Out To Lunch

By Elaine Viets

 "Do you want mustard or mayonnaise?" the lady with the hairnet asked.

"Mayonnaise," I said.

The hairnet lady slathered my hotdog with mayo, and I glided down the cafeteria line for the rest of my school lunch.

Thanks to a quirk in the federal subsidies, St. Louis Catholic schools did not get ketchup, and the thrifty archdiocese did not squander school funds on condiments. That would be coddling, which was bad for our souls. We could have mustard or mayo, like it or lump it.

I liked it. I still like mayo on my hotdogs.

Later, I learned that people could not only put ketchup on their hotdogs, but pickles, chili, chopped onions, jalapeno peppers, bacon, cheese, even (shudder) sauerkraut.

My favorite school lunch was hotdogs with mayo, tater tots cooked until crunchy, baked beans and raisin-spice cake with gluey white icing.

The hairnet ladies knew exactly how many raisins to put in the cake. Too many and some eighth-grade boy would yell, "Hey, your raisin is moving." The girls would shriek and soon raisins would be flicked all over the cafeteria.

Our school must have bought the hairnet ladies wholesale from Catholic Supply. They were stout, devout women with big arms, generous bosoms, and hair the color of cooked hamburger.

The hairnet ladies wielded giant metal spoons with machine-like precision. A "thank you" wouldn't get me a smile, but I might get the corner piece of cake, which had more icing.

I wasn't surprised to read on AOL that Tori Spelling's favorite school lunch was also hotdogs. But hers weren't served by the hairnet ladies. The West Coast fashion police would have corralled the ladies and sentenced them to makeovers and liposuction.

Tori's mom made hotdogs this way: "She would take a thermos and put boiling water in it and put the hotdogs in there," Tori told AOL, "and then she would heat the bun and put it in foil and give me little packets of ketchup so by the time I opened it at lunch it was still warm."

What dogged decadence.

Jesse Metcalf, the "Desperate Housewives" gardener, said his favorite school lunch was pizza. "My least favorite was sloppy joes," he told AOL. "Because pizza is awesome and sloppy joes suck."

Sloppy joes did suck. They sucked themselves right onto my white uniform blouse. I wore sloppy joe sauce all afternoon, the red badge of nerdhood. Cool kids never dripped sauce on their shirts.

We did not get pizza at our school. Public school kids ate pizza, but they were Protestants. The nuns said they were going to hell. We felt the public school kids had better live it up here on earth with pizza. We Catholic kids might suffer in the lunchroom, but we'd lounge coolly in heaven forever while the pizza-eating Protestants spent eternity in a lake of fire.

Kristin Chenoweth, on Broadway in "Promises, Promises," said her favorite school lunch was "chili and cinnamon rolls." Her least favorite was "filet o' fish."

The hairnet ladies served something worse than filet o' fish. We got jack salmon, a whitish fish nicknamed "sewer inspectors." Jack salmon tasted like sponges fried in fish grease.

Henry Winkler, The Fonz, was another mayo fan. "My favorite all-time lunch four years in a row was tuna on Wonder bread with pickles and mayo."

Ryan Seacrest confessed that he liked "peanut butter with honey on wheat bread -- fairly healthy."

Healthy? The hairnet ladies would never stand for that at lunch. But it may be the key to where Ryan Seacrest went went wrong. He's the host of "American Idol."  

Comments

[Marie-Reine]

Yeah, what is that sauerkraut on hotdog business, anyway? Gotta love the white glue frosting, though!

[mary alice at mystery lovers bookshop]

I still cannot believe that we went home for lunch from St Rays and got back in 50 minutes........just 8 blocks for me. If you ate luch in school there was no caf so your bag was it........except for once a month when home room moms offered Hot Dog luches with pre-ordered dogs, chips, cookie and milk----it was a fund-raiser at 35 cents! Sweet dreams.

[Twist]

Tater tots? Did someone say tater tots?

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

Were we the only school that had ice cream sandwiches available? I cannot name one thing I would eat from the school cafeteria.

Mayo? Only on BLTs and turkey sandwiches.

But I do put ketchup - Heinz - on scrambled eggs.

