General Chat

had a chat with a lady in m @s about school dinners i liked mine circa 1950-1960she hated hers children today love old fashion pudds meat pies as i was a school cook till last year it intrests me my grankids love pasta rice noodles i had italian friends also philipino friends who cooked loads of food from hardly anything just the sort of things we need in a receision

I was not keen on mine in the 50s, too much mushy cabbage, although I did like the puddings (except tapioca). However I worked in a large comprehensive school lunch time in the 70s and loved the meals. Good home cooking, and again especially liked the puddings.
But tastes have changed and a lot of children are introduced to pasta dishes and curries etc while my Mum would never have cooked 'foreign' food. Strangely not all children like chips, my 12 year old grandson is not keen on them although will eat a few.

Well, I for one enjoyed my school dinners, in late 50's/60's. They were probably the only 'decent' meal us school children got at that time. My mum, never the best of cooks, by that time had gone back to work in a factory on shifts, as did many women of that time. Also, it was not that far back in peoples memories, that we had just come out of a war, and it took the working class man well over 10 years, to get to any sort of normality.
Very often, my OH and myself, bring this subject up, as he was at the same school as myself. He too enjoyed his school dinners.
Julia in Derbyshire

LOL when I was at school during /after the war, the only thing I recall disliking was Swede, it was red and tasteless,
Maybe there was a lot of carrot mixed up in it?....
NOW though , I LIKE swede......think the price for a dinner,then was something like 5d

2 1/2 pence in todays money......but a hell of a lot then, methinks....
Bob

Stodge,that is what we called the ubiquitous pudding that was served up.I don't know if it was suet pudding or heavy sponge but the varieties were endless.

There was savoury stodge with the meat and gravy and so many types of sweet stodge.Jam stodge,lemon curd stodge,sultana stodge,chocolate stodge,coanut stodge,syrup stodge,date stodge,plain stodge with custard,ginger stodge with custard that hadn't had any colouring added.We knew they coloured it because they had to explain once why it was green.

One very exotic day we had chocolate stodge with pink custard!

Loved my school dinners, mind you it was during the war, and we were short of food, so it was most welcome .

My favourite was beef stew with dumplings, chocolate pudding and chocolate sauce. and if there was any over we went for seconds. Any extra chocolate sauce was served up in beakers, so we could drink it.

Even the tapicoca pudding was welcome.

Mo

Happy to meet you Mo.
I too loved my school dinners (1945-1956) and look back on them with affection.
If they were as bad as so many people remember, why were 'seconds' so popular?
I don't remember soggy cabbage, perhaps that is because, like most children I hated cabbage and only fell in love with it in my adult years.
Now eat it cooked in may ways, or raw, doesn't matter to me.
Deanna X

On the same level as cabbage,doesn't bread and butter taste good?

It makes you wonder why you wouldn't eat it when you had to.

Who did you mean Sharron?
I did not understand what you meant.
Did you mean a hungry stomach will eat anything?
Because I do agree with that.
Deanna X

Oh Shelly
Don't get me started on those awful plastic dinner trays.!
Who ever thought it was a good idea to serve mince and veg in one section and jelly / custard or whatever in another section of the same tray?
They're AWFUL.

I usually enjoyed my school dinners in secondary school. They were well cooked and tasty.
Chocolate popcorn ( a puffed wheat concoction) always added to our mineral intake, ie. it was so difficult to get out of the tin, that it generally had fine scratchings of metal on the bottom of it.
In junior school the dinners came in from a depot and my lingering memory is of a thin mutton stew with dry 'floury' butter beans.

Gwyn

I loved my school dinners ,favourite pudding Manchester Tart loved it
Dx