School Lunches

I have very mixed feelings about school dinners, my infant school had a kitchen and all the dinners were cooked on site. I remember looking forward to chocolate cake and thick chocolate custard (does that even exist anymore) and Arctic roll. The dinner ladies were lovely, I remember it being a very happy time, a relaxed environment where although we were encouraged to finish our cabbage and beans, we were in no way forced. At age eight when I moved up to the junior school, it was a whole different kettle of fish. The dinners were delivered to the school, so out went the home cooked comfort food and in came the spam, mushy peas and soggy semolina. ...  Read the complete review

I had school dinner's when I was younger and my experience was not a great one. My daughter has tried school dinner's too and doesn't find them too bad so I think they have improved over the years. Here is my experience as a child and a parent of school dinner's. I lived in a rural village with a small population of people, I had school dinner's everyday and found them ok.. ish, I did have one bad experience, I was about 8 at the time and always a fussy eater and in particular hated seeing fat on meat and the thought of putting it into my mouth and chewing it would make me gag. My mum did tell the school about my eating but this particular occasion there was a ...  Read the complete review

Apart from Linford Christie, only Jamie Oliver has made pack lunches more popular, his varieties of schemes to introduce healthy eating in schools, collapsing at the last like a bad soufflé. I've always liked Jamie, a genuine side to him that works on TV. If you excuse that pseudo working-class' mockney' delivery and those 'geezer' menus he serves up then you can believe in him, like the housewives seem to do, a refreshing break from those ponsy BBC2 chefs from France and Islington pushing stuffed road kill delicacies on you. But my faith in him may have been misplaced of late. Yet another one of his chef prodigies from his restaurant and documentary of the same ...  Read the complete review

Being rather old, school dinners for me weren't about packed lunches or chips with chips with chips with pizza with chips, and on a good day a choice of chicken nuggets or pizza, with as many chips as you can stuff down your face. Due to my mother having to work, I always had to have school dinners, and this was between the glorious and golden years of 1959 to when I left school altogether, in 1969. I won't dwell on the dinners at my secondary school, as they truly were well-cooked and palatable, but the nightmare of primary school dinners painted a different picture. Each day after the teacher called the register and just before ...  Read the complete review

The primary school that my three children go to do a wonderful job with the school dinners. They always send home the following weeks menu on the back of the weekly school newsletter. There is always a very varied amount of good wholesome healthy foods on the menu. Some of the dishes on there I would like to actually cook at home, I have asked someone who is on the board of friends for the school if they could make up a recipe book full of the recipes that they use and sell to help create some more badly needed school funds. The price of a school dinner I think is very reasonable. When I was at school a school dinner cost 15 pence. My children have packed lunch ...  Read the complete review