School dinners, as satirised so accurately by
The Simpsons (
zoo animal meat,
creamed corn, grease vats, et al), were a
grim reality for most of the
population of the UK at one time or another. Your typical school dinner involves either
chips and
beans, or various pieces of unidentified meat and grey boiled
vegetables.
Dessert was usually some kind of
cake or
pudding served in a blue
plastic bowl with the option of
custard or
chocolate gloop from a truly
gargantuan metal jug. Drinks were
water or
milk (water served in reusable plastic
beakers).
Some amazing foodstuffs were sporadically sighted in school dinners which crop up nowhere in the outside world, such as the delectable cheese wheels. Scotch eggs and roast potatoes also featured heavily. (I once put away an entire buffet plate of roast potatoes on a school trip. And I'd do it again!) School dinners are a great example of skirting at the very boundary of health and safety laws, and flatly contradict the healthy eating thread of the national curriculum. And of course, they fund the machinations of that mysterious sect, the Dinner Ladies.