I ate and enjoyed a lot of the food in my high school cafeteria (disgusting but true). Grilled cheese sandwiches, poutine, and my personal favourite - pizza nuggets. Also left you feeling somewhat sick afterwards but SO good!

There was no hot lunch at my private elementary school, so while I was there my mom started one three days per week. At the time I was somewhat embarrased to have my mom be the lunch lady, but I was always glad to see her. And now that I'm older, I think that's really awesome. It was way better than your typical school lunch, too, I'm sure!

In high school all I can remember is my favorite day - hot open faced turkey sandwiches and mashed 'potatoes', completely covered in some gelatanous pale brown gravy. In retrospect, ew. But at the time, it was great.

My wife and I actually had a "school lunch week" a few months ago. For dinner we made "grown-up" versions of turkey turnovers, chili dogs, taco salads, and shepherd's pie.

It was great; we talked about school memories, old friends, and favorite teachers.

Boarding school here for 4 years, so lots of school breakfast/lunch/dinner. It all was in (continental) europe though, so not too much unhealthy stuff ... they even refused to make fries because they said that that would make things too fatty. Still sometimes stuff like spring rolls (for sunday brunch) or self made pizza got kinda fatty. Breakfast always was lots of cereal (mostly without sugar, but you could add it yourself), rolls ... lunch always consisted of most of the time o.k. meals, with salad and dessert, so pretty good I guess, (compared to school lunches in us/uk) though when compared to similiar boarding schools we always felt that others had it better.
And they really could cook well if they wanted to ... (strawberry cake on special occasions or christmas dinner come to mind)

i went to public school here in brooklyn, so what i remember most are the jamaican beef patties - even though my school was like 99% russian heheh. i also remember the general store selling all sorts of bad stuff they couldn't give as the free official lunch. most days, i'd sell my PB&J for a quarter so i could buy salt'n'vinegar potato chips :)

I went to a Texas public school and remember eating in elementary school things like Frito Pie, Salisbury Steak, Pizza (rectangular slice to fit the tray compartment), Taco Salad, Burger, Grilled Cheese Sandwich, and Churros (the long fluted tubes like what they sell in NYC subway stations with ). And there was an ice cream cart - drumsticks and push ups were the most popular. Ice cream was $.25 and only the spoiled kids had parents who gave them money for that.

Public School in Hawaii - Peanut Butter and Guava Jelly Sandwiches on white bread or Beef stew day!

California may be the land - Oh-So-Healthy eating now and the mecca for foodies, but in the 70's, school food was as basic ( I am being kind) as you could get... For .35 cents a day there was a never ending supply of a Hamburger Helper type of main dish or Fish sticks and regardless of what was served the side vegetable was green peas those evil Lunch Ladies even put peas on the ever so rare Pizza slice ...LOL.. oh the memories -- took years before I could even look at a green pea much less eat one...

I must have been weird.... but I loved our school's cafeteria. When I was in high school the cafeteria had two lines with junk food (pizza, chicken sandwiches, fries), one line w/ a salad and potato bar and one line with homestyle food. I almost always ate the homestyle line because it was filled with yummy homemade items from the cafeteria ladies. And it didn't hurt that I knew one lunch lady since the day of my birth-- Miss Patsy always gave me seconds on mac & cheese!

I also loved breakfast at my school-- I could get a biscuit or bagel with juice for $.35.

Public school in Toronto, but my sister and I were the only Chinese kids around. I took so much abuse for the Vitasoy tetrapak my mom always packed -- it had the phrase "an edible oil product" on it. With no microwaves, I got tepid Chinese food packed into a thermos. So much mockery. I just wanted my friends' baloney sandwiches and oreo cookies.

I hated those little weenies. They were too sweet for me. Yet I marveled at the big-a$$ warm cookie during recess that was only a quarter. I think the thing I was perplexed by the most was the pizza boat, a combo tostada/pizza. It wasn't good, wasn't bad, it just went thud in your stomach and you were on your way. I gave up on school food after elementary school.

