School dinners

[MEL78]

Adding to my earlier comment the dinners in our school are pretty good and cooked to the best of our ability, however when you have to cook to a budget maybe they are not of the standard some people would want however when you think that they only cost £1.65 a day in my area (before they were on a free trial due to stop in september and half of us are out of a job due to this lovely government) due to drop to £1.50 in september that you can't get a happy meal for this price !!!!!!!!!!!!

[chickenchargrill]

This isn't anything personal, but surely bulk buying for a school, or more than one school, equals bulk discounts? I cook a very good selection of foods for my family, all healthy, for around £1 per person per day - so that's 3 meals rather than one school dinner. We're entitled to free school meals, but I would never claim them. The selection isn't brilliant and the food is generally overcooked and dry. I'd rather know exactly what my kids were getting by preparing it myself.

[mrsflibble]

I feel so lucky that soph's school dinners are fab. cooked on site from fresh (or ok freshly frozen) ingredients. I've eaten them myself when I was volunteering ,they're great.

[Susie]

Maybe what depresses me more than anything else(and God knows the list is long enough) is this essentially British attitude to food.To generalise,and carachterize a little perhaps,getthe stuff as cheap as possible,throw it down your neck as quick as possible,then get back to work/the telly (delete as appropriate) as soon as possible.I guess it's something to do with wartime rationing,or something,I'm sure it's not natural,how else could the british obsession with cookery programms be explained? a sort of subconcious desire to return to reality.

Have you read Bad Food Britain? She says that too. I think one of the problems is that British food often just isn't very good (not British cooking/ cuisine, the actual food) so if you're sitting there with your T***o pizza you're not going to enjoy it, discuss it, or make an occasion of it because the whole thing is just faintly unsatisfying and miserable. And you eat it while you're watching Heston Blumenthal do something that involves a lot of machinery to reassure yourself that no-one would expect you to do that kind of thing anyway. It might be rationing but I wonder if you could also trace it back to early industralisation (or the Puritans! Although perhaps I'm being influenced there by that Blackadder episode with the turnip. See the little pixie...).

[Sally Jane]

I may be the odd one out here, but I remember school dinners with enormous fondness. Mind you, my mother was a truly terrible cook, so it may have all been relative!
Funnily enough, when I was at one particular primary school (I was there for about 3 years, in the late 60s) it didn't have a kitchen, and meals were brought in from another school which did. They were then put in enormous warmers to be served up later. I don't have any particular bad memories of those meals either - perhaps my mother was a REALLY bad cook!
I particularly remember wonderfully crispy roast potatoes and amazing apple crumble, and later on at a different school they served up a fish pie which was gorgeous - fish in sauce in a proper pastry case. Ithought it was fabulous and went up for second (and possibly third) helpings, but I must have been the only kid who liked it because they never ever served it up again!
By the time my own children were at school it was pizzas, burgers and chips-with-everything, but the school had its own kitchen, so at least stuff was served up 'fresh'.
I suppose food culture has changed so radically in the past 40 or so years that, much as we'd like it to happen, the majority children are not going to get really good school food, especially when costs are being pared to the bone. We could even end up with school meals being phased out altogether in many areas as councils try to make more and more cuts.
Thank goodness some of us are becoming so much more aware of how to grow and cook decent food - the children and grandchildren of Ishers will be the food pioneers of the future, after all!

[PlainQB]

Good food can be cooked on site. I'm lucky enough to have work canteen and we get a salad bar, baked potoatoes, two meat options, a veggie option, soup, hot veg, pudding and sarnes. We also have cooked breakfast everyday. Our chef does have a very tight budget and it does show in the occasional odd creation but generally it's quite good. We pay about £2 - £3 for a lunch depending on how much you eat. We have themed days, like St. Georges day or Italy day.

But all of this is dependant on the enthusiasm and creativity of our chef. I'm sure if we had a different person we'd get rubbish because they'd go for the easy options to stay within their budget.