TMOliver wrote:
"Derek Lyons" wrote ...
"Jean B." wrote:

Folks sometimes try to locate recipes for foods consumed at school
lunches in days of yore. Therefore, I thought I'd list the recipes from
a booklet entitled "School Lunch Program: Recipes and Menus, 1946",
which was compiled and published in Vermont. This booklet will
eventually be very hard to find in the cookbook and recipe book clutter,
so speak up in the near future if you want me to type a recipe for you.
:-) Note that all recipes are for 12 or 50....
baked beans; baked bean loaf; chili con carne;
I'd be curious to see these three.


In the South/near Southwest, 1946-50 or so, creamed tuna always trumped
salmon, a canned food reserved for the dreaded "doorstoppers", croquettes of
mass and weight. Much rice was grown in Arkansas & Texas, aid for the
world's starving and to maintain the lives of elementary school kids. I
still need rice at least once a day.

Chili? A common dish about the town, source of many questions as to the
type and origin of the meat during the days of rationing, was rarely served
at school, since metal mess trays didn't do well with what was essentially a
soupy stew or stewy soup. Our chili was dramatic in its difference from the
tomato laden Cincinnati sort, a vulgar heresy still served in the Wendy's
chain, more of a "Sloppy Joe" w/beans than a Chili.

As you will see (or have seen), the recipe in this booklet is REALLY
bad, even from the perspective of one who can enjoy the "normal"
northern-style chilis, which usually contain beans and tomatoes.

Hominy, always white never yellow, and like grits a dish begging for flavor
and augmentation to rise above a vacuum filler to any semblance of enjoyable
food. I love grits, bolstered with eggs, cheese, green Chiles, country ham,
andouille, bacon, etc., or topped with sautéed shrimp, and find that few
things combine so well with tripe and pigs' feet than do hominy/posole, the
basis of "Menudo" (or even the simpler pork-flavored "Posole" (especially
when either is started from "real" dried hominy, not the sissified canned
sort).

School Chicken and Dumplings required little chicken (much of which we
suspected was pilfered to feed the cafeteria staff at home).

I best recall:

A limp leaf of lettuce
a half banana split lengthwise
a dab of peanut butter
topped by 1/2 a maraschino cherry Why a half. Did they actually come from
far away Maraschino, occupied by the bestial N*zis?

Interesting. My mom did something like that, but she mixed the PB with
some mayonnaise. I don't recall the cherry part though.

and on the next day.....

the same lettuce leaf (Maybe, few actually ate them.)
a ring of pineapple
a dab of "Miracle Whip", salad dressing, not mayo.
the other half of yesterday's cherry.

LOL!

....and canned spinach, truly among the nastiest dishes around.

TMO


I am happy to say I didn't eat school lunches. Back in the days of the
dinos, we could actually go home for lunch! In middle and high school,
I brought my own lunch....