School lunches

Today, Joshua decided he wanted to take his lunch to school. I made him a roast beef and provolone cheese sandwich, his favorite. He got out some plastic containers, filled one with exactly ten grapes and four baby carrots and filled the other with an unspecified number of pretzels...I usually give him ten pretzels when he eats a sandwich so I wish I had asked him how many he packed. He didn't want to pack the grapes, carrots and pretzels in plastic sandwich baggies because the teacher told the class they had to throw them away, he wanted them in the plastic containers so he could bring them home...I guess he is being green...He has a plastic container for his sandwich because I hate a smooshed sandwich. He also packed a box of yogurt covered raisons for snack and a bottle of water. I told him he could buy his milk at lunch because I don't want to have to bother with a thermos or anything. He was very excited to be packing his own lunch in his Scooby Doo lunch box. The first two days at school, he bought his lunch...chicken nuggets, tater tots and peaches, then a hotdog, broccoli with cheese and something I can't remember.

All of this lunch business got me thinking of my own elementary school lunches. I have to say that my very favorite lunch in elementary school were cowboy hats, a slice of bologna topped with an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes and a slice of cheese, broiled in the oven until the bologna curled, the cheese melted, and the shape resembled cowboy hats. Another favorite was pinto bean day with a slice of white bread in a bowl topped with pinto beans. When we buy bologna, I often make myself cowboy hats for lunch and I have been known to still eat pinto beans over a slice of white bread. Another favorite lunch was bacon slices and melted, shredded cheese on a hotdog bun. I do still eat a lot of bacon and cheese sandwiches, but never on a hotdog bun. I also have fond memories of what I call schoolhouse rolls. I loved the rolls. I can also remember Mark Phillips loved the rolls too, many of the kids would give Mark their rolls and he would eat an entire plate of rolls. I also remember having milk drinking races. Oh, and bringing Strawberry Quik mix in an old prescription medicine bottle to mix into milk.

I don't think we had choices in elementary school, I think we just ate what they gave us on the divided trays. We didn't have beverage choices other than milk. We didn't have any food choices until high school. We also didn't take our lunch unless it was a field trip day...taking lunch to school was not at all cool until after we had a big walk-out in high school to protest not having a long enough lunch period to get through the line and eat and then we went through a period of brown bagging as a form of protest. Now, I think it's the norm to do a combination of both.

So, next time you drink a glass of milk, see if you can remember your favorite elementary school lunch...and try not to laugh and spit milk out your nose...

Oh, and to go even further back, I can still remember the tuna casserole with peas and topped with crushed potato chips from Kindergarten.