I would bring my lunch. Thursdays there was "beef strip" soup.

I'm also remembering 'hot dog' day, when some mothers would come in and boil up some dogs and stuff them into those cheap sweetish white buns. We'd buy them ahead of time, bringing money and permission notes from our parents two days before. We could order one or two dogs, a carton of milk and best of all, a bag of chips (not available at school otherwise). Inevitably someone would bust open their bag of plain chips, douse the contents with an alarming amount of ketchup (meant for the hotdogs), smush everything around and declare the concoction delicious. We'd all follow suit. I recall thinking it was delicious and atrocious, even then.

When my mother realized she could avoid getting up in the morning by giving me a quarter and a dime every day, she was a happy woman. I ate the hot lunch every single day from first grade through eighth, at the same school.

That was my first experience with ravioli, and I was absolutely fascinated by the orange-colored sauce and the filled mushy pasta. I tried to explain it to my mother, but of course it made no sense to her. It was Chef Boyardee, I'm pretty sure.

For some reason, spaghetti was always served with a side of mashed potatoes. There were other combinations that were equally puzzling. Like certain meals would come with a slice of buttered white bread. Thinking back, it was probably margarine on the bread, actually.

And I got the chocolate milk every single day. Kids who just bought milk paid two cents for white and three cents for chocolate, but in the hot lunch line you got your choice at the same 35 cents. I tried the white milk a couple times, and although I always drank it at home, the stuff at school always tasted funny to me -- to waxy or cardboardy or something, like it started to taste like the carton it was in.

i am a teacher also so i cant escape the cafeteria food.... i also teach in the elementary school that i attended soooo its like relieving childhood everyday

marchpane- we had the plastic pouches when i was in elem. school also! but they didnt last long after many stabs and leaks...

mondays are always chicken-nuggets, patties, who knows what...
thursdays are always a pasta- spaghetti or our school districts infamous "macaroni milanese" which is pretty much like goulosh
friday is still pizza day and is actually kind of tasty! they also occasionally have "italian dunkers" which are buns with cheese baked on top to be dipped in sauce... great way to use wednesdays left over hoagie buns...

i've noticed though that they make such a stink about school lunches being healthy and we are no longer allowed cupcakes for the kids birthdays or tiny little Smarties for a reward but they still serve nachos made of questionable cheese and meat, and hot dogs weekly?

I almost always brought my own lunch, but one thing that I remember, and strangely my brother and sister also loved was the Mock Chicken Leg. It was a breaded pork cutlet shaped into a chicken leg, and yes they sound disgusting but I am very nostalgic for these. Always served with a soft potato roll, instant mashed potoes and some limp vegetable I refused to eat.

I also currently work in an elementary school, and I love the smell of the rolls. That reminds me of being a kid. Well, the smell of the rolls combined with the musty crayon (or whatever it is!) smell. It makes me smile when I stop and take the time to think about it.
This is my fifth year here, and I have eaten a lunch out of the cafeteria exactly once, when we had a power outage and I ran down to help the kids get through the line. The ladies working in the kitchen practically force-fed me for having helped them out. It was the "new" pizza, and apparently I was lucky to get to eat it. Let me just say that I could hardly wait to (gratiously and politely) get out of there and toss what I couldn't eat into a trash can far, far away.

I grew up in the Bronx, and my public school didn't have a cafeteria - just a room for brown baggers. The food in junior high was not only inedible, it was vile, and the cafeteria had a nauseating smell - I couldn't eat there even though I just bagged lunch. I either had a slice, or took my lunch to the park, or sneaked bites in the library or classroom. HS prepared food was inedible, but at least the cafeteria didn't stink, and they sold some good prepackaged chocolate chip cookies.

Three memories:
1. The first day I got hot lunch I was in kindergarten. The lunch lady plopped down onto my tray an ice cream scoop of what I thought was vanilla ice cream. I couldn't believe how great hot lunch was and I put a big spoonful of 'ice cream' into my mouth and gagged. It was powdered mashed potatoes.
2. I lost my first tooth in the delicious grilled cheese sandwiches served at my school. The crispy white bread was perfectly saturated with butter and the cheese was nice and mild and softly cradled my tooth.
3. When I studied abroad in France my freshman year of high school, the French school I was at served the most amazing food. A woman carrying a basket of hot pains au chocolat and pains aux raisins came by the classrooms every morning. Lunch was some classic French meal, complete with a mini baguette, a wedge of cheese, and then one dessert that sticks out was ile au flottant!

