School Food

Listeners share their school food memories. 

Want to share your story? Email us at treatlandpod@gmail.com.

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Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Hello and welcome to treatland. This is the podcast where you the listener share your favorite food memories from childhood. We'll be playing your audio clips and reading your stories, and we'll definitely be sharing some of our own along the way. Each episode will have its own food-related theme. If you like what you hear today, please be sure to subscribe to our show.

Unknown Speaker  0:23  
To this day, there's just something about the Word lunch that still connects to school lunch in my mind. Honestly, the word lunches always made me happy school or not. This particular memory took place late in my school career. Early in 12th grade, my otherwise mundane school decided to spice up our dreary lives, the new item to serve us. Nachos classic round tortilla chips, thick neon orange cheese flavored goo, and some ground beef to round it out. These were not the most elaborate nachos you might find. But man, we loved them. Sometime in 11th grade I fell in with the metal had stoners. These were the guys I'd sit with at lunch. There I witnessed power struggles I'd never experienced before. No Nacho de was serious business. There were a lot of emotions in the air in the cafeteria. Most I didn't understand. But one fact became uncomfortably clear. Do not touch another man's nachos. And what started as a joke, teasing or threatening to take one Nacho from my friend Rick's tray. Rick ended up getting into a full on fistfight with another guy, Justin. I remember thinking they're just messing around. They'll they ended up in a full on brawl on the cafeteria floor. These guys were otherwise good friends. That's just how good these nachos were.

Unknown Speaker  1:56  
Our first story this week comes from Mike from Buffalo, New York.

Unknown Speaker  1:59  
Hello, everyone. This is Rebecca. Thank you for tuning in to the second episode of treat land. For this episode, I wanted to cover something that we all have very, very strong memories of, and very mixed feelings about to and that would be school food. But I didn't want to limit it to just food that was served in the lunchroom. So this also includes foods that kids brought in and different parties that were in their classrooms. And before we jump into our episode, I just wanted to mention something we all probably forgot about. And that is the menu calendars usually printed on pastel paper, green, yellow, blue, sometimes pink, with horrible, horrible clipart a turkey for November or candy canes for December. And the ink was almost always smudged on these for some reason. And I'm really curious if they still have something like this today, or if kids just go online or have a QR code. If anyone knows, let me know. And now we will get into the rest of our stories.

Unknown Speaker  3:08  
One thing that really sticks out to me at school, when we would have essentially a potluck party for things like the holidays for Thanksgiving, or for Christmas. I don't know if that was a southern thing, or if that was an 80s thing, but it sure doesn't seem like something that would be acceptable today. Very fascinating to me, when the teacher would assign us as kids to bring their favorite side dishes to a Thanksgiving party or a Christmas party that we would have before a break. Imagine interesting little kids, as if they were attending some potluck social at your local bingo hall at the VFW is wild to me to go home and expect your parents to put together some sort of something to bring to the class just is absolutely mind boggling to me. But of course you would have the couple of parents that would volunteer to help out and serve the food but to have kids come with their green bean casserole rolls or their cranberry sauce of course desserts to bring to the school and having to go home me as a kid. Wait till the last minute tell my mom like the day or two before the party was supposed to happen that I needed to bring something and it always resulted in us going to the store last is minute, getting some sort of a pre packaged, plain cookie situation that she could take out of the container and pop into a Tupperware container as if she baked it herself to bring up there. But it's just so funny to me to look back and think on that just setting up the tables, putting the tablecloths on there and having some buffet style. Get together with elementary school kids for their holiday feast was nothing short of a Charlie Brown. Thanksgiving with m&ms and Turkey and the whole galore is just absolutely amazing to me.

Unknown Speaker  5:47  
That story is from Tim who is in Shreveport, Louisiana. Thanks again, Tim.

