School Lunches

Amber blogged about school lunches, and I decided to write my own post about them. When I was young I rarely bought my lunch. Once in awhile my parents would let me, but most of the time I took a sack lunch.

My sack lunches were usually the same. I usually had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on homemade wheat brick..I mean bread. I usually had a baggy full of either cheetos or fritos. Sometimes I had a small apple. Sometimes I could get a dime from my parents and buy either some milk, or a fudgecicle. My favorite lunches were when my Mom would make a meatloaf sandwich. I think I took tuna sometimes, but not often. I don't remember my mother every buying lunch meat. If she did, I'm sure it was bologna, which I never really liked.

I grew up in Texas, and had Texas meals when I bought my lunch. They served things like black eyed peas. My favorite things on the menu were the mashed potatoes, hot rolls, and cobbler. I remember trading my dessert for other people's mashed potatoes. They were my all time favorite food back then. The cafeteria often made too many rolls for their lunches. At the end of lunch, the lunch ladies would bring out trays of rolls to give out to anyone who wanted one. I loved them!

In High school there wasn't much choice at lunch. The main lunch line usually served hamburgers. It just wasn't that good to me. When I began running cross country and track, I found that those hamburgers would sit in my stomach all day, and then do an Irish jig while I was running. So I stopped eating the hamburgers for lunch and opted for the salad. My school had the best salads! They had ...dang, can't think of the name of it.....the green salad with eggs and ham. One of my favorite salads was the fruit salad. They had cottage cheese with a pear on top, and other fruits.

I'm afraid my kids' lunches weren't much better than mine. I usually gave them either a peanut butter and jelly or turkey sandwich. They complained about mayonaise and mustard, so it was just plain bread and turkey. I usually gave them a capri sun, and a small bag of chips. Boring... When I tried to give them different foods, they complained and wouldn't eat it, so I stuck with the same old boring lunch. They didn't want any pickles in their lunch: too smelly. They didn't want frozen Gogurts....they perspired and made the sack wet. (even though I wrapped them in a paper towel) I did send my son some Ramen in a thermos once. By lunch time, the noodles had soaked up ALL of the broth, and it was one huge noodle mess. I tried sending Hi-rollers....they hated them. They don't like my beloved meatloaf sandwiches. They hate tuna fish. Seriously, if you have any better ideas for school lunches, please tell me!

Here is a recipe for one thing that I sent that they hate, but which I would have loved as a child.
I've blogged about this before, but here is a reminder:

Chinchilla Delight
Take a flour tortilla and spread it with peanut butter. Sprinkle some chocolate chips on the peanut butter. Fold it like a burrito with the ends tucked in. Butter both sides. Fry until golden brown on both sides. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. You can vary this by adding different fillings. The original recipe called for slices of banana and chocolate chips. At the time when I first began making these, I had a chinchilla. When I made this for my kids, they said it looked like chinchilla food, and began calling it chinchilla delight. The name stuck.