Sadly, where I live now, the HS kids gripe that the "best" they have inside their own school is Chick-Fil-A...sigh.

We've had square pizza and the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches wrapped in plastic. Once a week, the caf served french fries - people pooled their money for that. I particularly liked the beef barley soup and pizza.

Holy Schnikes! I loved school food, It wasn't good but there was always plenty of it! From the little soy/hamburgers to the Pressed turkey chunks with gravy, square pizza you could drive a railroad spike with, PB&J sandwiches, instant mashed potato, sloppy joes.... then there was this salad dressing that was red and orange at the same time that went wonderfully with absolutely everything from the salad to the pizza... Whatever my lunch mates couldn't finish, I would!

In retrospect, it was awful quality... But I loved it anyways....

We had milk in plastic bags in my elementary school. This was also the first time I discovered Bacon Bits. I remember loving everything.
In high school, people only got two things. Either a limp salad in a plastic bowl the size of a fist, or curly fries.

I was thinking recently of all the foods I will not eat because of California public school lunches in the 80s and 90s.

Oatmeal
Corn dogs
Apple sauce
Sloppy joes
Canned cling peaches
Chocolate milk
Fruit cocktail
Canned green beans
Meatballs
Iceberg lettuce esp. iceberg lettuce mix with the little strings of purple cabbage and dry carrots
Sweet baked beans
Potato salad
Cole slaw - mayo water dripping from the slaw if you shift the plate
Anything with cold macaroni in it

I was traumatized by lunch ladies in hairnets, little pink lunch cards subsidized by the state that were for the "poor kids," and the underheated canned, processed meals. I think my pre-teen ennui was exacerbated by the horrible food I injested.

arent those the smokey mountains? rocky mountains are west,no?

I am 36yrs old and remember a few favorites from school lunches. Elem. school was the best. In high school french fries was an every day item. But there are two items that really stick out in my mind. They are fiestada pizza(octogan shaped,sharp cheddar cheese,tomato based sauce,spicy meat similar to meat for tacos) and vegetable sticks(breaded, fried on the outside,corn a couple of other vegetables inside) those were my favorites. I always wondered if anyone remembers these items and if you know where I could buy them. I have seen the vegetable sticks on chinese lunch buffets. About 12 yrs ago when my mom was a daycare supervisor and they ordered their food through a food distributor(PYA) I was able to order both items. So, does anyone here know where I can purchase these items? Also another favorite of mine was fried chicken with rice/gravy.

Thanks

I remember the meals were served with sporks and on styrofoam trays with compartments. There was a large silver milk fridge where you walked past to grab one of the small milks - red for whole, blue for skim and brown for chocolate if you were lucky. The food was not particularly memorable.

I remember something called Beagle Bagle Salad. It was iceberg salad with a mini bagel on top, but I was always afraid there was really dog meat in it.

My parents worked in the oil patch. I went to many different schools from the first grade on. I was taught to eat what was put in front of me to not complain and so were most of the kids I grew up with. I am not surprised that most American kids grew up to hate what should have been good and substanital food and became inordinately fond of the schtuff sold at fast food joints. In those days I looked forward to the days when Mom would pack our lunches.

Ack! I totally forgot about the mac and cheese with stewed tomatoes! I loved that! They always served it with fish sticks and I still love that combo. And to balance things out, we also had chicken nuggets that bounced.

Thank you for taking me back, Embackus! As I was rolling through the list I thought "No one had mock chicken legs in school? We had them weekly." And I still remember the fresh bread that was made everyday. We'd get a half a slice, but it was sooo good.

A brief tribute to the chief lunchlady at my school from grade 4-12. Mrs. Harwell fed about a hundred hungry kids every day. (towards the middle seventies she supervised two locations)

Almost all of the food was prepared onsite from fresh ingredients. NO surplus cheese or bunk food. Our school district was very small and had the benefit of being well funded. We paid a nominal fee for lunch.( I think it was fifty cents my senior year -1976). Potatoes arrived in a sack, were peeled and cooked from scratch.

In her kitchen the only thing that came out of can was condiments. She would come out into the lunchroom with a big pot under her arm of whatever was leftover about 20 minutes after everyone was seated and got many takers. The food was simple wholesome and fresh.

Pinto beans and cornbread from her kitchen was a feast I still remember.