[gaylin in vancouver]

I love to dip french fries in mayo, yum. I'll pass on ketchup and mustard entirely. Oh and a total pass on hot dogs, I barfed hot dogs once and never ate them again.

Lunch for us was brown bags. Generally a sandwich and a piece of fruit and on occasion my mom would write limericks for each of us. I sure wish I had kept them!

It really sucked if we got our lunch bags mixed up, one of my sisters love ham and mustard sandwich and I liked neither of those things.

The cafeteria at my school was just a big room with tables and a few vending machines. I usually sat with the geeky kids out in the hall.

[Laraine]

Mayo, or mustard, or occasionally ketchup. I guess I'm eclectic.
My brothers and sister and I used to make up insane sandwiches that we truly thought were delicious, but I don't recall taking a lunch to school, oddly. Must have done the cafeteria thing.
Crispy tater tots. Yesssssssss.

I'm catching up on past posts, and wanted to add retrospectively that my mom was a hoarder, and in her later years, it became clear that her chief motivation was that nothing be wasted, a natural result of growing up during the Depression. Once we began to talk about how others could use what she had saved, she started gathering up and giving away things. My favorite day of that period was when she decided that a big pile of lovely stuffed animals she had rescued could go to the playschool program at her church. She was happy thinking of the kids receiving the toys, and as a result her little t-v room was a much more spacious place to be.
There's a huge overlay between hoarding and blood sugar problems affecting the brain. Although I find the messy results of hoarding to be cringe-inducing, I've learned to regard the hoarder with kindness rather than disgust.
Much as I love and support authors, particularly my friends and TLC authors, I no longer buy books unless I simply must have a 'keeper' copy. My tiny home just won't allow for such accumulation, as my overloaded desk threatens to send visitors running screaming out the door, anyway. I used to have three or four six-foot-tall bookcases, but have worked my way down to one. I thought it would be painful, but, in fact, it feels like freedom. There's room in my home for the rest of my life . . . and if I clean off my desk, for some friends and visitors, too.

[Doc In CA]

Ketchup on a hot dog? No way would I eat that.

My lunches, at the little country school I went to, were usually tuna sandwich, banana, thermos of milk and some sort of twinkie or cupcake. Sometimes mom would do a change up and put in a turkey sandwich and some other fruit, but the milk and Hostessy goodness were a constant.

The only time she really changed things was on April Fools Day. Being a big practical joker, she'd put unexpected foods in the lunch box. I remember one year finding venison jerky, a half dozen figs, two biscuits with honey and my thermos was full of fruit punch.

By the time I reached high school, Mom just handed us some money every day on our way out the door. I'd usually eat at Taco Bell, because everything was 25 cents except a large soda, which was 30 cents.

[William in Looziana]

Pizza Rules! Hot, cold, leftover, fresh, frozen, pick one.

Hot dogs; anything from a touch of mustard and ketchup and onions to the Full Bore Chili Dog, which, if prepared properly, can effectively make a raccoon run from you for the next 24 hours.

[nancy martin]

Even now, the whole subject of school lunches makes me shudder--all those mysterious substances in vats of grease--argh. I carried my lunch to school for most of my life. But no cookies, ever. I associate little red boxes of raisins with lunch dessert!

[Nancy Pickard]

Lorraine, sweet about your mom, and interesting about the blood sugar connection.

Hate even the smell of Sloppy Joes.

Loved cherry tart day--little bowls of hot cherry pie innards under a flat hat of pie crust. It was a mystery how something so delicious got sneaked unto the menu. I loved being a cafeteria helper on those days because I'd gobble up the ones other kids didn't eat.

Am I the only one who loved to eat hot dogs straight from the refrigerator? Cold, no bun, just hot dog?

[Nancy Pickard]

Doc, you've made me remember that grade school lunches were 30 cents. Every morning I'd pick out three dimes from the little white box where my mother put out a week's worth.

[judy merrill larsen]

I think I've blocked out all memories of cafeteria lunches, except for high school where we'd just buy french fries and sodas. As a teacher, I always took my lunch, too, except for tater tots day--and yes, the crunchier the better!

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

For me, hOt dogs have mustard and relish. And if they;re cooked on as gril, they should be competely black on the outside.

Turkey gets mayo. Or DELICIOUS honey mustard.