I went to public school in the south. We had fried chicken, fried okra, pulled pork bbq sandwiches, pizza, tater tots, brunswick stew, chocolate cake. Yum, but not very healthy!

I grew up in rural Georgia, and recognize a lot of things on Fingernail's list, minus the Churros and Frito Pie. I don't know if I'd be as keen on it now, but I adored the soupy instant mashed potatoes. I wasn't keen on the fried okra, but everyone else thought I was insane to trade it away.

I also remember just LOVING the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches because they were on white bread (which we never had at home), and the peanut butter and jelly had been thoroughly mixed together before being added to the sandwich (I guess to cut out a couple steps for the lunch ladies.)

An odd Southern thing, I think, was the occasional pear salad-- half a canned pear topped with mayonnaise, shredded cheddar, and sometimes a maraschino cherry, all in one of those little plastic dessert cups. Sounds bizarre, but I loved it back then.

I also went to public school in rural GA(southwest corner). We had peanut butter and honey mixed to perfection on white bread. Usually served cross cut with soup and two sticks of cheddar. We had fried chicken at least once a week..............and it was on the bone no nuggets. One of my favorites was tuna fish served on a bed of lettuce, saltines, and a cinammon roll as big as the rectangualr pizza. And the rolls could not be beat.

We also had the crazy pear salad...........sometimes at home too.

I also went to public school in the south. In the 70s and 80s. But, except for the cheap and too-sweet peanut butter and the pear salad mentioned above, I don't remember being served anything edible at school. I still have nightmares about baloney, canned baked beans, and spiced apple rings---bright red and heady with cloves.

I went to school in suburban Minneapolis and I ate school lunch almost every day for 12 years. I loved it.

My favorites were Fiastada Pizza (mexican pizza), Rib-b-que sandwiches (fake BBQ ribs), Italian Dunkers (cheese bread with spaghetti sauce), and Chicken Nuggets. The brownies and chocolate cake we got were amazing, they used prunes to keep it moist.

There was fish or vegetarian entrees every single Friday during lent. Lots of Catholics up here. Sometimes it was pizza so you could choose vegetarian or meat.

In grade school, we got the same lunches as all catholic schools in los angeles. The plastic sealed cardboard plates with wienies and baked beans, pizza and a salad in a ziploc on Wednesdays. Every once in a while we'd get those triangles of frozen juice/ice pop.

In high school, the cafeteria was more expensive, with pizza hut personal pizzas and other food. The things we would eat all the time were the bagels and cream cheese , bean and cheese burritos or those soft grandmother's cookies - zapped in the microwave to make everything all melty.

Our friends on scholarship would have to work there at lunch - so lunch was usually a backpack full of burritos and bagels 5 minutes before we had to get back to class.

My private elementary school had the dubious distinction of getting its hot lunch meals from the local hospital! Lots of soggy vegetables, overcooked macaroni and cheese, and grey meat patties. We ate outside on a series of wooden benches, but because the school had, in its former life, been a farm and some of the animals remained, the benches were often covered with either chicken poop (bad enough) or peacock poop (much, much worse).

At my public high school, the most popular breakfast item from the cafeteria was something called a "zombie," a bun stuffed with cheese (American) and sometimes sausage (resembled lil' smokies).

1980's.

I mostly took my lunch to school. I was often made fun of by friends and even teachers for what I might have in my lunch. Things like kiwis, sprouts and I remember a teacher taking a bag of my carrot chips to the teachers lounge (smoke pit) to show to the all the other teachers.

I usually ate the hot lunch on pizza day. I remember using c-fold towels to douse the extra grease off the top of the rectangular slabs which we all loved.

Reconstituted guacamole on taquito day. It looked like boogers but tasted really good. Although my mother was a god-awful cook so anything not made by her was incredible to me when I was a kid.

