What`s your memories of school dinners?

When I was at St Mary's the dinners were amazing. Absolutely amazing. Everything was absolutely fantastic. No idea who cooked the meals but they were the best school meals I've ever had. Cooked to an extraordinarily high standard.

Primary School was much more hit and miss. When I first started the kitchen was small but the food would be prepared at the local High School and sent across, which meant it was perfectly pleasant. However this changed to a generic chain group doing the meals the quality nose dived and the majority of children at the school moved to pack lunches.

High School was pretty good! The kitchen staff were made up of mums who were all more then capable chefs. They'd try different things every so often and it was certainly pretty good.

College. Good, better then High School but not hitting the heights of St Mary's. Had a proper team of dinner ladies who would make almost everything from scratch every morning. I went to another College afterwards and it had a catering department who prepared a good majority of the food. Pretty high standard. A friends step father was head chef and he was an amazing cook but was much more of an overseer.
 
Tummy said:
The kitchen staff were made up of mums who were all more then capable chefs.
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Sorry to nitpick, but I think you mean cooks.

It's one thing being able to cook, but it's quite another working under intense pressure in a professional kitchen during service.

I've worked in all kinds of kitchens, including restaurants, hotels, hospitals and indeed colleges and I can tell you a college kitchen doesn't even come close to the intense mental and physical challenge of peak service hours at a decent restaurant.


Edit: I know your example was a high school not a college, but I can't imagine the working conditions are that much different.
 
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Loved my school dinners, im 30 now so my era was well before the health nuts went wild with it and the only difference then was we had healthy lifestyles and good home cooked food so a school dinner of burger, beans and chips with a jam slice and custard for desert wasn't a big issue, we didn't lay about like giant obese devils spawn playing call of duty on our xbox's :D


Jonesiani said:
I used to love school dinners!

I was lucky enough to go to a school where we had a good selection.

Choc brick with pink custard was epic! :D
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I remember that, god it was so much win you can not imagine :D
 
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Their apple and blackberry crumble was the **** at my primary school. A mate and I once had 8 servings. I remember that.

Most rest was awful. Not real meat, just like turkey roll crap. Bleugh
 
Van Hellseek said:
Sorry to nitpick, but I think you mean cooks.

It's one thing being able to cook, but it's quite another working under intense pressure in a professional kitchen during service.

I've worked in all kinds of kitchens, including restaurants, hotels, hospitals and indeed colleges and I can tell you a college kitchen doesn't even come close to the intense mental and physical challenge of peak service hours at a decent restaurant.


Edit: I know your example was a high school not a college, but I can't imagine the working conditions are that much different.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that most of the people were chefs. I know a couple of the mums from my high school and they have worked previously in much higher level and pressure kitchens.

I think you're doing them a discredit by calling them 'just cooks' as you've taken a snobby attitude to this 'not being a proper chef' unless you work one of the given examples.
 
In primary school, they had rice with butter and onions, which was nice. But when it came to swimming....you can guess the rest. I told the swimming teacher what happened but he was not too bothered. After, when I used to have Beetroot. A teacher at the playground thought I fell or something, as my lips were purple. :D
 
junior school dinners... 1980s...

I have memories of mashed potato being served with an ice cream scoop to form perfect little hemispheres.

And some kind of Lemon curd dessert that smelled and tasted like the kiwi Shoe polish my dad used to use to clean my shoes.... Needless to say Lemon curd makes me want to vomit even to this day.

Seemed like everyone had packed lumches after that...

Senior school, was usually some kind of burger in a paper wrapper or a trip to the local bakery for a sausage roll, sandwich or a classic dish at my school pioneered by one kid "The Buttered Loaf"... which we would all share hahah
 
I used to enjoy it. Burgers + chips were complete win considering I lived in a strict household that ate healthily.

Had packed lunch 99% of the time though. :(
 
At our secondary school everyone was assigned a table of 6 people, and each table had to go to the serving hatch in turn. To keep it organised a prefect was nominated to go to each table to tell them when it was their turn to go. Was quite funny that over your time as prefect you started out with actually saying "you can go", then over the years it evolved down to you simply having to lean forwards slightly to initiate the dash.

Did anyone else have milk sessions at primary school? Do they still do that?
 
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