Run home, slam down whatever, do noon chores, run back to school.

For dessert, two Krispy Kreme doughnuts on a plate, one filled and one glazed. This was in Orlando long before KK went national and was just a local doughnut shop.

They also made this fruit flavored chiffon type dessert that was really good. Very strong fruit flavor, usually orange but sometimes strawberry.

We had those just about every Friday in elementary school. Along with parsley buttered potatoes and a vegetable like green beans or peas. My favorite desserts were the mixed fruit jello or apple crisp (like apple cobbler). We usually had pizza or spaghetti on Thursdays and those entrees were tasty.

In high school, we had the choice of a tray lunch or a plate lunch daily. I preferred the tray lunch which would be a bowl of chili or a bowl of soup which was usually tomato, vegetable or noodle. Then there was a sandwich which was usually a grilled cheese, a small cold cut on a sub roll or a steamer. The steamer was my favorite of the three; it was what folks in the Iowa-Illinois area would call a loose meat sandwich. They still the old reliable apple crisp, mixed fruit jello or applesauce for dessert and celery/carrot sticks.

A la mode or plain, it's wonderful!

We had one line that was just burgers. I’d get a burger, a salad, and a milk for 80 cents. Unfortunately the blue cheese dressing had a weird reaction in my mouth and my breath stunk.

I’d eat my lunch before any of my table buddies showed up and then I’d write papers I’d found out were due in periods 1-3. Day late. B becomes a C. I was a horrible student in high school.

I may have graduated a few years before you (late 1970s). Our lunches were 55 cents my senior year and an extra milk was 10 cents. I forget how much an ice cream was, though. I took things for granted back then but I realize today what a good value school lunches were. And they were pretty good, overall.

until 2020. There’s a guy who owns the Midas shops around here whose radio commercials are mostly about food programs not car care. He grew up really poor and had a weekend backpack program well before 2020. I had no idea.

We go to them exclusively. Is it maybe a bit more? I don’t know but I know where it’s going. They have a complete history on each vehicle, longtime employees, the front counter people are straight salary - no upselling. Always a loaner car (Honda Fit usually) even for $20 state inspections.

They were only served once a month. Everything else was terrible.

The sky was darkened by flying black olives.

duty one day a week. Really disliked it.

You didn't have to have that long lunch period class. Of course the kids in my school were nice for the most part. This was way back.

I love that combination still.

My Mother did not like fish and never cooked it. So if on the school lunch menu it had that tuna fish sandwich I’d beg my Mother for lunch money to buy it! It was 50 cents then!

For some reason, their bread and better was good, too, no matter what the entree was.

i liked the grilled cheese too also

(without sounding like we were starved and deprived at home. we weren't .. by any stretch)
But have to say stove top stuffing (and how that ever ended up on a school lunch menu .. ?) was actually pretty good!
AND .. the really big treat was the chocolate milk in the cute little (half pint) cartons. I'd scoop up more than my single - if I was a good enough con with classmates. I don't know how much sugar they pumped into those things - but they went beyond any milk shake - and there was surely nothing like it at home!

left the turkey. It was our Thanksgiving lunch. Thanks for the memories.

Sugar cone filled with vanilla ice cream and covered with chocolate.

Otherwise, I preferred to take my lunch to school.

The chili was OK, but the cinnamon rolls were excellent!

It was the only cafeteria meal I would eat. They used real potatoes, not instant ones.

It's funny that I would like that meal, since I wasn't really fond of gravy. But, the cafeteria did a great job on that lunch.

Real potatoes and it was cooked by mothers of our students. They were very good cooks. It was a small junior high school.

to dip into!

And Sloppy Joes and Fish Sticks. I always found the kids that did not like fish sticks and I would trade for them.
Oh and the Spaghetti was bland but good.

I would eat at the school cafeteria every Thursday. My grandmother was a former teacher and I remember the school bringing a tray of these enchiladas to the house

some. We need more of that.

I *did* work in a few school cafeterias for a couple of years.

The high school I worked at made some killer burritos... they were made to order. Chicken, pork or beef and a good variety of add ins. Also, some salsa we made with habaneros was VERY popular with the kids.

of service on the staff. Cafeteria staff get very little appreciation, but I want to say thank you.

I didn't get to eat school lunch very often, but when I did, I tried to make sure it was on the day they had beef stew and a biscuit, MMM.

My family moved to California from the East when I was in 6th grade, and the school cafeteria there served tacos a couple of days a month. I had never had tacos before, but they quickly became my favorite cafeteria food, and I always looked forward to "taco day."