My mom would always give me a sandwich (pbj or turkey or ham or salami), a snack (usually fruit, fruit rollups, or a granola bar), and juice in a thermos. I loved when she would run out of regular bread (she always used whole wheat even back then) and would put peanut butter and jelly on pita bread. So good :)

My first elementary school had a real kitchen, so we were served things like mashed potatoes with meatballs and spaghetti, both of which I liked. Fridays were pizza days and the line would spill over into the playground. My second elementary school didn't have a real kitchen, just a place to re-heat things, so everything was trucked in from a central kitchen. "Salad" was a styrofoam cup of iceberg lettuce, choked with ranch dressing.

In high school, I'd eat three chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, still hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth. And just one dollar. They got harder and harder as the day went on, so breakfast was the time to have them.

oh wow...school lunch...cheesesteak with cheese wiz, which I am not a big fan anymore, prefer provolone on my cheesesteak now. what else...hmmm cheeseburger with fries, pasta with meatballs, chinese food...and lunch break was never complete without few fries thrown across the aisles or tables!

Buying lunch was interesting. The food always seemed great, or at least novel, especially since my family never went out to eat. I always ate everything, but looking back, those hamburgers were always too flat and dry, and the "braised beef" was more like stewed ground beef with peas in watery gravy over a scoop of mashed potatoes--sort of like an exploded cottage pie. Sack lunches were always more interesting--my classmates would gag when they'd see Mom's tortang talong (with roasted eggplant) or tuna omelet sandwiches, so I had to pretend that I didn't love eating them.

k-5 was god school: seventh day adventist church ladies could not cook to save their lives. spaghetti sauce was tomato paste and water. bean burritos with american cheese. horribly sticky sweet fruit punch.

grades 5-8 was public junior high in california and unmemorable cafeteria food. but, I had a stay-at-home dad who would cook in the afternoons and have mysterious pizzas and odd cookie combinations waiting as a snack after school. I remember eating lots of cheetos (bought for a quarter) and bean burritos.

grades 9-10 was high school with my dad as a teacher. he made the best turkey sandwiches with sprouts and avocado! my lunches were usually very large with lots of veg sticks pb and home made cookies.

grades 11-12 I had a "lunch pass" and a car, which meant lots of trips to the deli down the road for $1.99 sandwich of the day. sometimes I would ditch my afternoon classes to have lunch with my dad across town.

Public school in Texas also free lunch,
Lunch was usually-burgers(beef, chicken, or fish-during lent)- there is like a huge hispanic population in my town which the majority of us being catholics so during that time its fish dishes only at lunch, corn dogs, frito pies, Salisbury steak, pizza, tacos.

Since I was in elementary school I would skip lunch until I was in high school... then I started packing my own lunch or go out... we had open campus until my senior year- then I had to pack lunch again.

I went to school in a small Massachusetts town. School lunch didn't really get interesting until junior high. I'll list a few crowd favorites along with tips from the upperclassmen on how best to enjoy them.

Pizza - You got a rectangular slab, cut from a huge pan. It was always plain cheese. "Get some extra napkins and sop up the bright orange extra cheese grease pooling on top."

Tacos - These were always served with buttery, watery corn. The taco was minimalist. You had a shell, a bunch of greasy taco meat and a blob of orange mild cheddar shreds. No lettuce, no tomato. You might have got two, I can't remember. "Eat the corn first because the tacos get much better once the hot grease softens the shell."

Shrimp Roll - This was the best lunch, hands down. It was a hot dog roll, with six formed seafood shrimp that were deep fried in it, served with a giant amount of tartar sauce poured over it. No explanation was needed. "Shrimp rolls! Awesome!"

My school always seemed to have grilled cheese (with that horrible plastic type cheese that melts so well) and tomato soup on rainy days. That was imprinted firmly on me, and so now when during the early, dark and rainy part of spring, that's all I want to eat.

I went to hippie elementary and middle school - no cafeteria, no meat or refined sugar allowed on campus. I remember tempeh, popcorn, satsuma oranges and lots and lots of grain & vegetables from the gardens we kept.

