What did your school lunch look like?

[El Presidente]

So a great mate of mine has finished telling me that that his mum packed his school lunch with an entree, main and then a youghurt or sorbet for dessert. This was his main lunch, she packed him something else for first bell/"little lunch".  

Jesus H Christ. I am going to call my mum and tell her that I have been ripped off! 

Mind you, she did turn up one day in grade three and walked into the school yard to deliver some crab sanwiches she had made. I was so embarrassed. I was so beaten up the minute she left.

From that day on I insisted on taking only what the white aussie kids took. Vegemite and/or peanut butter sandwhiches....maybe a cheese sandwich. 

Sorbet?  I would have been hung up by the pants belt on the cloak hook. 

[Chibearsv]

Hah! My mom sent me with a thermos of hot soup (no matter how hot outside) and sandwiches with things like pig's heart or liver sausage. I didn't get beat up, nobody got near me. 

[JDoughty]

Japanese bento box when I was lucky. Made classmates jealous. 

Remembering those bento boxes...homemade pickled takana leaf rolls with fresh rice, umeboshi (sour pickled plum) and shiso leaf, sometimes my favorite squid or sea urchin fermented pickles out of a jar. Gobo root cooked with carrot shreds, sesame oil and roasted black sesame puffed salt. Yellow pickled daikon tsukemono. Salted cooked or pickled fish sometimes, salmon shioyaki or mackerel, but only in the winter when it was cold and wouldn't spoil. Sometimes futomaki or vegetable sushi roll. No raw fish because of freshness concerns, alas. What I wouldn't give for another one of those lunch boxes. Nobody said a thing about my fancy lunches other than wishing they had a nice sushi bar lunch too. If they had I would have beaten the crap out of them, I was not a very nice little kid and I didn't take racist sh*t or insults about my mom from anybody. Not that there was much of that in Los Angeles at the time, not toward Japanese folks anyhow. 

[ElLoboLoco]

Bologna Sandwich, baggie of chips and a pickle. Thermos of cherry koolaid. If we were out of bologna, it was a fried egg sandwich. It was like a short filler, bundled cigar lunch.😂

[ha_banos]

We had school dinners! I really don't remember them but likely looked like this. The only thing I think I can recall is some sponge pudding with custard... maybe.

[tbelle7]

Child of the 90's.

[JDoughty]

Oh man I remember square school pizza with chocolate milk. An objectively horrible taste combination but somehow it worked at least when I was 9 years old. These days, I dunno. I can't think of any good cigar or wine pairing with this. 😆

[Malt]

We had a sandwich and a banana/orange or Apple. The sandwich could have been ham, peanut butter and Jam, lobster (was a poor family food when I was a kid in the 70’s). I needed a thermos because there was no vending machines or canteen at school. 

[LizardGizmo]

This thread is really taking me back. I remember a weekly rotation of hot garbage in elementary school. Lunch was 75cents. It went something like:

M/W/F:
1. Breaded Chicken Sandwich w/ Mayo, fries, milk of choice
2. Two beef tacos & cheese w/ white rice, milk of choice

T/H:
1. One Slice of Square Pizza (dealer's choice), Brownie, milk of choice
2. Hamburger (no cheese), Chips, milk of choice.

Alternate (always available): Peanut Butter and Jelly (or Fluffernutter), side of your choice, milk of choice

The pizza situation was a real life lesson early on. I'd get a slice that was about 4"x4" and the kid next to me would have a slice sized for a king. There was no justice!

[riderpride]

Clearly some here are more traumatized than others 😆 

Latchkey kid here, so I went home each day after Gr1. My parents probably figured I couldn't burn the house down with these. The walk was 20 min each way (but only uphill one way) - I don't think that happens anymore 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the memories. 

Cheers!

[bmac]

Peanut Butter and Jelly, pickle, apple, maybe some celery with peanut butter and Tang.

[Ken Gargett]

i would not have been able to spell sorbet let alone have a clue what it was when i was at school. 

mum made me salad sangers almost every day. beetroot and tomato essential, otherwise whatever was to hand. the bread would be soaked purple usually. plus a small bit of fruitcake. for some reason - i think because we always played sport at lunch and so i did not want to waste any time - i always ate everything at morning tea. 

she knew better than to waste a piece of fruit on me. 

