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School Dinners

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Dionysius//88

master brummie
I don't know if there is a thread for this I did search but came up with variations but nothing concrete lets say . There's been a lot of flak thrown about school dinners I personally never had a problem with them , when in the fourth year I got pretty chatty with one of the female cooks as we called them at that time . A lady of years at that time no disrespect intended around 50-ish , when I got to her in the queue for potatoes the allocated amount was two scoops of mash I used to urge her to give me another which due to my sweet talking at the age of !4 paid of ha ha . In later years I spent 3 days in Sandwell Hospital and can I say it was the nearest I came to school grub again absolutely brilliant, Ger it down yer >
 
My primary school was only five minutes’ walk from home, so I only had school dinners there occasionally. They were dire in my opinion for two reasons. One, they were mainly just boiled vegetables; sweed, parsnips and carrots with mash potatoes and some form of meat.

Two, you were made to eat them like them or not.

Secondary school was quite different. It had a cafeteria style servery with an excellent choice. Two mains meals with a choice of mash and veg or chips and salad. I liked either and as long as you put plenty of salt on the mash. It was mainly spag bol, cottage or meat pie, burgers in gravy, cheese flan and cheese souffle.

Pudding was not bad either. Cornflake tart, treacle sponge, chocolate concrete and a Bakewell tart.
 
Morturn said:
My primary school was only five minutes’ walk from home, so I only had school dinners there occasionally. They were dire in my opinion for two reasons. One, they were mainly just boiled vegetables; sweed, parsnips and carrots with mash potatoes and some form of meat.

Two, you were made to eat them like them or not.

Secondary school was quite different. It had a cafeteria style servery with an excellent choice. Two mains meals with a choice of mash and veg or chips and salad. I liked either and as long as you put plenty of salt on the mash. It was mainly spag bol, cottage or meat pie, burgers in gravy, cheese flan and cheese souffle.

Pudding was not bad either. Cornflake tart, treacle sponge, chocolate concrete and a Bakewell tart.
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Morturn it's quite obvious looking at your secondary school menu that our menu at my secondary school was Dickensian . we didn't have the choice of this or that . What was served at our school was a case of you eat it or you don't
 
Dionysius//88 said:
Morturn it's quite obvious looking at your secondary school menu that our menu at my secondary school was Dickensian . we didn't have the choice of this or that . What was served at our school was a case of you eat it or you don't
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I must agree. Admittedly in my case ( not birmingham) it may have been earlier (1950s), so at a more frugal time, but chips and salad were a mysterious unknown entity on the menu, while liver from extremely old cattle with much connective tissue was a staple , as was the revolting chocolate concrete , which is the reason that now , though I like chocolate , any " chocolate" flavoured cake or sweetis approached with suspicion and often avoided
 
Morturn said:
My primary school was only five minutes’ walk from home, so I only had school dinners there occasionally. They were dire in my opinion for two reasons. One, they were mainly just boiled vegetables; sweed, parsnips and carrots with mash potatoes and some form of meat.

Two, you were made to eat them like them or not.

Secondary school was quite different. It had a cafeteria style servery with an excellent choice. Two mains meals with a choice of mash and veg or chips and salad. I liked either and as long as you put plenty of salt on the mash. It was mainly spag bol, cottage or meat pie, burgers in gravy, cheese flan and cheese souffle.

Pudding was not bad either. Cornflake tart, treacle sponge, chocolate concrete and a Bakewell tart.
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Mort, you were blessed, never had any of that except cornflake tart occasionally and very occasionally at that! PS: I used to take my own salt.
 
I loved school dinners, especially junior school. In summer we had cold meat salad with a scoop of mash with warm salad cream poured over it. Yum :yum
 
i also loved our school dinners and would often go back for seconds..there was something about the mash i loved :) favourite pudding rhubard and custard..still like it now

lyn
 
Hey, Morturn, was that Erdington Boys?, how you described the dining arrangement is exactly how i remember it.
Cheese Souffle was amazing, i adored it, take care, and Merry Christmas,
 
oldjoe said:
Hey, Morturn, was that Erdington Boys?, how you described the dining arrangement is exactly how i remember it.
Cheese Souffle was amazing, i adored it, take care, and Merry Christmas,
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It was indeed. The school cook was Mrs Stephens, dead strict, an amazing cook and very kind.
 