I went to a traditional high school - my first exposure to a tater tot was as a freshman, and it was awful. Not sure if that's because it came from a cafeteria or because they really are horrible, it's 14 years later and I still can't bring myself to try them again. I brought my lunch every day after that.

when I was in grade school (mid to late 80s), I would eat the cafeteria food once every other week on cheese pizza day. as an almost life long vegetarian it was the only day I could eat. the rest of the time I brought the lunch my dad made for me. it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, corn chips (the really thick kind that you could get at health food stores in the 80s), carrot sticks, and raisins. that was the lunch every day for my entire grade school career.

in middle school, I started making my own lunches and the variety definitely approved.

I went to boarding school for high school and the food in the cafeteria was horrible. I ended up cooking a lot in my dorm and ordering way too much take-out.

WI public school, no matter what the meal of the day was there was always the option of getting a butter sandwich. Basically it was about a quarter inch thick of butter between white bread. So bad, but so good. I also liked breakfast for lunch, pancakes and sausage, yum. My other favorite thing was having brats for lunch. Yes, we ate brats for lunch pretty regularly and they were awesome with sauerkraut and some ketchup and mustard on top.

HaveForkWillTravel - thank you for mentioning the Zombies! It was the first thing I thought about when I saw this post. I remember they were pretty inexpensive and the sausage ones where marked with a crispy little knob of dough. I loved that little dough-mark and would order the sausage, but then throw them out or give them away and just eat the meat flavored cheesey bread.Yum! But I probably wouldn't enjoy it half as much now...
My favorite memories of my mom-packed lunches in grade school are the sliced vegetables with a little wax-paper triangular packet of seasoned salt to dip them in, and the hot-dog packed in a thermos of hot water to enjoy with a bun and all the trimmings.

I brought my lunch from home. One day in the second grade, for some reason my mom gave me money to buy lunch at school. The cafeteria served spaghetti that day, which meant a semi-solid mass of unidentifiable material dished out from an ice cream scooper. I cried and cried but couldn't tell anybody why -- I wasn't sure myself -- and the school called my mom to pick me up. That was my last school cafeteria meal ever.

Catholic grade school in the late 70s/early 80s meant hot lunch day once/week on Thursdays; alternating between hotdogs or hamburgers and burritos on those days. High school was so much fun because I had a cafeteria that was open every day plus a snack bar. By far the best memory was the tater tots-crispy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside.

We always tried NOT to get the school lunches in elementary school.... we didn't have a kitchen so the food was bussed in from another school- several towns over- and was always super gross. I remember people finding things like metal pieces in the "brownies" (looking back it was probably tin foil) and the same congealed pasta-like substance as Julie! We would also find things like slugs in our milk boxes. Honestly! Though it was a rare experience it turned you off milk for weeks.

My high school had catered lunches, so was very good. I remember the cookies especially. Giant and always warm.

I know this sounds super-nerdy but my mom packed my lunch straight through high school. She loves, loves, loves making school lunches full of tiny bits of things to send with you for lunch. I am 29 and I am sure if she lived closer, she'd make my lunch every day even now. I think she does for my grad school attending brother who still lives at home.

She would make tuna salad, shrimp salad, deviled eggs, dips etc. She'd even pack food for my friend Shankia who loved her dip and celery sticks combo.

I forgot how they always served tacos with watery corn! The soggy shell and the faux cheese that never quite melted.

The rectangle pizza with sausage was always a favorite of mine and to this day I still love pizza with a glass of milk. I was also a big fan of the grilled cheese. My mother insisted on making hers with cheddar and wheat bread so the wonder bread and velveeta was a special treat.

my elementary school lunch menu always listed sloppy joes as untidy josephs. it still tickles me to no end.

Salisbury steak was about the only stereotypical school lunch that I liked a lot.

I ended up bringing lunch a lot.

Only nostalgia makes school lunches tasty. I worked in schools as an adult and the choices were a bit slice of unpleasantly doughy pizza with fake cheese or burgers on white buns with fake meat. Fries with both. Fruits and veggies were animal-feed quality corn, soggy canned green beans, and applesauce loaded with HFCS. Nothing was made on site--it was all reheated frozen food. Nasty

It's no wonder the kids lunched on Doritos and Coke from the machines. Who wants to stand in line for 2/3 of your lunch period for that kind of food. (as an employee, I got to cut).