Unknown Speaker  5:52  
When I was in second grade, the teacher assigned us all to do a book report. I didn't really know what book I was going to read. And we had to give a presentation to the class of our book report, we could do something kind of fun or creative. And one person read a book about how to make lemonade. And so for their presentation, they made lemonade, and I was like, Oh my gosh, they got to make food they got to have. And now we get to all drink lemonade. And that's so cool. And so I want to do that. And so I thought of different things that I love. And I love all sweets, I love anything that's creamy, but also the cake with frosting. That's just anything super sweet. I love all sweets. And so I decided I was going to make chocolate pudding for the whole class. And I was going to show them how to make chocolate pudding. And I was going to you know, get that instant mix at the store and bring all the ingredients and just stand in front of the class and make pudding so we could all enjoy delicious, delicious chocolate pudding. And I used to love those in simple things like the vanilla flavor and all those. They were just so good. So I go to the front of the class, and I say okay, my name is Whitney. And today I'm making pudding and I'm doing this and the teacher stopped and she said Whitney, what book did you read? And I said, oh, and I realized I hadn't read a book. And I totally forgot that this was all about a book report and wasn't just about making food in front of the class. It was about doing a book report. So I was very embarrassed. And I went home and I realized that a book I'd read recently with my family was oh gosh, what was it was something about the someone and the chocolate touch? Oh, I wish I remembered. And it was based on sort of the story around Midas and the golden touch. But it was this boy and his chocolate touched and everything he touched her into chocolate. So I went back to school the next day. And I said, Listen, I read this book about this boy with a chocolate touch. So now can I make chocolate pudding for the class? And they said yes. And I brought chocolate and made chocolate pudding and it was wonderful.

Unknown Speaker  7:55  
The previous story was brought to you by Whitney Walker, host of the women waken podcast. Thank you so much for sharing Whitney.

Unknown Speaker  8:02  
So memories of school lunches, there's a lot of things that come to mind. The first one really is I'm from Syracuse, New York and we have burned dairy which is kind of like it's like a gas station also a dairy like ice cream and milk and like stuff like that they're they supplied all the milk for school lunches and they didn't come in a carton. They came in like a bag like literally like a baggie size thing and you had to like punch a straw into it like a Capri Sun straw into it. And of course like kids can never handle that like these are like elementary and middle school kids. They're like punch their straw and the milk will go everywhere. So like the lunch ladies were just constantly cleaning up you know, like milk all over the place. And it never really like left my memory and I actually was talking about this with someone recently my son just started having lunch at school and he's like, oh a carton of milk and I'm like oh do you mean a bag of milk and he's like no a carton and everyone thinks I'm crazy for like saying that milk came in bags like mini tiny bags. Back in Syracuse, my second memory has to be breakfast sandwiches. And this seems to be kind of consistent throughout all middle elementary school even high schools. You know when you got to school some kids get there really early. Some kids get there later, they had breakfast sandwiches and like at the time they seemed so good even though like my dad would like make me breakfast or whatever. All the kids love these breakfast sandwiches and it was basically like a hamburger bun with like a an egg that was like a perfect circle and then like a sausage patty or like some microwave bacon and then like some cheese slapped on it like it was always different cheese like white American yellow American like you know all different stuff and wrapped in tin foil like it was saggy and like weird and like kind of have a condensation on the inside. It was really gross. Not they think about it, but we thought these things were like the best ever, like so good. And really like the third night memory I have of school lunches has to be tater tots for some reason I thought in high school like tater tots were like a meal. Like I was like, oh, I'll just have the tater tots. Like nothing else for me. Please. Don't I'm like I could have picked something much healthier if I was really trying to be like, a skinny high school girl I don't know. And like ranch dressing with it huge like, that was like what we ate for lunch and then come home like starving and then I eat like 10 Little Debbie's it was just the worst. Like, I should have just brought a sandwich with me. But for some reason, tater pet seemed like a meal. And they were like literally the best tater tots ever, because I think they put them in like a deep fryer or like a giant, extremely hot oven. And I can never get our tater tots at home to taste the same. So yeah, I just wish I could go back and have those

Unknown Speaker  10:45  
school lunches were a constant challenge for my mom, when my brother and I were growing up. My brother and I were both kids that were fairly picky eaters, but also have a lot of quirks about how we would and wouldn't eat certain foods. For example, we'd only eat sandwiches that were on toasted bread. So that made sandwiches tricky for taking to school for your lunch. So my mum often had, I guess she was a bit creative about how she would approach packing lunches for us, so that she could find things that we would actually eat. One circumstance, though, required my mom to sort of deviate from that type of plan. My brother's class was doing a lesson on the Canada Food Guide. And every student had been asked to bring a lunch that included something from each element or food group in the food guide. So she packed my brother's lunch with you know, fruits, vegetables, dairy, products, grains, and for the protein. She packed a slice of Bologna seeing that that was in the fridge. So my brother gets to school the next day, and opens his lunch and sees bologna in there and proceeded to have a meltdown about it. He was definitely not a fan of Bologna, I guess. Anyway, so much so that the school had to call my mom and ask her to bring something different from my brother to eat because he was so upset about the Bologna. Needless to say, my brother still doesn't like bologna today, and does not eat it. I'd like to think he's not quite as picky anymore as he was then. But I'm not even sure if that's true, either.

