UK school dinners 80s&90s

[Captain Shaw]

On another board I go on we got talking about UK school dinners from the 80s/90s.
We all remembered the pink and mint custard and cornflake cakes.
But not one of us can identify the cheese cake they used to serve, No matter how many different brands I try, I can not find one that taste as good has the one they used to served in school.
Does anyone on here remember it? And more importantly do you know who made it?

 

[Jadzia]

One of my neighbours is a school cook. She has done that job all her working life and is now nearing retirement. She would probably know if I asked her.

 

[Dac]

I don't know about the cheesecake, but I clearly remember the really thin but really taste Apple Crumble with custard we used to get.

Mmm Mmm.

 

[FPAlpha]

I only have seen Jamie Olivers special series on UK school dinners and it scared me

 

[cultcross]

I only have seen Jamie Olivers special series on UK school dinners and it scared me

That was the school dinners of the noughties - they hadn't invented turkey twizzlers when we were at school

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

What I remember about school dinners (or lunch as they were in the US) is that everything tasted delicious. I am quite sure it wasn't. I just loathed school so much and getting to pick out some food and sit down with it was like a fabulous holiday in the middle of the horrors.

What I do remember was that every day there was a different combination of the same three ingredients: pasta, ground beef, tomato based sauce

And chocolate milk was 6 cents a carton, must have been some government make-them-drink-milk thing.

I was in a single parent health food crunchy granola family though so I think I was just dazzled by all this food full of salt and sugar and containing no lentils, ever.

 

[Holdfast]

I liked most school dinners. Prep school had the usual classic school dinners with awesome stodgy puddings with custard (with skin, of course!). In my later school, we were pretty well catered too, although with a more international range of dishes. Mind you, just as often, I would skip a proper lunch and go the tuck shop and buy crisps, chocolates and sweets. Sugar-coated cola-bottle penny sweets were awesome, and I discovered that if eaten together, salt-n-vinegar crisps, cherry coke, and a Lion bar make for the most intense flavour combination. Yeah, I was _fat_ as a kid! My heart's grateful I lost all the weight later.

But even the tuck shop wasn't as unhealthy as school teas (we finished school at 6pm, so had tea at around 4pm). As much refined white sliced bread as you could stomach, with bream and jam!

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Holdfast Lion Bars are my favorite ever candy bar. They are the only nostalgia food I went for years without that actually tasted as wonderful as I remembered. Now I know a few shops I can usually buy them in here and when I get there I always do. Apparently they are not very common in the UK now? A friend's parents came over to visit and said they looked in 20 shops before they found any.

 

[Captain Shaw]

I liked most school dinners. Prep school had the usual classic school dinners with awesome stodgy puddings with custard (with skin, of course!). In my later school, we were pretty well catered too, although with a more international range of dishes. Mind you, just as often, I would skip a proper lunch and go the tuck shop and buy crisps, chocolates and sweets. Sugar-coated cola-bottle penny sweets were awesome, and I discovered that if eaten together, salt-n-vinegar crisps, cherry coke, and a Lion bar make for the most intense flavour combination. Yeah, I was _fat_ as a kid! My heart's grateful I lost all the weight later.

But even the tuck shop wasn't as unhealthy as school teas (we finished school at 6pm, so had tea at around 4pm). As much refined white sliced bread as you could stomach, with bream and jam!

I was not one of the popular children at school, so I think I only ever got the skin once.

 

[Holdfast]

Holdfast Lion Bars are my favorite ever candy bar. They are the only nostalgia food I went for years without that actually tasted as wonderful as I remembered. Now I know a few shops I can usually buy them in here and when I get there I always do. Apparently they are not very common in the UK now? A friend's parents came over to visit and said they looked in 20 shops before they found any.

I don't know... I can still find them. Perhaps too many people have been poaching the Lions without permission...

I just looked up Lion Bars on wikipedia to see whether their availability/status had changed. It seems there's some kind of funny internet meme suggesting that a lower league football player went missing after entering a supermarket to buy a Lion bar. How random.

I liked most school dinners. Prep school had the usual classic school dinners with awesome stodgy puddings with custard (with skin, of course!). In my later school, we were pretty well catered too, althoug

I was not one of the popular children at school, so I think I only ever got the skin once.

The skin really is the best bit. And it has to be the really artificial-tasting Bird's fluorescent yellow custard.

I mean, I'm all for a good vanilla creme anglaise for a fancy dessert.... but if it's a roly-poly pudding or spotted dick, I want custard with skin! D

 

[Jax]

Best thing I remember about school dinners was giant COOKIES

 

[An Officer]

Primary school dinners were a nightmare to me, except for the puddings. I probably would have enjoyed them now, I remember lots of soupy green vegetables, ravioli, salt beef, quite healthy stuff I think... I found it all beyond disgusting, and the dinner ladies never let me go till I had eaten at least a bit, so I used to spend most lunchtimes staring at a plate of food, waiting till it was 10 mins before lunch was over, when they would allow me to have my pudding, and I'd run out to play for 5 mins.

I don't ever remember getting cheesecake though, maybe I never chose it, I remember apple crumble, jelly, jam roly polys, spotted dick.... apple crumble with strawberry custard was my favourite.

