| Product: |
School Lunches |
| Date: |
11/06/08 (37 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Nice simple fare
Disadvantages: a little suspect at times
Why is it when it comes up in conversation it's alwas school dinner items that people ask what ever happened to? People remember fondly brown bread pizza, cheese flan, chocolate concrete and jam roly poly with pink custard.
It also seems to me that if talking about a food item that was found on your school dinner the prefix 'school' had to be added. Is this because they were totally differnt to normal varieties? Certainly in the case of school chips, they weren't recognisable to the homemade, deep fried hunks your mum made on a Friday night or the fast food chips you see about either. Unfortunately the happened to be extinct of taste but the very fact that they were chips tricked kids into liking them. Well, that and got many children accustomed to the liberal use of salt just to get any taste at all.
This seems one of the school cook's best techniques thinking about it. Tricking pupils into thinking what was on their plate was something they liked. Putting boring old waffles into the shape of smilie faces made you want to eat them. At that age you don't think about nutritional value so you go with what seems the most fun. Making custard pink makes it more interesting than it really is. Some kids didn't like normal custard 'cos there was a horrible skin on it and it was very lumy but when it came to pink custard there was never any for seconds. I think as a child I had often decided whether I liked it or not before I had even tried it!
The biggest factor in School Dinners (lunches if you're in the south has always had to be cost though. Nobody used to expect them to be perfect and top quality. Many were just happy that their child had something warm in them at lunch time that they'd eat. It's said that a person has to taste something at least 7 times before they develop a taste for it and school dinners are perfect for doing this as the child isn't fed the same thing every day. Also to consider though is school dinners had to be mass producable. Some schools are 'home' to 1,000 pupils or more and dinner had to be ready on time day in day out. This of course had to mean that some short cuts could be used and fair enough, why not?
Overall, I have to say I believe school dinners did their job more than adequately. I know they're something I always look back fondly on. Even if the best bits where always centred round flicked peas and dopey John falling alseep right into his plate!
Summary: Overall, I remember them with a smile
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