Unknown Speaker  12:28  
That first story is from my good friend Lindsey, who is in Orchard Park, New York. And she totally nailed the breakfast sandwich description. And the second story is from Janet who is in Edmonton, Alberta, thank you both.

Unknown Speaker  12:47  
So coming up with a snack, or some kind of food was a little tricky for me because I have nostalgia for just about anything that came from, you know, the late 80s, early 90s. You know, and I can literally name like 15 Different things that, you know, give me that that great feeling of just pure joy and you know, the fact that they don't make them anymore, they discontinued these things. But I'll keep it short because we'll be here for all day. So I'll keep it kind of short and I'll just talk about I guess the two foods that are I don't want to say had impact on me but but the ones that I just remember very much so and that would have to go hands down to the Ritz cracker handy snacks. These were little pouches. I think they included maybe four or five, you know, rectangular crackers. And then there was like a little pouch for cheese or peanut butter depending on which one you got the cheddar cheese one and they also had a peanut butter one and then it came with a little tiny red stick. Which one could argue is probably a pretty nasty choking hazard. Because it was so tiny. And I'd often you know you know spread the cheese on the cracker. You know eat the crackers, or sometimes you know, spread the cheese on the cracker and then make a sandwich of it. But then I'd started like sucking on the red stick you know really cleaning out that that little pouch of cheese or peanut butter and for sure that could have went right down your throat and been pretty nasty because I remember that that little red stick had pretty sharp points. I don't know if they still sell these. I think they might I think perhaps they're kind of like Dunkaroos I think they were they were before Dunkaroos Dunkaroos have the same principle little pouch with you know crackers, some kind of animal shaped crackers, whatever. And then they had a you know, some kind of container where you know like a Funfetti cream or something. So this was the same thing, but, you know, came before it and it was rich crackers with cheese or peanut butter. They called it handy snacks. So that was one that was probably like the snack that I remember just always being packed. And then there was this other saying, but I wouldn't call it a snack of just something that I remember very much. So growing up, they actually weren't good at all. I don't know if you'll remember, but it's the recalled Candy Dots on paper. I think that's, I don't know, if they had an official name. It was little drops of candy, like hardened candy that looked like it was on like a roll of paper, you know, and I guess he sold it in sheets or something like that. But it was just like, if you looked at it, it's just a series of dots. And then you would peel off the little tiny, I guess, you know, pea sized balls of candy off the paper. And like 90% of the time you'd get paper still stuck on it. So But anyways, the only the for some reason we call this in my family. We call it smart pills. Because for some reason, whenever we were given these things, we were we me and my brother, I say we always did really well on a test that we had. So if we had something in school, like a test or something, a spelling bee or whatever it was spelling test, math test, whatever. There was oh, it always seemed like we had just eaten both of us who incidentally, had been packed that lunch, or within our lunch or whatever, like a little snack or something. But it just seemed like we would eat these little candy dots on paper. And then we do really well on a test. And so we called it smart pills. And of course now at age 41 I realized that there was no there was nothing it was in the ingredients that made you actually smarter. But anyways, yeah, that's my tale of of nostalgic goodies. Thanks for listening.

Unknown Speaker  17:06  
That last story is from Mark who is an incredible artist. You can find him at sadist art designs on Instagram. He really seems to capture the late 70s 80s horror theme. And he uses that throughout all of his artwork, incredible posters and sweatshirts all sorts of merchandise. So check him out either on Instagram or his website, which is sadist, art designs.com.

Unknown Speaker  17:33  
I was born on June 10, which means that I had absolutely no birthday parties growing up, because no one stayed connected back in those days. But also all of the birthday parties were usually held during school and school ended at the end of May. And so every year, our family would be on family vacation and they'd say, Oh, Laura, and this is your birthday, happy birthday. And I knew it was just like, we're gonna have a vacation. Anyways, my birthday had nothing to do with it. And so when I was younger, I cried to my mom about this. And I said, Mom, I just want people to celebrate my birthday, like one time, just want them to just do that for me. And it was the end of the year party. And everybody was having lots of fun. And my mom surprised me and came in with this big smiley face cake that was surrounded by little smiley face cupcakes. And my mom said to the class, she said it's Lauren's birthday today, everybody wish her a happy birthday. And I never have felt so happy. That was probably one of the happiest moments in my childhood because I just was so thrilled that my mum remembered that I had said that and that she had done something so sweet for me and I went around pretending it was my birthday for the rest of the day. And I just I just adore that memory.

