What was the worst lunch/lunches you had a Jr high or HS, Mine was American Pizza, made with a muffin , some kind of

[debm55]

Sauce and American Pizza. I mostly brought my lunch.

[catbyte]

1. Lukewarm hamburger gravy over wallpaper paste mashed potatoes,

canned green beans, and Sahara cake for dessert. (Sahara cake = dry af) Blecch.

[debm55]

2. Oh that is nasty. Thank you catbyte.

[catbyte]

3. Oh, it was. Over 50 years later the memory lingers on.

[debm55]

4. Yes it does. I still remember American Pizza. It was terrible.

[Ocelot II]

26. We called that stuff mystery meat, and figured it was road kill.

[debm55]

28. HAHAHAHHAHAHAH, I like that Ocelot II

[House of Roberts]

5. I don't remember any of the lunches as a whole,

but the worst single item was their abomination of cornbread. My mom could make real southern cornbread (no sugar), but that stuff was not edible. I used to save my money, buy a pint of milk and that would hold me until school was over, then I'd attack a box of cereal when I got home.

[debm55]

6. Thank you House of Roberts.

[EYESORE 9001]

7. Oddly enough, I don't have much recollection of bad food in jr or high svhool

I was busy growing and didn’t quibble over quality. I even recall looking forward to hamburger day where, if you were lucky and seconds lasted long enough, you could purchase another burger for a dime.

Elementary school was a different matter. There was a fixation on…let’s say, regularly on the part of schoolchildren. On days when bowls of stewed prunes weren’t set out on each table, we were served some vile green weed cooked into submission and nutritional uselessness - sometimes spinach, sometimes a collard-type green. I loved greens made at home, savoring the ‘pot liquor’ in which the greens were simmered. The ones at school made me wanna barf - especially when encountering a stem or stalk that defied getting pulverized or cooked into submission.

[debm55]

10. Thank you EYESORE 9001 ,Your post is great

[Runningdawg]

8. Nothing was truly horrible but at least once a month we had beets, small school, great cooks.

The teachers would make you take a bite of everything on your plate. That stopped after I ruined several pairs of their shoes.

[debm55]

11. Thank you Runningdawg, Great post

[pamdb]

9. worst lunch

In grade school (Catholic school) every once in awhile we would get spinach. Boiled spinach, I think. It looked like something a cow had thrown up. The only way I can eat spinach now is as lettuce.

[debm55]

12. Thank you pamdb, I like your reference to cows and I agree

[Simeon Salus]

13. Char patty on bun

Some sort of pork/chick/soy combination with lines on it looked like magic markers made.

On the other hand, fresh yeasty cinnamon rolls. Yum.

[debm55]

16. Thank you Simeon Salus. I do remember the cinnamon rolls. They were good.

[debm55]

17. Thank you ArkansasDemocrat1. That fake gov't cheese was nasty.

[debm55]

37. It was terrible.

[Diraven]

29. I think every school used to have that

Back in the 70's and 80's. It was the worst.

[debm55]

38. Got that right.

[emulatorloo]

15. 'Yum-yum on a bun' in Junior High

Some kind of mystery meat prepared sloppy-joe style. The cafeteria really called it “yum-yum on a bun.”

It tasted horrible and we never figured out what kind of meat it was. We had never tasted anything like it outside of the school cafeteria.

[debm55]

18. HAHAHHAHHHAHA. yum yum on a bun. Thank you emulatorloo.

[emulatorloo]

19. ...

Thanks so much for the thread!

[debm55]

20. Your welcome

[surrealAmerican]

21. bag of Fritos.

I was always low on funds in high school. Fritos were about all I could afford most days.

[debm55]

22. Thank you surrealAmerican. I use to eat those little bags of Fritos too.

[ProfessorGAC]

23. No Cafeteria In Grade School

Bag lunch from home every day.
Our HS cafeteria was really good, so no complaints. Same with college.
I'm disqualified from this question, I guess.

[debm55]

39. I guess so.

[fargone]

24. It was called corned beef hash

I do not know what it really was.

