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Weird or Icky School Lunches


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I am reminded of a friend's story. She was one of 13 kids. She referred to "scent of tuna sandwiches." Her mother would take a can of tuna, one hardboiled egg, and miracle whip. She'd spread it on bread -- 13 sandwiches worth -- smearing on, and wiping off -- to stretch one can of tuna for 13 lunches. On a "special" day, she'd add sweet pickle relish. The bread, naturally, was squishy white. The sandwiches when into baggies -- and the baggies were re-used forever (homemade baggies out of waxed paper).

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
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My son used to like egg salad sandwiches but stopped taking them to school because the other kids used to make fun of him for liking egg salad.  I offered to make two sandwiches, one for him to eat and one for him to push into the other kid's face, but he declined.

This reminds me of a great scene in a novel, Secrets of the Tsil Cafe by Thomas Fox Averill. The narrator, whose father owns a restaurant that serves only foods from the New World, gets tamales for his lunch and ends up getting in a schoolyard fight over his strange food. The next day, he throws his lunch away, and then he begs his mother for a normal lunch. He continues, "The next day, my mother gave me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a small bag of potato chips, and two Twinkies. I sat in the lunchroom and tried to eat the unfamiliar food. The sandwich tasted like a sweet sponge, the potato chips like salt, the Twinkies like sugar. Everything had the same texture: no texture at all. Nothing was rich, complicated. But nobody teased me on the playground." Then he goes home and asks his father for some tamales.

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The one my mother will never live down: Peanut butter and bacon. She had read a tip in a women's magazine that peanut butter would keep the bacon crisp. I never trusted Betsy McCall again.

I used to collect the Betsy McCall pages. Wow, haven't thought about that in years.

My mom used to get all sorts of gross ideas from women's magazines.

Betsy McCall! Have not thought of Betsy for let's say...many years! Thanks for tickling that part of my memory. Those paper dolls!

Seems weirdly appropriate to talk about Betsy McCall in a bad-sandwiches thread, doesn't it? She was, after all, the ultimate white-bread kid :raz: . . .

Kathleen Purvis, food editor, The Charlotte (NC) Observer

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Also there are other sandwiches that need to be wrapped, weighed down and stored in order for the dressing to permeate the bread.  One is panne bagnat.

Mmmmmmm, yes, I make marinated sandwiches all the time now. There's one in the Two Fat Ladies' cookbook called the Shooter's Sandwich (I think) that I'm dying to try. Steak and mushrooms, weighed down for a few hours. There's also muffeletta. :wub:

Unfortunately that method doesn't do much for bologna and american cheese, or olive loaf. :blink:

Edited by hjshorter (log)

Heather Johnson

In Good Thyme

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My father stayed at a boarding house while going to university (this is in Edmonton in the 60s). The lady who ran the place was Ukrainian and very kind, she often made sandwhiches for the young men who stayed there. My dad appreciated them, but was never able to eat them- they were lard sandwhiches!

That's right, just a few slices of bread with a generous filling of lard.

Makes me feel sick just thinking about it...

My eGullet foodblog: Spring in Tokyo

My regular blog: Blue Lotus

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smallworld, that's actually quite charming in a way.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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Growing up as a good Japanese-Canadian, mom would make us Steveston Style chow mein sandwiches. Also komabuko(sp) sandwiches. Basically fich cakes that you can now find everywhere in asian markets. Mom still makes them from fresh salmon. Yummmmm thanks mom, no boring PBJ for us.

slowfood/slowwine

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I was fairly lucky in the lunch department but had a friend that loved to bring a fried egg on toast. Imagine a hot fried egg stuck between slices of crummy toasted white bread, wrapped up tight while still hot and kept in a locker for a few hours. The result was flaccid and humid and oh so aromatic. It was so wet 'n wobbly by the time he tucked in that it took him two hands to hold it still enough to get a bite.

He said it was his favourite.

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Growing up as a good Japanese-Canadian, mom would make us Steveston Style chow mein sandwiches. Also komabuko(sp) sandwiches. Basically fich cakes that you can now find everywhere in asian markets. Mom still makes them from fresh salmon. Yummmmm thanks mom, no boring PBJ for us.

kamaboko sandwiches?

I guess it isn't much different then tuna? :blink: but eewwww!

Kristin Wagner, aka "torakris"

 

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I was fairly lucky in the lunch department but had a friend that loved to bring a fried egg on toast. Imagine a hot fried egg stuck between slices of crummy toasted white bread, wrapped up tight while still hot and kept in a locker for a few hours. The result was flaccid and humid and oh so aromatic. It was so wet 'n wobbly by the time he tucked in that it took him two hands to hold it still enough to get a bite.

He said it was his favourite.

Welcome to eGullet , Hickory! And thanks for reminding my of All Sandwiches Egg.

I am living proof that one can live to ones very late forties even though one ate a ton of unrefidgerated egg sandwiches. In any of their delightful guises.

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."

Studs Terkel

1912-2008

A sensational tennis blog from freakyfrites

margaretmcarthur.com

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My packed lunches were always delicious, but sometimes I did manage to frighten friends at school.

I particularly remember:

- sandwiches made from black German bread with cream cheese and real ham - lovely to eat and to look at

- boiled lambs tongues (forced to eat these facing the wall :biggrin: )

- unpeeled prawns (before such things were very common in the UK - great for frightening the unwary)

- dessert of sour cream with prune puree from Germany

- my father's best fruit cake had some friends queuing up for a taste

- home-made pizza

That's all I can remember at the moment ...