[loose_axle]

Cheese and Vegemite sandwich day in day out for years. I loathe vegemite. Still like cheese. Mum was an excellent baker so there’d often be a slice or piece of cake that would make up for it and fruit for morning tea. 

Did anyone else get the “the starving children in Africa would love to have your lunch” when you mentioned you hated it?

[Ken Gargett]

6 hours ago, loose_axle said:

Cheese and Vegemite sandwich day in day out for years. I loathe vegemite. Still like cheese. Mum was an excellent baker so there’d often be a slice or piece of cake that would make up for it and fruit for morning tea. 

Did anyone else get the “the starving children in Africa would love to have your lunch” when you mentioned you hated it?

apparently there were also millions of children in india starving when i was a kid. and i was regularly made to feel responsible for hunger in both places. 

if mum had dared put vegemite on my sangers, they would have been slammed on the table that evening, uneaten of course, with instructions that if that ever happened again, i'd be looking for a replacement for her. i will say that mum made excellent lunches and especially fruitcake (largely because being a non-drinker, she seemed to be of the view that tipping an entire bottle of VSOP Cognac into a cake was perfectly fine and would have no impact - Dad, also a non drinker, didn't know and would not have cared). 

[Chibearsv]

14 minutes ago, loose_axle said:

Did anyone else get the “the starving children in Africa would love to have your lunch” when you mentioned you hated it?

I told my mom she should send my lunch to them. That didn’t go over very well. 🙄

[garnett]

I use to trade my skinny white store bought bread sandwiches made with peanut butter and jam for thick white homemade bread sandwiches made with bear meat and ketchup from the native kids. They used to laugh thinking they were ripping me off! Man, those sandwiches tasted good. I don't think I saw a piece of fresh fruit until I was 10 years old.

[El Presidente]

46 minutes ago, bmac said:

 and Tang.

TANG!

Do they still make that stuff?  Oh the memories 

[JDoughty]

10 minutes ago, garnett said:

I use to trade my skinny white store bought bread sandwiches made with peanut butter and jam for thick white homemade bread sandwiches made with bear meat and ketchup from the native kids they use to laugh thinking they were ripping me off man those sandwiches tasted good I don't think I saw a piece of fresh fruit until I was 10 years old

Oh man. I'll pass on the ketchup, but I love bear meat sammiches. You definitely got the better end of that trade. 

[bmac]

6 hours ago, El Presidente said:

TANG!

Do they still make that stuff?  Oh the memories 

I don’t know if they still make it. All the astronauts drank Tang.🤓

 

[ElLoboLoco]

They sure do! That c**p gave me canker sores within an hour.🤮

[avaldes]

I was in high school late 80’s/early 90’s in San Diego. Carne asada burritos with hot carrots and jalapeños. My mom would also make a sandwich of various descriptions, always with some kind of fruit.

I miss those $1.50 burritos!! They are $14 now.

[rcarlson]

5 hours ago, ElLoboLoco said:

They sure do! That c**p gave me canker sores within an hour.🤮

Made with Orange Naranja!  

[Capt. Corona]

Tang was a powdered drink mix back in the day as I remember it. I swear the packets of super orange emergen-c is the same tasting powder as the original tang with a few other vitamins rolled in.

👁️👁️

[AshMe Nothing]

Definitely the square pizza with those tiny squares of pepperoni. The hamburgers we called “crater burgers”, because they looked like the surface of the moon. Lots of round craters and popped bubbles on them. No clue what that was but it wasn’t beef. The milk was from a local dairy in elementary school. Later on it was not local milk and tasted horrible, then it was SunnyD instead for me. And corn always a pile of corn…until we meet again corn…until we meet again.

Edit: Always green beans too. Once with a very large grasshopper in them, which was also very green. No more green beans for me after that.

[JDoughty]

For folks with square lunchroom pizza nostalgia, Tasting History recreated it with what looks like a pretty easy recipe.