Hey, you think we became Tex-Mex food junkies by accident?

From 1st through 9th grade I was in small school with all grades in the same building. The cafeteria food was marginal and a lot of it was commodity food. I hated almost all of it but I did like the fried chicken, the meatloaf, the turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas (they made turkey salad with the leftovers which was quite good), and the sloppy joes.
We had a soft serve machine and when fish was on the menu, the ice cream would run out.

Starting in 10th grade I was at a different high school and the food was better. Spaghetti was great, meatloaf, fried chicken (those are really hard to mess up) and we had an option to get a chef's salad as an alternative if we wished. I do not remember anything at that school that was awful. However, they used a lot of ground beef and we started rumours that the meat was being recycled. Scared a few freshmen, let me tell you.

One thing both had in common: Delicious hot rolls!!! I have a recipe which claims to be
"Lunch Lady Rolls" and they do come close. I love to make dinner rolls!!

The vegetable soup was made from scratch and tended to be a bit watery but it was good.

Sheppard's Pie is meatloaf topped with mashed potatoes and gravy. Normally, Sheppard's Pie is made with minced meat but meatloaf was cheaper to make.

I can't belief I ate like that. Would love to have all those years of bad eating back. I look at the typical Japanese student lunch and think how I would love to have eaten that instead. The US one is still grim.

Go figure...

The abuelita next door to our house would hand out hot off the griddle hand-made tortillas w/ a smear of butter
to all the kids passing by on their way to school... One of the best breakfasts ever...

and I bought a 50-cent soda and a 50-cent roll of crumb donuts. Daily. For all of high school.

Terrible. Wish I had better self control back then. God only knows how much damage I did back then!

a Salad bar. homemade bread and buns. I mostly took a bag lunch or had a dollar for something special, at my school very few items were served a la carte. So I skipped lunch.

cafeteria, but once a month we would have pizza day and it was from my favorite local pizza place, so I always looked forward to it 🙂

is kind of an unusual presentation as I came to realize. But it worked. They scooped it out like a casserole, so I guess it was spaghetti casserole. And the garlic toast.

but I have no recollection of anything else that I particularly liked---
other than a small bag of BBQ potato chips, but that wasn't part of any actual "meals"...

Was just like salmon patties only in a loaf and was served with Mac and cheese

I liked the spaghetti too. I'm Italian and loved our spaghetti but the stuff at school was really different. Found out later from one of the moms that worked in the kitchen that they added peanut butter for protein. This was before knowledge of peanut allergies.

And shepards pie. My mom hated gravy so never made it so stew and stuff like shepards pie were never made at home . She hated gravy because when she had rheumatic fever it was hard for her to swallow solids so they fed her lots of bone broth and gravies.

I would bring a bologna & cheese sandwich from home and an apple, usually. Stuff in the cafeteria wasn't free and I grew up in a large family. After I got a job and could actually afford something, I typically bought the little cartons of chocolate milk and the bread slice "pizza". It wasn't good.

We only bought our lunches for a year or two - most of the time mom made our lunches.

They were huge. Cookies and milk were my lunch.

Chris's Burger stand. You would get the best tasting hamburger ever and a soda for $0.35.

that we went to for their $.25 loose meat sandwiches, lol.

In Elementary School, the cafeteria cooks would make these great little pizzas using a toasted English muffin with pizza sauce and cheese with a choice of plain, sausage or pepperoni. Each plate came with two mini 'zas and a vegetable salad with Italian dressing. There was usually a fruit cup or a small pastry for dessert. It was many decades ago but I remember it clearly!

no choice of toppings. Just plain.

The cook at school was also a neighbor.
When i got married, I called her and she gave me recipe, I still use it today.
And still one of my fave meals.

Koz

I do Manwich, when im lazy,
When i cook, sloppy, here it is
Ground beef of course,
Ketchup, Mustard,sugar,
The sauce should not be red, it needs to be orange!!! If its red, add more mustard.
Garlic powder, onion powder, and salt, to taste.
Sometimes I even add some cayenne depending on my mood.
Koz

We had a very good cafeteria at the HS I went to. Anything they served was good.
They use to make fresh donuts every morning. No freshmen or sophomores allowed though.
The college I went to as an undergrad had a very good cafeteria, too. I recall on Thursdays (I think) one of the choices was Italian sausage, onion, & peppers over a pasta. Had that nearly every time, if i was around for dinner.

For most of us the school lunch was the best meal of the day.

I ate it every day along with a 5 cent bowl of red jello and an 10 cent ice cream sandwich. Plus a carton of milk.

less.