But my favoirite school lunch was what the cafeteria ladies called "Roman Holiday." They named everything, I remember that, but "Roman Holiday: is the only one I remember. It was--spaghetti. And for years, as a result, I thought spaghetti sauce was orange.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Oh, gosh, I hit publish too soooooon.

For me, hot dogs have mustard and relish. And if they're cooked on as grill, they should be completely black on the outside.

Turkey gets mayo. Or DELICIOUS honey mustard.

But my favorite school lunch was what the cafeteria ladies called "Roman Holiday." They named everything, I remember that, but "Roman Holiday: is the only one I remember. It was--spaghetti. And for years, as a result, I thought spaghetti sauce was orange.

[Nancy Pickard]

Spaghetti sauce isn't orange?

[Margaret Maron]

The first time I ever saw sauerkraut was at my rural elementary lunchroom. Straight out of those gallon cans. No rinsing, no caraway seeds, no beef broth, nada. This was the South and I doubt if the lunchroom ladies had ever seen it before. A gov't freebie no doubt. I took one taste and after that, sauerkraut sat in isolation on my plate.

Fast-forward to the December I went to NY to meet Joe's parents. Joe was showing me Battery Park, I was freezing and hungry, and the only thing around was a Sabrett's stand. He ordered hot dogs for both of us. "With kraut." I was prepared to be polite. It was utterly delicious. Now I have trouble choosing between a southern "all the way" (slaw, chili, onions) and one with sauerkraut and brown mustard.

[Alan P.]

I love sauerkraut on my hot dogs, but as the chief lunch packer in the house, would you like to meet the 21st century school lunch?

Public schools must meet Federal nutrition guidelines for lunches (and breakfasts). Fried anything is gone. Baked French fries are the order of the day, and turkey based hot dogs. The gotcha is that for your child to meet the guideline, they need to eat the whole lunch all five days. Most of the entrees are between 300 and 600 calories. Consider that Princess 1 only eats 1,000 calories a day and you see the problem with nachos day. All of the lunches have about two days worth of fat and sugar as well.

As the guidelines have gotten stricter, the fast food industry has developed school lunch friendly products. The Domino's I deliver for delivers lunch once a week to two public and two private schools. You can read about the Domino's Smart Slice here: http://www.dominosbiz.com/Biz-Public-EN/Biz+Footer/School+Lunch/

Lunch money has been replaced in many places by a debit system. I love it. As a parent I send a check once a month. I can go online and see what has been ordered. No lunch money stops at 7-11 on the way home anymore. The other thing is that students on free or reduced lunch can only eat one meal a day. The savings to a school district in free lunch students not being able to "buy" (that is your tax money) their friends lunch can pay the $10,000 to $50,000 setup costs in a year.

[Elaine Viets]

The 21st-century lunch is an eye-opener, Alan. Nutrition in schools? What will they think of next? Computers?
Doc, with your sense of humor, I somehow knew your mother would love jokes.
Nancy P -- a cold, uncooked hot dog makes me shudder. Cookie dough,now that's something else again.

[Maryann Mercer]

My mom was a cafeterian worker at the local high school's freshman-sophomore building, so I always knew what was cooking...and when not to eat more than a salad and pie :o) The junior-senior building actually had four lunch lines and a snack bar. Two of the lines had burgers and fries every day, including Friday (and they were actually good!), the other two had the day's 'special'...anything from 'mystery meat' to spaghetti or ham and scalloped potatoes. Even the fish on Friday during Lent was good.(Large high school, Chicago suburb, early sixties). The snack bar sold sandwiches and ice cream. And the lunch was a whole $.40!
I love mustard on my hot dogs...never ketchup. I don't like it, although I'll tolerate it on a burger from Micky D's if I can't speak fast enough to change it. I also like vinegar on my fries...and horseradish is good as well. But my most memorable sandwich experience was in 8th grade. The entire class somehow fixated on the taste treat of liver sausage, mustard and onions (early sixties, remember? No one necked in the hallways of First Lutheran!)on white bread. The fumes in that classroom were unforgettable :o)

These days,thanks to prepackaging, the lunches for my downstate school district are prepared in one place and then shipped in little styrofoam clamshells to the various schools. Ugh.