High school, we were allowed out to lunch, we usually elected to go to the local Dominoes for a mini pizza and coke, or the local fish and chip shop for fat chips with plenty of malt vinegar, and Frijj strawberry milkshake. I have no idea how I didn't get fat, probably because I walked rather than taking the bus, and apart from a breakfast of Weetabix, it was my only meal of the day. I hated my mother's cooking just as much as Primary school dinners! Never stopped her cooking every night though, poor woman.

 

[Jadzia]

Lion bar

I remember those! They were my brother's first choice whenever we went to the sweep shop. You've got me remembering all the other bars now too.

The skin really is the best bit. And it has to be the really artificial-tasting Bird's fluorescent yellow custard.

A skin on food is always something that repels me. I'm inclined to scrape it off and dispose of it. You'll probably think that's sinful

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

When I ate Lion Bars they had a lovely wrapper. I remember it being a very light creamy color with an MGM style lion on it. It is completely ugly now, black with a cartoon lion.

OMG look how delicious it looks!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Bar

I used to eat an apple and a Lion Bar every day for lunch. I thought this was the perfect combination.

 

[Captain Shaw]

Best thing I remember about school dinners was giant COOKIES

You are talking about secondary school dinners from the canteen, we're talking about primary school dinners where there was no choice you just got what you where given.

 

[Holdfast]

Primary school dinners were a nightmare to me, except for the puddings. I probably would have enjoyed them now, I remember lots of soupy green vegetables, ravioli, salt beef, quite healthy stuff I think... I found it all beyond disgusting, and the dinner ladies never let me go till I had eaten at least a bit, so I used to spend most lunchtimes staring at a plate of food, waiting till it was 10 mins before lunch was over, when they would allow me to have my pudding, and I'd run out to play for 5 mins.

We had a teacher who would stand near the food bins where we scraped off anything we didn't want. They would always try to guilt trip us about not finishing our food. The usual "there are starving kids who would be delighted to have that" kind of thing. We all quickly learned the "they're welcome to have it then" standard riposte.

You've got me remembering all the other bars now too.

Crunchies and Twix were also in the Premier League of chocolates. Then Yorkies, Dairy Milk and Aeros. I did go through a phase of being addicted to the mint Aeros though.

Mind you, I was also fond of the penny sweets: the sugar-coated coke bottles (NOT the plain ones!), flying saucers, and the big sherbet dib-dabs.

A skin on food is always something that repels me. I'm inclined to scrape it off and dispose of it. You'll probably think that's sinful

Horrific.

The texture of the skin on custard was wonderfully gross.

When I ate Lion Bars they had a lovely wrapper. I remember it being a very light creamy color with an MGM style lion on it. It is completely ugly now, black with a cartoon lion.

Yeah, I wasn't impressed with that change either.

 

[Epsilon IX]

I did my primary schooling between the years 1991 and 1997, and always had a packed up lunch. A bit hit and miss at times, but infinitely superior to the reconstituted slop I would have had to eat otherwise.

 

[Jadzia]

You've got me remembering all the other bars now too.

Crunchies and Twix were also in the Premier League of chocolates. Then Yorkies, Dairy Milk and Aeros. I did go through a phase of being addicted to the mint Aeros though.

I remember all of those, also those toffee crisps in the bright orange wrappers, the 10p chomp, and the deceptively big curly wurly. Though I did prefer packets like revels, toppets, maltesers, smarties (when they still had proper colours) and chocolate raisins.

Mind you, I was also fond of the penny sweets: the sugar-coated coke bottles (NOT the plain ones!), flying saucers, and the big sherbet dib-dabs. .

Penny mixes were also one of my favourites, the pink shrimps and the jelly dummies in particular.

When I was at junior school, it was my treat on a friday to have 30p to spend at the local sweet shop. The lady who owned and ran the shop was a friend of the family, and when it come to penny sweets, before closing up the bag, she'd put about 10 more in for me, smile and wink.

 

[backstept]

here in the states there were usually a few dishes they served: salisbury steak(mystery meat with gravy), pasta(penne, ravioli, baked ziti, etc), pizza (square cardboard with leftover marinara from yesterday's pasta and styrofoam cheese), macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, fried chicken product on a bun, beef product on a bun,
usually served with 'salad' or tater tots, or crinkle cut fried potatoes
and of course milk cartons and fruit cups and on special occasions we'd get those tetrahedral frozen fruit dessert things . . .
our homeroom teachers would gather names of who wanted the school lunch so the lunch people would make enough :P

 

[Holdfast]

You've got me remembering all the other bars now too.

Crunchies and Twix were also in the Premier League of chocolates. Then Yorkies, Dairy Milk and Aeros. I did go through a phase of being addicted to the mint Aeros though.

I remember all of those, also those toffee crisps in the bright orange wrappers, the 10p chomp, and the deceptively big curly wurly. Though I did prefer packets like revels, toppets, maltesers, smarties (when they still had proper colours) and chocolate raisins.

I never went for the small packets of stuff; they always seemed expensive to me compared to penny sweets or the bulk of a chocolate bar. Plus, other people always wanted to share your packet of maltesers, whereas it's harder to do that for something like a Lion bar.

Toffee Crisps are/were stunningly good.

Mind you, I was also fond of the penny sweets: the sugar-coated coke bottles (NOT the plain ones!), flying saucers, and the big sherbet dib-dabs. .

Penny mixes were also one of my favourites, the pink shrimps and the jelly dummies in particular.

We'd have got on well as kids, because those were among my least favourites, so division of the bounty would have been very easy.

What are your views on chocolate mice? I adored those things.