Kitchen Garden Forum

School dinners were mentioned on the radio with fond memories of the sweets served up in my schooldays some fifty years ago.Delights such as Semolina with a skin on it,with a dollop of jam,Tapioca,Jam Roly-poly.Spotted Dick served with lumpy custard.Treacle tart.apple tart and everybody's favourite Chocolate Sponge with a pink sauce!And I enjoyed every one of them and if 'seconds' were being offered,I never refused!!

I always enjoyed the puddings - made up for the vegetables I tried to hide under my cutlery!

Mostly enjoyed school dinners but did a spell in a village school 16 kids taught by a nun sister Dorethea who made me eat new potatoes with mint eeagh love potatoes lose the mint aaand grapes in a salad as a 9 year old it scarred me for life

I used to dread the suet pudding with sultanas and a runny excuse for lemon curd. Didn't like the jam suet roly poly either.

Then when I was teaching in primary school school dinners changed. We weren't allowed to encourage children to eat their veg etc. Then they changed again and because children were allowed to take packed lunches, (one child once brought a packet of custard creams and a packet of crips as he said his mum just gave him some money and told him to pop into the shop on the way to school and buy something for lunch), the cooks in fear of losing their jobs started to produce 'child friendly' meals which basically meant chips with everything, baked beans etc and things with names like turkey twizzlers and dinsoaur burgers.

Likewise when mum's used to send things for Christmas parties things went from home baking to packets of biscuits. Changes in the curriculum meant we had to drop cooking and baking with the children too.

NOw we have childhood obesity and children up the wall on chocolate highs or additives. Progress eh?

Now we have a childhood obesity problem

I loved school dinners and was apparently unusual in that I was particularly fond of the cabbage and used to eat all the cabbage that my friends pushed aside. I used to give them my baked beans (still not fond of them).

I remember eating "kesp" when it was introduced and loving that too as soya doesn't have any nasty chewy bits. I think the only thing I refused was liver and I can't imagine them serving that up these days

Well I can assure you all that you would not have liked wartime school dinners at all. A scrap of meat served up with dehydrated vegetables and swede in inch cubes running with water. Did you ever taste Pom the forerunner of Cadbury's Smash or dehydrated cabbage and the meat always disguised in a kind of stew and always boiled. This was served up mainly five days a week. About once a month there used to be a meal or Corned Beef. Mostly there was no pudding but occasionally we had Sago or Semolina. The pigs did very well out of us school kids!
JB.

Is that what they look like? I had never seen any before! Not very attractive, I think.

I don't think the turkey twizzlers look very appetising either....I'm not saying what I think they resemble......

I was at senior school in the sixties and our dinners were, on the whole, very good. My favourite pud was, what we called "Hammer and chisel pudding"..................I now realise it was a shortcake of some sort! The plain one was served with custard and the chocolate one with pink sauce. It was so called, because, it was so hard, when we tried to prise a piece off with either fork or spoon, it invariably shot off the plate and skittered across the table. Even so, we all loved it and went back for seconds!
Cheers!

Hi Elaine,

That sounds suspiciously like my own old favourite , Chocolate Concrete

Other school foodie memories are liquorish wood sticks and tiger nuts. I remember some lads in my class giving some anomene bulbs to one girl and trying to kid her they were tiger nuts. I seem to recall her being rather sick.

I confess I've never seen a turkey twizzler before either. Actually that isn't strictly true. The dogs seem to leave them lying on the pavements round here all the time.

Johnboy. Seem to recall that there was only one choice, {Hobson's] can never recall any of my school chums saying, I don't like that, it was a case of eating it, or going hungry. No school tuck shops in those days.

Hi Shallot Man,
You are so right. It was called take it or leave it! It would appear that most of the forum contributors have absolutely no idea what being short of food means. Most of them will have as much butter on one slice of bread that during those dark days was a weeks supply to us!
I know that whatever we had at school was hard fought for and that the staff did their utmost to give of their best. Most of the kitchen staff were very elderly because war work took the vast majority of the young and middle aged women leaving only the elderly to care for children.
We survived and really at that time I was as fit as a flea and certainly a lot slimmer than I am today so the rationing really was doing us a favour.
I do suspect that a mugful of Rabbit Stew when I got home from school was part of it though. Rabbit Stew was permanently on the go on the range and a pint mug and a chunk of home made bread kept me going until supper time.
JB.

Primrose wrote:I confess I've never seen a turkey twizzler before either. Actually that isn't strictly true. The dogs seem to leave them lying on the pavements round here all the time.

I agree entirely Primrose

They look totally disgusting!