Unknown Speaker  19:07  
That story is from my really good friend Lauren, who is the CEO of her own company. And she's also started her own social media platform and that is vox pop in and you can find her at Fox poppin.com Are you one of the kids that brought in your lunch or were you typically buying it?

Unknown Speaker  19:28  
I was a buyer.

Unknown Speaker  19:30  
And what were some of your staple purchases?

Unknown Speaker  19:33  
Oh, the pizza was always a favorite the weird rectangular pizza that said that congealed cheese on I always liked those. I always liked the burgers because they were weirdly good. I mean, they were they were terrible. But they were weirdly good. This tiny sort of coaster like meat with these weird crease nodules on them that sort of looked like legs. I just think I used to joke that oh, what is this? Some sort of a squash fraud or something horrible. Horrible kid joke, of course, but they tasted weirdly good. They I mean, thinking back the sodium level was out of this world. But my favorite was the hotdogs because

Unknown Speaker  20:14  
that was when

Unknown Speaker  20:16  
I never got. Well, they had. I've st Leo's was my first foray into the wonderful world of Turkey francs. I had never had them before. I always had the Oscar Meyer beef. But I found that I like turkey hotdogs a lot better. And something about them just was amazing and boiled to so after that every single year, they

Unknown Speaker  20:34  
were boiled, right? Yeah. Do you remember if the burger had like a whole wheat bun and a different tastes to it than a typical bun, at least at our school,

Unknown Speaker  20:44  
our school was a little bit different. I think that we were working on budget, because they definitely used the cheapest possible bonds, I'm I'm fairly certain that they would get them in crazy bulk. Positive Yeah. And they were not very good quality. Some things were better than others. Like if you get them at the very beginning of the delivery, they're going to be nice and soft, but they're still about as low quality as you can possibly get. But toward the end, it's getting a little harder. And you know, like both of the roles and the burgers have been sitting around for a few days now. So it's starting to become less of a good experience, but still weirdly good. Like all school lunches.

Unknown Speaker  21:23  
One of my fondest memories of my junior high school years was of course, lunch breaks. But there is this one specific day that I wish I can experience one more time. We regularly had pizza day, monthly for lunch, but every now and then we would have French bread pizza day. To be honest, I can't even recall what sites came with it. I was always in awe. As this masterpiece was placed on my tray. It was this thick cut bread, maybe two inches thick with pizza sauce, melted cheese, I would assume mozzarella, and three round pieces of pepperoni. It wasn't the prettiest pizza. But at the time, it was the best pizza I've ever had living on the West Coast. I know. That's not saying a lot. We all knew what was for lunch that day, not only because we read our paper lunch calendars, but we could smell the greatness that was about to be served to us. As we waited in line. My junior high had tracks on our vacations were sporadic at times, and we could see what lunches were being served during our vacations. Every so often, they would have French bread pizza day during my vacation. And I would have been willing to lose a vacation day for that pizza. Thank you for listening to my memory. And now I'll be craving that French bread pizza for the rest of the year.

Unknown Speaker  22:49  
That last story was brought to you from our friend Jose. Thank you very much. And now I am also quite hungry for French bread pizza.

