from Kris B

As I wrote in last Friday’s post, I have been packing lunches to take to school for a long time!  Even when it was an option, I rarely ate a cafeteria lunch at school.  The exception to that is when I lived in Hawaii.  School lunch was a quarter back then and included all the pineapple and papaya I could eat.  I only lived in Hawaii for eighteen months so I didn’t get tired of the pineapple and papaya.  I imagine after twelve years of such a lunch, one might never eat pineapple and papaya again!

Mealtime at my house growing up was not fancy, extravagant, or adventurous.  Dinner was always meat, potatoes or rice, a green vegetable, and some kind of bread.  The rare treat was when we had breakfast food for dinner.  And, we rarely went out for a meal.  Admittedly, this was not just my family; it was the norm in the sixties and seventies, at least among the families I knew.

Lunch, whether at home or packed for school, was equally as predictable – a sandwich, chips, an apple, cookies, and milk.  My dad loved bologna so that was the go-to lunch meat at my house.  Sometimes I got ham, which was my preference. Oscar Mayer; it came in the yellow package and the meat was square.  That’s why I liked it.  It fit better on the bread than did the round slices of bologna.  Either meat was accompanied by both mayo and mustard, both on both sides of the store-bought wheat bread.

My chips of choice were Fritos.  I remember when Frito-Lay started selling them in the “lunch-sized” bags.  I believe there were six bags in a package and you got a free Frito Bandito eraser pencil topper.  I collected them in all the different colors.  The Frito Bandito was the product mascot from 1965-1971.  I think he then was deemed “politically incorrect”  in 1971 and thus he disappeared.  Those pencil toppers might be valuable collector’s items now. 🙂

My mom always bought red delicious apples.  It was always a whole apple in my lunch.    I’m not sure the idea of cutting and coring an apple before putting in my lunch ever even crossed my mom’s mind!

Cookies were either Oreos, Chips Ahoy, or Fig Newtons.

I always bought milk at school.  For most of my time in school, a carton was less than ten cents.  There were no soda machines at school.  Our drink choices were milk, water, or nothing.  That was it.  And no one complained about it.

So what’s in my lunch bag now?  The contents of my daily lunches have changed, but they exemplify the same level of simplicity and predictability as they did when I was a kid.  I do still have an apple every day.  The only difference is that now I use the apple slicer and have eight uniform pieces.  And, no more red delicious apples!  I am a fan of honeycrisp apples.  My bag of Fritos has been replaced by a bag of baby carrots.  Every now and then, I will make a PB&J sandwich, but most of the time, my “main course” is either celery and peanut butter or a Luna bar.  The biggest change in my lunchbox over all these years is no more cookies.  Some days that is a bigger disappointment than others.  On the days that I miss those Oreos most, I make a trip to the faculty lounge with the hope that someone has left some goodies to share.  I’d say the odds of that are about 50/50.

The same things for lunch day in and day out may seem boring to some.  For me, it’s one less thing to worry about.  I don’t have think about what to buy for lunches when I grocery shop or what to pack in the morning.  I can accomplish both tasks on auto-pilot.  And the truth is, the way my schedule is, I eat breakfast at 6:15 and lunch at 1:30.  By that time I get to lunchtime, I am usually so hungry that I am happy for whatever has made its way into my lunch bag!

Thinking about my history of school lunches has made me realize just how much a creature of habit that I am.  I also realize that keeping things simple is what comforts me and keeps my stress level minimal.

I wonder what lunches will be like if I ever decide to retire!  I suspect I’ll still eat the same way.  The one big plus may be that my Luna bar, carrots, and apple will be accompanied by freshly made coffee instead of a travel cup of cold-ish coffee that has been siting on my desk since 7am. 🙂

from Tracey G.

When I was in school, I think it was pretty equal as to whether I bought lunch or brought lunch. I can remember, back then, the newspaper would print the weekly menu, you paid x amount of dollars for your weekly lunch card that I think got punched out, so you could get school lunch until you had no more punches left, then repeat the process. I’m sure I did that until junior high, where you paid cash as you went so you could order off the “a la carte” menu. It always depended on what I liked – if it was something good that day, I ate a school lunch, and if not – home lunch it was!  So, with that, my favorites would be:

Home Lunch Category: Hmmm, this is tough, I never liked PB&J until I got older, like my 30’s (but I mostly love peanut butter sandwiches, no J, lol), so that wasn’t a lunch option for me. I think my favorite was a thermos of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (or their Chicken and Stars soup) and some chips/crackers! Since there weren’t cool juice boxes back then, and my thermos was in use, I was forced to get milk – BLECK! I do not like to drink milk. I will drink it with chocolate or strawberry syrup, that’s it. The end. So, I’m sure the milk I got at lunch went mostly untouched! But that was elementary for the most part, once I hit junior high and high school it was rare, with either the lunch line of choices or the short, sandwiches-only line – that I’d bring lunch from home lunch at all.

School Lunch Category: I can recall a LOT of things I didn’t like that they’d have for “hot lunch”. There even a few times of having my mom come to eat lunch with me the day something yucky would be served so I could prove, that yes, the hot dogs were really GREY! So, what I can remember is that one of my favorites, that stayed a favorite throughout my school career, was the ever-popular square pepperoni pizza! And nope, still didn’t dig milk, I was so happy when I got to high school and could have a fruit punch or something other than milk!!

So, for me, those are my two faves – that I can recall at the moment anyway, lol. I’m sure I’ll think of loads more AFTER this gets posted!

What was your favorite lunches in school – either home or school-provided? How about now?? Leave us a comment and let us know!