The one bright spot was the cobbler--apple or peach--yum.

Did anybody watch Jamie's School Dinners?

http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/J/jamies_school_dinners/

Bad memories of horrible school lunches flooded back to me while reading these posts. Jeez, I hope his work really changes things in school lunchrooms in North America too.

fries with gravy and ketchup

elementary school: I don't remember eating much of the lunches though I do remember the weird looking hot dogs in a long aluminum cup oozing black stuff.....no bun. I still wonder what that black stuff was....it was thick a little like molasses but didn't taste like anything.

jr high: giant cookie for brunch and an "It's it" for lunch with a root beer sometimes.

I almost always brought my lunch, but I do remember sitting with my bologna sandwich with a table of classmates eating mystery meat in gravy (also shipped in from another elementary school that had a kitchen), and never being able to eat bologna again. Blech!

My mom packed my school lunches in elementary school, and every day it was a single slice of ham on Miracle Whip-smeared Wonderbread. Blech.

I loooved my high school cafeteria. Veggie and fish burgers for $2, chicken and cheese burgers for $2.50, and Monty's Mushroom Burger for $3! There were also thick cut fries and tater tots. Every Friday there would be an ethnic lunch special for $5....lasagna & salad, perogies & cabbage rolls, curry & samosas, sweet 'n' sour chicken & spring rolls....mmmm...

Green gravy. Still wondering what that was.

oh public elementary school... chicken nuggets, rectangular pizza (cut from the giant sheet), the little boxes of milk, occasional fruit pies (those gross packaged ones), and the ice cream cart on fridays. I was super picky and maybe only bought lunch once a week, so I always thought it was so fun standing in line with my friends. the recess attendants would also pick the kids who were behaving well to go in the short line. that's probably not allowed anymore because it would hurt someone's feelings.

my highschool hardly served anything with enough nutrition to be called lunch. the most popular items were chocolate chip cookies and fries. they made an attempt at 'healthy' with a chinese chicken salad which consisted of a few leaves of anemic lettuce piled high with fried wontons... I overdosed on turkey sandwiches brought from home instead.

My elementary school had a brief experiment with milk in a bag. You can imagine all the fun we had with that. I also remember milk chugging contests. And I too remember the rectangular pizzas (which I loved, but now would probably be disgusted at). In high school I ate snickers and Coke pretty much every day because I started to hate the caf food.

From JK to grade 2 living in europe we had free lunches consisting of meat, starch and a vegetable, there was no pizza, burgers, fries... on special occasion the lunch ladies would make plain rice with mashed strawberries, sour cream and sugar yum.
Growing up in Canada in high school we had poutine (fries, cheese, gravy) pizza rolls, grilled cheese, fries, and these giant warm cookies.

My lunch experience all happened in middle Ga. Elementary school consisted of over cooked spaghetti with a mixed salad (with bell peppers, which was my first introduction) and rolls. Rectangle pizza with Ranch on it and salad (which I still put Ranch or French...or both on my pizza to this day, but I think it's just a quirk on my part.) And to this day the PB&J sandwich and vegetable soup they served is still my favorite combo to have.

Middle school I think I took my lunch. Having a Japanese mother means having lunches that people were always trying to look at as if it were a peep show or something--even if it was rice balls or soggy egg rolls with a piece of fruit and some juice in it.

High School is pretty much where I stopped eating lunch all together. All it took was too many moldy personal pan pizza, too many gristle found in chicken nuggets/sandwiches, breads being moldy, rotting salad, and well the only good thing was the taco line (sometime) and the sloppy joes. Oh and the introduction to fried okra was pretty amazing for me. But I just didn't eat until I got home and hung out in the library waiting for the day to end with the guys, who also didn't eat lunch.

College had some pretty great foods though but most of it was cooked in house. Thanks to college, I learned about the awesome flavoring abilities that Feta has on just about any pasta dish the Italian line made.