[Karen in Ohio]

What great memories. My own lunch ladies, from grades four to eight, were my pals. They called me "Little Bit" because I would always ask for "just a little bit" of everything. My tastes were tentative back then, due to a limited diet at our house, but I was--and am--willing to try almost anything once. Usually I liked it. We were lucky to have lunch ladies who knew how to cook good food, considering what everyone else here is saying. Catholic school, too, Elaine. As far as I can remember, we did not have any kind of hot dogs. The only thing that ever came on a bun was Sloppy Joes, and those were rare treats. Does anyone else remember Johnny Marzetti? My father-in-law's favorite dish, dating back to when HE was in grade school. After my mil died I made it for him a couple times, and it was just as yummy as I remembered it being.

Our school's lunches were a quarter, and milk was 2 cents for white, 3 cents for chocolate. I hated the white milk, maybe because it was skim, looking back, so I sprung the extra penny and always had chocolate. Of course everyone who knows me also knows that chocolate is a part of my Karen-ness, anyway. :-)

My favorite lunch back then was a bowl of chili with peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The chili I make is very similar, heavy on beans and ground meat, and with a lot of tomato goodness. But I've never been able to replicate the PBJ they made back then.

They also made something they called Hungarian Coffeecake, which was a sour milk cake with cinnamon crunch topping that I loved. When I was in fourth or fifth grade the PTA did a fundraiser cookbook, and that recipe was among them. The cookbook is hand typed with a blue and white-checked oilcloth cover, and I still have it. Until my ungrateful brat kids discovered Pillsbury Grands cinnamon rolls I made that Hungarian Coffeecake every Christmas morning for decades. Sigh.

When my two youngest girls were in school locally they used to publish the school lunch menus in the weekly community paper. Every single day they had some kind of pizza. Every single day. Some kids ate that pizza every single day, too. I think that's terribly sad. My youngest went to England on a "mission trip" with her youth group (they passed out Bible tracts one day out of the eight they were there), and most of the kids only ate pizza, on the entire trip, including the afternoon they went to the amazing Yo, Sushi for lunch.

[Maryann Mercer]

PS. My mom (and all the other ladies) did have to wear hairnets. So did the student helpers...the sight of netting on a carefully coiffed french twist was sometimes too much :o)

[xena]

lunch for my son whe he first attended pre school was a nightmare. My husband was a fanatic about what our kid ate leading to all kind of problems later. My attitude was simple. Something he'd eat and something to trade. The other kids had teddy grahams and he had juice sweetened oatmeal cookies or frookies. Once I had run out of everything and sent him off with a scrambled egg on toast lunch. He requested it for the rest of the year.(like the thermos hot dog, you have to keep the toast separate until lunch time)
My memories were meat loaf. My mom didn't make it so I loved it. There were days when the teachers went around picking up milk cartons to see if you stuffed your green beans in them because you would not be excused to go play outside unless you cleaned your sectioned rectangular tray.
My mom worked in the high school cafeteria. She cut the butter into pats and had hands like silk for years. She was like a blond petite movie star amongst the dowdy hairnet ladies. They cooked their asses off. Imagine hot and steamy in hot and humid Miami Springs!
I always had to use the kosher hot dogs when I snuck one into my son's lunch. I always browned them in butter.
Catholics can't eat ketchup? Who knew?

[PJ Parrish]

Nancy, I ate cold hot dogs right out of the fridge. But I also could down an entire jar of marochino cherries that my dad kept for his highballs.

As for lunch, I still have a thing about Twinkies and those pink Snoball things that tasted like rubber. No wonder I was a fat kid.

And Maryann: Didn't your mother ever tell you eating cookie dough would give you worms?

[Darlene]

We didn't have a school cafeteria, but my best friend's mother did the hot dogs in a thermos. No hot dogs for me because my mother was suspicious of what was in them. Strangely enough, she had no problem with big rolls of bologna.

[marie]

Elementary school lunch time usually consisted of me running home for lunch and then running back to school.
When severe weather kicked in such as snowdrifts up to our necks (cue the violins, here) I brown bagged a lunch with sandwiches made of Sandwich Spread, a thousand island dressing with pimentos and mystery ingredients.
As a seven year old I had a crush on a red-headed boy and coaxed him to take a lunch break and ride on his little red wagon down the hill.
We both fell off and I ran home to my mother looking like a wartime casualty with bloody scraped knees.
In her apoplectic state she bandaged me up and sent me back to school.
The teacher looked at me and my red-headed friend and surmised that we must have had a lunchtime tryst and did not comment.

