I’m in a strange mood today, completely overwhelmed by nostalgia. I blame it on Classmates.com which sent me an email this morning to alert me someone had signed my guestbook. I rarely use the site but was intrigued to see if there was any new information from my former high school classmates.
One thing led to another and I found myself visiting the website for my high school. I grew up in a small, rural community so it’s one of the those places where you know everyone (and everyone’s business, which likely why I’m such a gossip today). My graduating class only had about 60 students and we grew up with each other since kindergarten. I’ve only kept in touch with a few people and am curious what happened to everyone else.
From the school website, I came across the school lunch menu and it filled me with many memories, like being excited by ‘pizza day’. On pizza day, the world somehow seemed to be magical and perfect. It only happened once a week, so you learned to anticipate it.
You’ll see from my school menu that they now serve pizza every day. I am happy for the advancement but sad that I never got to partake in eating pizza every day. I’m concerned that it is now ‘homemade’ though … I rather enjoyed the frozen square pizzas topped with finely ground sausage bits. I am perplexed by the difference between homemade pizza and Tony’s pizza slice. I suppose Tony’s pizza slice is now the uber-exciting pizza the students anticipate and look forward to each week.
If I were eating there today I would have to try the pizza first. Hmmm, but tomorrow I would have to try out the stew with a biscuit. *sigh* I don’t think sushi will ever make it on the menu. They just don’t know what they are missing.
This menu is very telling of my food world growing up. You see pizza, chicken, stew, nachos, spaghetti, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I grew up in that period of time just before the internet world — there wasn’t any exposure to any foods outside of our microcosm.
Asian food of any type was unheard of and didn’t exist. Aside from Taco Bell (which my family never ate at), Mexican food was scarce. And, forget about Indian, African or Greek food. My food experiences didn’t expand until I moved away to attend college.
I feel as though I should send a care package to the school with spices and cookbooks. Maybe I should make a culinary pilgrimage to the cafeteria and help them overhaul their menu?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
We don’t have that in Mexico. There is a cafeteria in some high schools down there, but they usually only sell sweets. Blah!
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I love it! I wonder if I can find one of my old school lunch menus? I still vividly remember my first hot lunch meal in first grade. I was so excited because it was beef stew and then so sad because it came in a small styrofoam cup and I really wanted seconds. You do realize you’re so going to start a new blogging trend with this post, right? :)
Not surprising for high school food, I think I ate french fries everyday for lunch. It was nice to see when I was visiting colleges a few weeks ago how much that cafeteria food has changed, so many ethnic & vegetarian choices along with the staples like pizza. There is even an awareness to where the food is grown!
Ah, it seems that our culinary horizons all expand during college. A big part of the reason is that they will never serve “strange” and unfamiliar food to kids. If you ever happen to catch “Jamie’s (Oliver) School Dinners” (er, I think there’s a t o r r e n t) you’ll be surprised on how much of an uphill battle it was for him. It doesn’t even document that after he’d succeeded, parents protested that their children should be able to eat all the unhealthy junk they want. I mean, there was picketing!
Factor in the fact that many parents in our day and age (esp. in the States) are deathly afraid of allergens and strange ingredients. I’m not saying it’s unfounded, but let’s put it this way: here’s in the Philippines, “this product contains wheat, soy, milk, peanuts…” means not a damn thing. I’ve never encountered a single fatal allergy or celiac disease in the hospital.
I have to admit, though, that despite my snottiness now, I was quite fond of the frozen pizzas when I was in elementary school– a slice a day enabled me to save enough money for comic books!
Heh… what a coincidence: Amy and I made cafeteria food last night… we had salisbury steak again: http://foodmonkeys.blogspot.com/2008/04/salisbury-steak.html
Ben: A cafeteria with only sweets?!?! Ok, this sounds like heaven :-) And, a big THANK YOU for the award!
Erin: I can almost see your sad and disappointed face realizing that you couldn’t have seconds :-) I’m not sure if this post will set any new trends but I do encourage everyone to think back to your childhood foods. I mean, this is what we ate every day during our most formative years.
Kat: Schools do have strict budgets and kids can be finicky, so I guess it’s no wonder how the menus turn out. You are right that more schools seem to be upgrading what they serve, let’s hope this trend continues.
Manggy: “despite my snottiness now” … haha! At least you’re not in denial :-)
I haven’t seen the Jamie Olive show you mentioned but would love to see it. I’m sure I can find it online somewhere.
It’s funny that parents would picket — god forbid little Suzie should get a healthy salad for lunch.
Joel: Clearly, great minds think alike!
Allen, what an interesting post:) It brought my school memories back, too. In our schools, back in Azerbaijan, just as in all schools across the ex Soviet Union hemisphere, we didn’t have a lunch menu or anything like that. We had school in shifts. So, you could either go to school in the morning until lunch or from 1 to 5 pm. Means that it was up to you whether you wanted to grab a bite in the school canteen (which was HUGE) after your shift or come from home half-full and run to the canteen to eat something. But one thing is for sure - OUR CANTEEN SERVED THE BEST DEEP=FRIED PIROJKI I’ve even eaten. My attempts to imitate the taste have been unsuccessful so far:) Viva my school canteen:)) OH, they also served specially cooked food for our teachers, lucky them:)
Love it! The only offerings we had were jacket potatoes, beans and chips as far as I can remember. Or maybe that was all I ate….
I volunteered for many years at my daughters elementary school for their lunch program once a week. They never had pizza on the menu, but you had to watch the menu so you wouldn’t make the same things for dinner.
Scary! I very, very rarely ate from the school lunch menu. We always brought lunch.
I don’t suppose that the “Fulton” is Fulton, NY? Just curious.
Fearless Kitchen: Actually, it isn’t Fulton, New York — the Fulton High School I attended was in Middleton Michigan.
I’ve got too many bad memories of school dinners and the slop we got. mind you the puddings were always good!