School Dinners!

I posted earlier about my memories of school dinners as I was due to enjoy lunch with my 9 year old at her school.  Well, I can now report back on how things have changed since my school dinner experience of the 70s!

Kizzy's Junior School cooks all its meals on the premises in well equipped kitchens that are attached to the multi-purpose hall.  Many of the ingredients used are locally sourced and include free range eggs, local farm vegetables and locally produced cheese.  It also focuses on seasonal foods and often uses organic ingredients.  In fact our school meal service here in Shropshire has been recognised as a 'Beacon of Excellence' in this area. They also cater for vegetarians, with a different option available everyday.  It all sounds really impressive, but how did my experience hold up against their reputation?

On the menu today was roast dinner, and I was delighted to see Quorn fillets as an option for those who didn't eat meat.  It came with all the trimmings; gravy, mash, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, fresh carrots, broccoli and cauliflower cheese.  The presentation was from the 'pile-it-high' school of serving, but it was a good size meal.  Pudding was an old-school cornflake cake with custard...I was a bit excited by that! Other choices today included freshly made wraps with salad, fish fingers or quiche.  I was so tempted by the quiche, I remember loving school cheese flan as a child, but I wanted to do the whole school roast dinner experience.  Fruit salad and apple crumble were alternative pudding options.  Spoilt for choice!

Kizzy had the same as me and I was impressed to see the portion size and the fact that she had three of her five-a-day right there!  I liked that they had their meals on real (albeit melamine) plates and bowls rather than on those horrible all-in-one plastic monstrosities with separate spaces for dinner and pudding on the same plate.  Sloshing gravy into your custard is just not on!

The dinner really got a big thumbs up from us.  It was 'real' food, not processed rubbish.  The vegetables were not overcooked and the mash wasn't lumpy!  How things have moved on in the last 35 years!!  The traditional school pud was exactly how I wanted it to be, a bowlful of pure nostalgia!  (I did notice that the pastry base was wholemeal...nice to see them sneaking some extra fibre into the kids' diets!)  We also got a cup of cold water (from a rather surly Year 4 water monitor!) served at the table.

I was really impressed by the quality, quantity and choice available.  I will definitely let Kizzy have school dinners now and again as £1.95 is really good value.  I'd go as far as to say that the vegetarian roast dinner surpassed some of the pitiful veggie options I've eaten out at restaurants!

It's nice to see that school dinners are at last providing wholesome, freshly cooked food for our kids and are no longer relying on cheap processed food.  Is Jamie Oliver to thank for this??  If he is, good on him!

I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch date with my daughter today and can confirm that school dinners are no longer objects of revulsion or the butt of jokes!  I look forward to the next open lunch so I can be cooked for again with a two course meal for under three quid!

Back To School For Me!

School Dinners Remembered!

Today I'm off to Kizzy's school for an Open Lunch, where the parents are invited to join their child for a school dinner, all for the princely sum of £2.93!  Kizzy is very excited about this and assures me that there will be a veggie option available (fingers crossed!) Knowing that in a couple of hours I will be stood in the queue of a school cafeteria with my plate in my hand has brought back a flood of school dinner memories!

When I was in Infant's School I was a very shy little thing.  My over-riding memory is of getting my school dinner of a sausage, a scooped ball of mash and a spoonful of peas and walking back to my table, when horror of horrors, my sausage rolled off my plate and across the floor. I helplessly watched the runaway sausage roll underneath one of the tables.  I remember the feeling of embarrassment as I froze to the spot praying that no-one noticed my mishap, but at the same time wishing a kindly lunch lady would come to my rescue offering a replacement sausage and a friendly word.  Sadly it was not so.  Poor little six year old me was far too timid to tell anyone that I had lost the bulk of my school dinner under someone else's table, so I went hungry that day.

A little later on in my school career, I remember queuing for my pudding.  I was disappointed to discover that the sweet offering was some kind of fruit cake.  I have always disliked currants, raisins and sultanas so plucked up the courage to ask for a bowl of custard only...after all, these were the days when you were forced to eat up your food before being allowed back out onto the playground.  I didn't want to have to sit there nursing a bowl of my worst nightmare in cake form!  My newfound bravery was however destroyed when the dinner lady said "So don't you like chocolate chip sponge, love?"  Noooo!!  I had got it wrong...I loved choc chip cake.  But the shame of changing my mind and admitting that I had it wrong was too much to bear.  So I shrugged and said "Nah!" in my best nonchalant manner, whilst crying inside at the prospect of losing my fave pud.  

My mum did a stint as one of our school dinner cooks when I was about eleven.  My overriding memory of this era was that she got to bring home leftovers.  We'd get big trays of coconut sponge topped with jam, chocolate cake and my personal favourite Manchester Tart (remember the pastry case with jam and solid cold custard!!)  this kind of made up for my traumatic choc chip sponge incident!!

I always had a fondness for school dinners.  I was the weird kid who actually liked soggy semolina and tapioca pudding.  I had no problem with the overcooked vegetables, lumpy mash or thick gravy.  I actively enjoyed the strange chicken pie and spam fritters that were served up.  As long as it wasn't the gruesome mincemeat tart or fruit cake I was happy!!

So today, I will be looking forward to sampling school dinner again 2012 style.  Things have changed dramatically in the school kitchens since the seventies. They get things like pizza wraps, Cajun potatoes and Korma.  It all sounds very exotic compared to my school dinner memories.  But I will continue to look back with sheer nostalgia at the memory of my school day lunches!