[Tina]

Nancy, LOVE cold hot dogs. Love hot dogs any way (even with sauerkraut). Also love bologna. I just had a bologna sandwich for lunch today.

I don't really remember buying too many lunches at school until high school. Mom always made some sort of sandwich, chips and something Hostess. In high school I bought strange combinations like, french fries in a cup with a frosty or ice cream and a chocolate milk.

The so called nutritional lunches they serve at schools now, most kids won't eat. They look nasty and beige.

[Elaine Viets]

Kosher bologna on Wonder bread. Yum.
Maria, your story of the tryst with the little red-haired boy made me laugh. I see you as two Hummel figurines.

[storyteller Mary]

All those years of teaching, I ate many school lunches -- cheap and fast if not that tasteful . . . (you may insert jokes here ;-)
Dr. Oz is talking about healthy food right now . . . I'm trying to half-listen. He's right, but I don't want to believe all he says . . . Schools are trying to move toward healthier choices, and tater tots may be going the way of the dodo bird.
A friend introduced me to salsa on scrambled eggs -- not bad.

Elaine, glad you are surviving the storms and impressed with your writing a blog despite hurricane! Next time you are in St. Louis, we should meet at Woolfies on Woodson Road, only a few blocks from the home in which I grew up -- I'll even show you the little house my dad and his brother built.

[storyteller Mary]

Johnny Marzetti? I don't know this, Karen -- please describe.
I wonder if the peanut butter we had was 100% peanuts, like the fresh ground at Whole Foods?
One of our cooks at the high school used to doctor the canned carrots with a little butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon -- then the supervisors for the company came along and told her she couldn't because of "nutritional guidelines," and the carrots went back being flavorless and going into the garbage can. My aunt used to say that common sense wasn't all that common. . . .
Sauerkraut yes! on hotdogs, with pork . . . (and it was one of the foods that helped sailors avoid scurvy)

I spent two years in Catholic school (5th and 6th grade, the attempt to remediate the years prior to age 10 when we were Baptists). We had a lunch room and could buy milk to go with our lunches from home. My grandma made us little crocheted pouches for the mild money, to wear around our necks. Clever and pretty!

[storyteller Mary]

That would be milk money -- just a dime, I think, so fairly mild as well . . .

[Karen in Ohio]

Johnny Marzetti has a lot of incarnations, but the one I remember best, and the one my father-in-law liked, has elbow macaroni, ground beef, tomatoes, onions, and the crucial ingredient: green peppers. In fact, when I was a kid that was the one and only way I'd eat green peppers. It just made that dish, somehow.

As for the peanut butter, who knows? It came in massive industrial-sized cans, and they may have mixed it with the grape jelly, to make it easier on the cooks.

My dad was a butcher for a time, and I think that's where my mom learned to make "ham" salad in the meat grinder, using the stick bologna, sweet pickles, and a little mayo, which tasted exactly like the more expensive stuff. Ham salad is still my favorite sandwich spread.

[Harley]

Ah, Elaine -- "hair the color of cooked hamburger" -- that phrase alone made it worth getting out of bed this morning. Thank you.

You guys are going to make me cry. Today was the first day of packing lunchboxes for this school year. What wouldn't I give for a crew of hairnet ladies and hot lunch for the kids? As for Tori Spelling's mother's hot dog protocol . . . well, words fail me.

[Alan P.]

Ah, Woolfies! For you folks outside of St. Louis, Woolfies is the St. Louis home of the Chicago hotdog. Vienna beef dogs, poppy seed buns, and electric green relish. Worth every calorie.

I forgot. At the 21st century Catholic school the hairnet ladies are likely student's moms. They get a break on tuition.

A friend is the IT director at a higher class private school. Tuition is over $20,000 per year. They have a full kitchen and staff. The food is fabulous. Made fresh every day.

