I remember the food at the school cafeteria not being half bad, and they had the best yeast rolls. Had to go to a really GOOD restaurant to get rolls as good as the ones they made at the school cafeteria. The rest of the food was mediocre institutional food - bland, but pretty tasty. Except for the sausage patties, which stank on ice. Sure, we made fun of it, but we ate it.
Nowadays, I swear they have gourmet meals at the cafeteria. They practically have a menu to pick from. When I was kid the choices were “Whole, skim, or chocolate milk or orange drink?”
choices?
there were no choices when I was in school. It was served on a prison tray...like they serve food in prison. You picked up a tray and walked down the line. at every station, someone put something in one of the dents in your tray. 4 days out of 5 your desert was some form of jello or pudding. One day a week you got a piece of cake or a scoop of cobbler.
No one was allowed to leave without finishing their main course. You could leave bits of the side dishes if you were persistent, but not the main course. But this was a very very rare issue. It was usually a girl that was feeling ill that left some of her food on her plate. everyone else cleaned their tray like a dog. There just wasn’t enough of it to let it get tossed. we were all growing kids and very hungry.
Once in awhile there would be some leftovers from the previous day and the first few people in line could opt for the previous day’s food item instead of the current one. The drink was the same thing every day...a half pint of vitD milk in a paper carton and a small straw if you wanted one. No exceptions except fridays. Fridays you got chocolate milk unless you didn’t like it then you could get plain vitD milk instead, if you preferred. sometimes they would run out of chocolate on fridays and then you got plain vitD even if you didn’t want it. Water was not even an option. Water was not available.
If you were really hungry you had 3 options:
1. buy a second lunch
2. buy an extra drink
3. buy an extra main course item.
nothing on your tray was sold “a la carte” except the drink and the main course item.
You could volunteer to work in the dishroom for a free lunch. Not many did. I was one of the few that did. My parents gave me lunch money by the week, not by the day like most kids. I worked in the dishroom to get free lunches and kept my lunch money my parents gave me.