More imaginative meals definitely depended on the head cook. Our 1950s/60s meals were bland, cost effective and could either be made quickly or could be stewed with less staff effort. At Cranborne Road/Kingsthorne Junior our kitchens were housed in the overflow cabins. The smell of cooking would spill across the playground from early morning, so you knew very early in the day what was in store at lunchtime. Never a hint of chips, burgers or spaghetti bol in those days. A lot of liver and onions (which I still love today), casserole, sausages, mashed spuds and cabbage, concrete pudding with traditional lumpy custard and fruit. It had a lot going for it in terms of nutrition, especially when children came from less well off homes, but it was quite boring. My mum made up for that at home, especially as she always worked in the food trade.
 
Vivienne14 said:
More imaginative meals definitely depended on the head cook. Our 1950s/60s meals were bland, cost effective and could either be made quickly or could be stewed with less staff effort. At Cranborne Road/Kingsthorne Junior our kitchens were housed in the overflow cabins. The smell of cooking would spill across the playground from early morning, so you knew very early in the day what was in store at lunchtime. Never a hint of chips, burgers or spaghetti bol in those days. A lot of liver and onions (which I still love today), casserole, sausages, mashed spuds and cabbage, concrete pudding with traditional lumpy custard and fruit. It had a lot going for it in terms of nutrition, especially when children came from less well off homes, but it was quite boring. My mum made up for that at home, especially as she always worked in the food trade.
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Viv, sounds a lot like our school without the liver (which I still love if you add a little bacon) and definitely no sausages! Grey colored meat, mashed lumpy spuds, meat pie (yuk) and lumpy custard. We had apple something for desert but the star desert was cornflakes tart. When I got to the US I went to university three nights a week after work, first class at 5.30pm. I would stop at a small restaurant for a sandwich or salad. There were a whole group of us going to school after work, all with not too much money, at a beak in class a good friend (now over 60 years) said why don’t you go to the school (university) cafeteria, It quite good and not expensive for a student. At first I was not sure, I did that for 5 more years going to school at night and all through the summers. Saved a lot of time and money Yes, by that time I was married with two children. The food at William Murdoch School was really quite bad even for the late 50’s .
 
My first school was at Kings Norton Green in 1951, I remember I had problems with the school dinners and the worst was the gravy being all thick and lumpy, to this day I've avoided thick gravy and have mine really thin in a separate jug. I even take my own in a small flask if we go to a carvery :D
 
Mom worked in school meals, this meant she could be home when we boys were off school. She was "cook-in-charge" at Oldknow Rd in Small Heath but trained previously at Central Grammar and Blakenhale schools. This was in the "meat and two veg" days ie well prior to the burger and chip days.
 
The absolute worst school food for me was spam fritters. They actually made me very sick, don't know why, possibly because they were very greasy. Was minced beef and gravy with peas in it ever on the menu?. I vaguely remember this (although it could have been mums), and still love a plate of it with mash or Yorkshire pud.
Remember when you used to add salt to the aluminium water jug on the table ? Tut, tut ....
 
Vivienne14 said:
The absolute worst school food for me was spam fritters. They actually made me very sick, don't know why, possibly because they were very greasy. Was minced beef and gravy with peas in it ever on the menu?. I vaguely remember this (although it could have been mums), and still love a plate of it with mash or Yorkshire pud.
Remember when you used to add salt to the aluminium water jug on the table ? Tut, tut ....
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Spam fritters god they were awful, also another horror for me was corned beef fritters, maybe how the cook done them but they were like a sponge full of grease horrible things, i think most kids didnt eat them, another dinner i disliked was pilchards with salad like an overgrown sardine still wouldnt look at one today 60 years later awful things full of bones, a pudding horror was prunes and custard. Things changed though when i got to about 13/14 my mom still gave me the dinner money about 2 shillings a day but the usual routine was buy a packet of fags on the way to school usually 10 Sovereign or 10 Players No 10, no dinner that day but you would smoke 5 fags leaving 5 fags for the next day, that second day you would be down the local chippy, so much better. Incidentally if you were short of money there was a shop on the way to school that would open a packet of fags and sell you 1 fag and 1 match for about 3d mostly Park Drive or Woodbine usually passed around your mates for a drag and when it came back to you there was nothing left, so you stuck a pin in the end as it was to small to hold just to get the last puff, burnt my lips more than once, ha ha happy days.
 
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