[marie]

Entering my civic duty stage and the bossy years as an eighth grader I skipped most of my lunch hour to become a volunteer crossing guard.
Five minutes before the lunch bell rang I suited up in my school traffic control banner, clicked the closure at the waist, and ran down to the busy street with my trusty STOP and GO sign.
Rumors were that a free movie was a reward at the end of the semester and I loved movies.
I would stop at the Grotto where the statue of the Virgin Mary looked down at my pathetic sight and pray that no one would beat me up after school. Many of the demon pedestrians paid no heed of my threats of citations for not heeding my trusty signs.
Rain slickers down to my ankles, a hat to keep me dry did not add to my no nonsense image.
The morning finally came where as faithful guards we were assembled into front of the new modern Odeon Theater.
Moments before we entered, there was a giant gas leak explosion inside the theater and we missed our reward. I often thought that we almost went to our reward..but we lived for another day.

[Rita Scott]

School lunches turned me off of tater tots for life. They were always like rocks on the outside & raw on the inside, bleck! They only seemed to have one tray of chocolate milk, which was gone by the time my class got there. (and the white milk was not very cold)
Salt & pepper would have been a big improvement but we didn't even get that!
I loved peanut butter but not with jelly, either plain or with potato chips. (what a strange child! what kid doesn't like pb&j?)
Never liked plain baloney. Mom would fry it for me. Or the big treat was a fried Canadian bacon sandwich!

[storyteller Mary]

Al, I'm thinking Domino's should make that Smart Slice available for the rest of us . . .

[Elaine Viets]

Johnny Marsetti sounds pretty good right now, Karen.
Poor Marie -- all that work and then you nearly get blown to smithereens.

[marie]

Yes, Elaine! I went from a sweet Hummel Figurine model to a Imperious Crossing Guard.
I am imagining that an evil plot was in place to destroy all the bossy crossing guards, but hey we surived. Bwahahaha.

[Marie-Reine]

Nancy P. I love cold hot dogs, no bun, straight from the fridge. My grandmother told me they were "baby baloney tubes."

Elaine, I was raised on sliced hot dog rounds dipped in ketchup, no bun, and never at school-- Catholic or public.

Hank, sometimes she served these little rounds baked into a casserole of (what she called) French spaghetti, which was orange, because she blended it with cheddar cheese. I think that was a real recipe from Québec??? I also had it at the old Ditson School in Billerica when we lived there for awhile.

[Laura (in PA)]

Xena, Catholics are allowed to eat ketchup, it just sounds from the posts here that many of them don't. Myself included. I always thought I was a mutant, because I don't eat ketchup or mustard on anything. Ever. My father used to be annoyed when we (rarely) went to McDonald's or Burger King and we always had to wait for my plain cheeseburger.

I wasn't allowed to buy lunch at school - my mother packed my lunch every day, even in high school. I will confess that she also did the hot dog in the thermos - my classmates were quite taken with it - and I had never heard of anyone else doing that until Tori Spelling. In high school, I had gotten to the point where the only sandwiches I liked were PB&J and Tuna. My mother got very bored making my lunches, lol. And I remember we had an exchange student from the Netherlands who had never heard of peanut butter, and thought it was just disgusting! I always had a piece of fruit and a packages of Ho-Hos or a Little Debbie. Or I would get to buy Ring Dings at school with my milk. In high school I finally got to buy lunch on spaghetti days.

I eat my hot dogs plain, my burgers plain, and I do love sloppy joe's. I have my mother's recipe for homemade ones - awesome.

I swear I am a more adventurous eater than it sounds like!

[marie]

In my school, Catholics were not alowed to venture a look down at the local Protestant school.
Boys and girls did not comingle and we hardly ever saw a hot dog unless it was at a local fair.
Now we mingle, comingle and eat all the hot dogs we can eat. Times changed for the better.

[Cinema Dave]

Ah, the Hair Net Ladies!
They added kerosene to the fire of my eating
disorders.

BTW ~ The Hair Net Ladies were a very consistent
species, the Hair Net Ladies lived and worked
from Long Island to South Florida. For some
reason they maintained the same icy
expressions and seemed to not like
children.

However, when I taught middle school, the hair nets were removed the the ladies were much nicer.

[Marcia in OK]

In our neck of the woods (or it could just be our convulated family) we call that dish "Johhny Knows It" - all the same stuff in the dish.

