Things You Only Know if You Always Had School Dinners

Did your mum put your dinner money in a brown paper envelope too?

Posted on

2 September 2019

Things You Only Know If You Always Had School Dinners

All Credits: PA

Today your daily lunch break dilemma is another limp supermarket sandwich, or splashing out an overpriced box of sushi-to-go – as a kid things were far simpler.

Either you were handed a plastic box of food (and hoped that whoever made it had done a big shop on the weekend), or you were on the list for school dinners.

If you were part of the latter camp, we hope you’ll agree with some of this…

Pretending you were allergic to something so you didn’t have to eat something you didn’t like was standard practice. Unfortunately, your dinner ladies were pretty savvy.

Nothing was better than seeing a hug tray of ‘pink cake’ in the dessert section – aka airy sponge with sugary hot pink icing. It was amazing. And better than any birthday cake you’ve ever eaten since.

When you moved up to secondary school and could choose whatever you wanted from the canteen, it meant a good three years of having a packet of chips and a doughnut for lunch every single day. You have no regrets.

You knew exactly the right moment to pour out the custard to avoid the skin slopping into your bowl. Eww.

It was really annoying on ‘pizza and chips’ day when the rest of the school muscled in on school dinners and tripled the queues. Where were they the rest of the week?!

Jamie Oliver might have been doing a good thing bringing nutritional standards up to scratch, but you were always quite a fan of turkey drumsticks.

You had you favourite dinner ladies – and knew exactly what to say to get an extra slice of pie, or another spoonful of gravy out of them.

American teen dramas and the canteens they had food fights in were NEVER even REMOTELY like your school’s, and this made you inordinately sad.

Yes, you were jealous of everyone else’s Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles/Little Mermaid/Star Wars lunchboxes. Yes, you gave your parents hell over it. For years.