Chloe

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I can't put my hands on it this second, but I believe M.F.K. Fisher wrote about a sandwich made by a friend of the family that got its savor from being carried around for hours (or was it sat on) before being eaten while hiking.  Something like that.

I think those are two different sandwiches. In With Bold Knife and Fork, she describes a Railroad Sandwich: a hollowed-out loaf of French bread spread generously with butter and (optionally) some dijon mustard, and filled with sliced boiled ham. The whole is wrapped loosely in plastic, or foil, or waxed paper, and then in a towel.

Then, and this is the Secret Ingredient, call upon a serene onlooker (a broad or at least positive beam adds to the quick results, and here I do not refer to a facial grimace but to what in other dialects is called a behind-derrière-bum-ass-seat-etc.), to sit gently but firmly upon this loaf for at least twenty minutes.  (pp. 236-7)

But I believe there was also a sandwich of fried egg on white bread, wrapped in waxed paper and taken on hikes or to the beach when she was very young. That one I have not found yet.

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Just about any sandwich was disgusting by the time it had been a locker for 4-5 hours.

Nope: once, in Nice granted, a bag lunch had a french baguette spliced spread with butter and loaded with chocolate that melted, foil-wrapped, for 4 or 5 hours.

Edited by lissome (log)

Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons: That is all there is to distinguish us from the other Animals.

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edited to add I remember chicken roll well...and how about Olive loaf? Pressed ham?

::shudder:: Olive loaf and Miracle Whip sandwiches. On Pepperidge Farm white bread.

Just about any sandwich was disgusting by the time it had been a locker for 4-5 hours.

I too grew up with olive loaf and chicken roll sandwiches, though I think mine were on white bread and guldens..this was until my family moved to NC...somewhere along the line my lunches brought me grief.

I will never forget being picked on for having a sandwhich on a bagel (this was bou 1979, there were no bagels in the mountains of NC, and they were schlepped by relatives in their luggage). "Donut Sandwhich! Ew!!!"

My mother, may she rest in peace, always sent me to school with a dry sandwich. I think in retrospect it was a pain in the ass to pack my lunch, but she never put enough mustard on it. Never mayo. Meanwhile, I was often envious of my school mates pimento cheese sandwhichs and little debbie cakes why I had to eat my dry tuna sandwhich with an apple ( my mom was always on a diet, therefore so was I).

Matzo sandwhiches-you guys covered that all. See above bagel comment and insert "Cracker Sandwhich! Ewww!"

Of course now, I'd kill for my mom's dry sandwhichs, as she is gone & she was a kick ass cook outside of the lunchbox.

-----------------

AMUSE ME

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  • 12 years later...

Seems like an excellent time to exhume this discussion, and [once again] wax nostalgic over the atrocities that were foisted on you under the loose category of 'school lunch'.

 

The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that my mum made during the years I went to school in the US were pretty bad: Arnold's whole wheat bread (which was weird to me, since I was used to firmer, entirely unsweetened bread, in Italy) with home-made peanut butter and whatever jam was deemed appropriate for a child raised on health foods. The oil from the peanut butter would separate out and soak into the bread, so by the time it was unwrapped from its cling film, it was in a state resembling rigor mortis, and there was a whiff evocative of wet dog fur to season it. I don't think I ever ate one, I couldn't gag them down. Sometimes, the canteen offerings were more attractive, other times, not so much, but I seldom had a chance to eat the school food, because my parents dissaproved of it (looking back, I can't blame them).

 

So, what have the rest of you got?

Michaela, aka "Mjx"
Manager, eG Forums
mscioscia@egstaff.org

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I don't have atrocities, at least not from *my* point of view - the crap I pulled on my friends, though, might convince you otherwise.  My mom is a tremendous cook, and I regularly took heat-up leftovers with me to school for lunch.  My friends, though, were often quite horrified by the contents of my lunch kit.  

 

Highlights include Easter leftovers - rabbit long-stewed in cream sauce, over wild rice (a family tradition).  They thought this smelled tremendous, and would line up to try a bit; then I'd inform them of what it was exactly they were eating - the Easter Bunny - and watch them turn green.

 

Stepdad also made award-winning deep dish pizzas stuffed with things like shredded crab meat, langoustines, etc.  I'd tell people this was tofu and sea-bug pizza just to keep them away.  Keep your meaty-hooks off my pizza, dangit!

 

And for some reason, everybody but I and my friend Miriam, who had recently emigrated from Iran, was utterly horrified at the concept of a cold meatloaf sandwich.

Edited by Panaderia Canadiense (log)
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Elizabeth Campbell, baking 10,000 feet up at 1° South latitude.

My eG Food Blog (2011)My eG Foodblog (2012)

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I have less than fond memories of the school canteen regularly dishing up 'liver and onions' with mash and peas. The liver was gray shoe leather, the onions were burnt, the mash was lumpy reconstituted mash powder and the peas were rock hard.

Best days my life? Not gastronomically. It was years before I was able to eat liver again. Now I love it, but cooked properly.

Edited by liuzhou (log)

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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I used to get leftover Chinese food sandwiches - stir-fry tofu, stir-fry pork, braised beef.  I don't remember being teased about it in school, but I recall I was embarrassed about it all the same. The fillings didn't stay in the bread.  The sandwiches didn't taste bad, they're just weird. 

 

Hubby recently told me about the PB & cheddar sandwiches he used to get for lunch and loved. It sounded gross so he made me one, turned out pretty tasty. I've been having it for breakfast the last couple weeks.

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