Unknown Speaker  22:57  
I had a huge phobia of apples growing up. Believe it or not, I actually had my mother and friends of mine chase me around as a kid with apples and I would run up the stairs and run away as if it was like a spider or something. So I had a serious phobia. And the thing about the lunchroom at school is apples were almost always part of the meal. And so many kids got them. So I was just surrounded by apples and these apples are near pizza and near other foods that content on their plate and just the thought of them. Being near the food that was being eaten was really disgusting to me. So I associated basically all the food there with apples. There was one year I remember specifically where there was a girl who sat across from me and she would bring her lunch every day. And her mother always gave her either an apple or a pear. And the reason I hate apples is because when you eat them or bite into them like the juice splatters out and same thing with a pair. So I remember i i feel like i like hated her just because I was afraid of her meal and having it be eaten near me during lunch. So that was traumatic and every once in a while if I didn't bring my lunch and I was buying lunch, they would put an apple on my tray without my consent. So that was also horrifying for me. Even though I had some trauma in the lunch room. I do remember some of the food being good and especially the Mexican pizza which was like an octagon shaped or maybe it was a hexagon piece of pizza that had tomato sauce cheddar and some kind of taco see seasoning and needs a little spicy meatballs. It was honestly so good. I think about that pizza a lot. Sometimes we got these pizza dippers that was almost like Stuffed Crust Pizza was two little dippers that you could dip into marinara sauce with like a triangular shape of pizza next to it like a teeny tiny one. And then I think one of my favorites was the ham and cheese bomber, and I think they like wrapped it in tin foil and it would always stick the cheese would always stick to it. And we also got french toast sticks that I always put a lot of syrup on. Oh yeah, that were chicken fries too. And those weren't too bad, but they were super soggy. And just like really disappointing. And then we had the crinkle cut fries at lunch. And those were also soggy and usually pretty cold and no no seasoning that I remember. Something else that's very distinct in my mind is what the kids did with the food in the lunchroom, including taking a fruit roll up and wrapping it around the pretzel rods and sucking on it like it was a lollipop. I never tried that. But honestly, it kind of seems like it would be good thinking about it now. And also, a lot of kids would put mustard on the pretzel rods just like pour it on there and eat it like that. One more quick little memory of mine was my mother packing my lunch every day. And she would give me a Jello pudding cup, the chocolate vanilla cup. And I loved my mom's so much that after I would eat the jello cup. I didn't want to throw the little plastic cup out into the school garbage because it made me think of my mom. So I would just leave it in my lunch bag. And then my mom when she would open it when I got home she would be like why didn't you throw this out?

Unknown Speaker  27:06  
That last story is brought to you by my lovely co host Rebecca. You can find her on Instagram at retro Plex underscore.

Unknown Speaker  27:16  
I remember. Do you remember when we were in middle school, ta Duggar junior high school? When we had shout out the milkshake machines in the cafeteria when they introduced that were you around? Introduced?

Unknown Speaker  27:27  
I don't think I was around for that. I feel like I would have remembered though they

Unknown Speaker  27:31  
were so good too. It was like it was like 50 cents or something. And you got a little Styrofoam cup and it was like kind of like soft serve style. Like

Unknown Speaker  27:39  
Yeah. Oh, wait, now that does sound kind of familiar. Maybe I do remember that. They were very good. And I was definitely definitely med school. I was even eating the lunch. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I do remember in high school. We had those maybe my last couple years there we definitely have like a big like an ice cream freezer that just had like frozen Snickers bars and frozen like twigs and like all those like specialty things. You could buy extra I would card ate a lot. Yeah, and a lot of twigs. Or, I mean Snickers ice cream bars. In my senior

Unknown Speaker  28:16  
years. Ice cream bars are phenomenal. They, I they are amazing.

Unknown Speaker  28:21  
Lots of great

Unknown Speaker  28:22  
school. I remember having I remember. And I remember having like soda machines in high school. And that was like a first where it was like in the cafeteria and I was like, Oh, wow, I can just I have a very distinct memory. This is high school. This is probably like 2000 And I

Unknown Speaker  28:37  
remember exactly where they were. Yes. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  28:40  
Oh my god drinking Pepsi blue because we had Pepsi. They brought Pepsi blue to the uh huh. We I think we had a furtopia machine as well.

Unknown Speaker  28:48  
I was literally about to say I think there was furtopia machine. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  28:51  
Did you ever eat school breakfast? Oh,

Unknown Speaker  28:59  
I mean, I won't say never. But I don't think I really ever did. No.

Unknown Speaker  29:04  
I remember getting a couple times.

Unknown Speaker  29:07  
Yeah, I'm sure I did a handful of times. Honestly, to get me up out of bed is so hard anyway, to get

Unknown Speaker  29:12  
up early back then. And now I will skip breakfast for more sleep. Yes. Yes. I remember the breakfast was never that good. It was very, you know, when I was when I was in my 20s I spent a night in jail one time, you know, it happens. It's whatever. And the food that I had for breakfast was like it really was straight out of just elementary school.

Unknown Speaker  29:34  
Like you were all coming from the same square yellow

Unknown Speaker  29:38  
egg slab with quotations

Unknown Speaker  29:40  
around. Yeah, egg substitute eggs. Oh, man. Yeah. A lot of good, good memories.

Unknown Speaker  29:52  
It was better than others. It sounds like you know, it was it was the best part of the day, you know?

Unknown Speaker  29:57  
Yeah, it really was good to hang out with Your friends you don't have to worry about class. And you got to eat that that rectangle pizza with a tiny little cubes of pepperoni.

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