[justaprogressive]

25. Prep school..

Red Flannel Hash

[debm55]

40. HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH That's funny.

[dchill]

27. Sorry, traumatic memory loss - specific to school lunches.

Seriously, though, I remember liking the sloppy joes and the goulash. Go figure - I still do!

[debm55]

41. Thank you dchill. But the sloppy joe isn,t made from mystery meat.

[KitFox]

30. KitFox

These posts are making me laugh! I remember many of these mentioned, also. The worst in elementary was thin watery looking clam chowder. The whole school smelled bad all day.

[debm55]

42. Thank you KitFox. I can imagine the smell.

[Diraven]

31. Goulash!

At least that's what they called it. Basically just random leftover meat and vegetables turned into a stew. It was different every time because it depended on whatever they made too much of the previous 2 weeks.

[debm55]

47. Hahahhahahahhhahahahahhhaahh That's funny and gross. Thank you Diraven.

[zeusdogmom]

32. About once a month a vile smell would float from the cafeteria and envelope the hallways

Sauerkraut (US surplus #10 can variety), runny instant mashed potatoes with a pat of “butter” on top and half a local butcher’s idea of good kielbasa 🤮. It was an awful meal. The school still reeked of it the next day

This is not a bad meal IF properly prepared with quality ingredients. But the cafeteria most certainly was not working within those perimeters.

[debm55]

43. YOU WIN the Post. My mother would make it at home and it gave me the drive heaves, I can't imaging eating the school

version

[Permanut]

33. School lunches were tolerable for me, but later..

I had a chance to stop by for lunch in the school cafeteria with my SO's 5th grade son.

We had "deli sandwiches"; a little dry bun thing with what we assumed was baloney, and some yellow stuff that might have been cheese at one time. No mayo, mustard, relish, nothing.

That was in 1988, but we still laugh about "deli sandwiches".

[debm55]

44. That doesn't sound like any deli sandwich, I am familiar with. Goodnes.

[moniss]

35. Chop Suey that was

served over an ice cream scoop of rice that, varying from week to week, could either be a solid ball of starch welded together or way undercooked hard little white shards. The beef chop suey was about 5 levels of quality below Chun King and was more like what might get shipped in a 55 gallon drum. Usually you were lucky if there was an actual, barely visible piece of meat. The sauce/gravy was more like a way over salted slurry that would make canned broth seem thick and tasty.

Usually accompanied by a scoop of what we were told was sweet corn but it was as pale as paper and every bit of flavor had been boiled out of it so nobody knew for sure what it was. This would be served with the usual doughy, small dinner roll that you could hold in your hand and squeeze into a small ball with complete confidence it would never spring back. You could wash all of that down with a carton of milk that was lukewarm because the cases had been delivered an hour before and had been sitting in the hot kitchen off to the side.

I began to not eat lunch at all and when I hit junior high it was like finding Heaven when I discovered that a small bakery was only a couple of blocks from school. It was a closed campus and we would sometimes get caught for leaving the school grounds but it was worth the detentions. Jelly filled bismarks and filled long johns. When I hit high school it was also a closed campus but some kids who had cars could leave for work/study jobs or doctor appointments etc. and if you begged you could hitch a ride with them as long as you ducked down until they were out of the driveway. Once they got a block away they could stop and let you out and you could walk to the burger joint (chains didn't exist) and order to go. Getting back unseen could be risky but there were a couple of different wooded areas bordering the school and you could take your chances as to which one the vice principal would be watching. We never worried much about the principal because he would usually split for lunch to the local golf course bar and not come back until the end of the day.

[debm55]

45. Your version on the Chinese lunch is absolutely hilarious. That you so much.moniss. I guess there were other kids that

ate it.

[Best_man23]

36. The "Manager's Choice"

The food-like substances that made up the "Manager's Choice" varied, but it was usually concealed by some sort of sauce or gravy.

Perhaps this was training for what the Colonel in the first Rambo movie referred "to eat things that would make a billy goat puke."

[debm55]

46. Thank you Best_man23 That is so funny.