Our school has a lockdown on PBJs and anything else with Peanuts. Couple of kids in the entire district have peanut allergies - entirel district has a restriction on nut products in the buildings or on the buses.

I'm a mean mom. My kids ride the bus to and from school almost every school day - the entire year - all weather. And, they have to eat something in the school cafeteria. The only lunches from home are for field trip days. (No PB&Js then either.)_

[Laurie Moore]

Our cafeteria menu was published in the local paper weekly. Not that I had a choice if I didn't like the food. I wasn't a finicky eater but there was just something inherently wrong with everything they served, right down to the color and consistency of the food. One of the most memorable items was the "flying saucer" cookie, which was a big molasses cookie that would cover a 10" plate. If you don't like molasses cookies, you're not going to like the granddaddy of those cookies. I did like the fish sticks on Fridays. It was hard to screw those up since they were already messed up to begin with. Lunches were $.40 cents a tray and extra milk was a nickle. Like you'd want extra. This is why I kept a contraband stash of crunchy Cheetos in my bedroom for when I came home hungry from school.

[gaylin in vancouver]

Does anyone else remember getting weiners and beans for lunch? Good old hotdogs cut up and cooked in with canned baked beans. The whole concept makes me shudder now.

Laurie, I loved anything with molasses in it so probably would have liked the flying saucer cookie!

All this makes me really glad the cafeteria in my high school didn't have hot food, very little of it sounds palatable. And being up here in Canada, back in the 70's, a lot of American snack items weren't available yet. No Twinkies, Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's for me!

[Nancy Pickard]

My people!! Cold hot dog lovers!
"baby Bologna tubes," lol, Marie-Reine.

Gaylin, I confess that I still love weiners and beans for lunch, though my taste in beans requires more molasses than previously, and what I used to call weiners are actually brats. I still cut them into thick coins, though.

[Holly Gault]

Our high school had a snack bar. It sold egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches and hamburgers. The egg/tuna salads had only mayo, they were spread on squishy white bread. Heaven. At least in comparison to the soggy tuna salad made with pickle relish and Miracle Whip on bark'n'twigs wheat bread that my mom bought. I barely remember grammar school cafeteria food.

[Pam aka SisterZip]

In high school in the early 70s, I only ate an ice cream sandwich and a carton of milk. No soda, juice, or flavored water. The only vending machines in the entire schoole were in the teacher's lounge or the boy's locker room. I would have someone go through the line to get the chili though. You had to have the chili with a peanut butter sandwich. Dear Hubby still eats pb with chili. Government peanut butter. The best there is. Open the can and you have 6 inches of oil that they would stir it back in. Just the right amount of sugar.

They had one dish I wouldn't touch called "Gravy Train". It was ground beef in a light colored gravy over mashed potatoes. Nasty, nasty looking stuff.

[Elaine Viets]

Beans and weiners! Yum. And if they were made with those little hot dogs, that was gourmet food.
Loved the "baby bologna tubes." Sure beats broccoli, which my mother said were little trees. Little mushy trees.
Alan P., how could I forget Woofie's. Greatest dogs in the world. That electric green relish looked kind of dodgy to me, but I ate it anyway.

[Karen in Ohio]

Elaine, are you talking about Beanie Weenie? The only time I've eaten that since I was a kid--when I was pregnant. In fact, that's how my husband knew I was expecting the last time, because I begged him to go find a can or two of the stuff.

[Bev]

In jr. high, I got a hot school lunch everyday. My mother didn't make enough to support 2 kids so it was free. Back then, if you got free lunch you had to work in the cafeteria too. They did away with that so people wouldn't know you were poor. Ha, I think I got the better part of the deal though. I got to eat all the good stuff. When my mom remarried, we no longer qualified for free lunches so I got to brown bag it. Everyday, a warm bologna and cheese sandwich which ended in the trash. To this day, I still won't eat bologna. Yuck!

[Margaret Maron]

Karen, I craved Butterfingers, which could not be found in Brooklyn at that time or if you did, they were always stale. Ah, we'll have to do a blog on pregnancy cravings!

[Hot Dog Carts]

When I was a kid my mom would usually give me a hot dog with mayo and some potato chips. I love it more than the dogs sold at school.