Ahhhh....School Lunches

Yesterday, as part of my volunteer job at the school, I was in charge of laying out the lunches for one of the preschool classes, so when they came into the cafeteria, everything was ready to go.

It was a fascinating job, actually, because it took me down memory lane a bit when it came to school lunches.

Did you all take your lunch to school? Or did you eat in the cafeteria? I did a bit of both. When I was in lower elementary, I had a metal lunch box (remember those?) with a matching thermos inside. (Things I should have kept, I'm sure.)

Each week, the school would send home a menu for the following week, and I would mark it with the lunches that looked appealing to me. Mom would send enough lunch money to cover those days, and on the days when the food just didn't cut it for me, she would pack a lunch.

Of course there were the infamous rectangle pizzas. You remember those, right? And I seem to remember some sort of stew that had peas, carrots and meat that resembled hamburger. And bread and butter. We had bread and butter frequently. Did you? (It was always cut on the diagonal, and I would eat it starting in the center, leaving the crust.) I also vaguely remember the chili, which I think was served with a peanut butter sandwich. Peanut butter is probably outlawed in cafeterias now, isn't it?

I'm not sure what it says about me that these are the only dishes I remember.

Anyway.

Unpacking the lunches at school taught me about foods I didn't even know existed and reminded me of things I'd forgotten.

* Squeeze yogurt. I don't even know the technical term for these, but several kids had them. They looked like those plastic popsicle pouches that you open by snipping the end and trying to eat the popsicle before it melts into juice at the bottom of the plastic sleeve. Except these had yogurt.

* All the yogurt, actually. I'm pretty sure as a kid, I wouldn't have touched yogurt with a ten foot pole, but these kids had it not only in the squeeze tubes, but also pouches and little tubs. (One kid even got M&Ms to sprinkle in his. Bet his neighbors were jealous of that!)

* Juice boxes and pouches. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh the fun of trying to stab the straw through the foil seal without jamming the straw or shoving it clear through to the other side. I would like the record to show I had 100% success.

* The thermos of hot food. Took me back to my own first grade days when Mom would pack leftover soup for me in a thermos. One kiddo had a thermos (and a parent with wild muscles to seal it) full of something warm and homemade smelling. Comfort food for the win!

* Pop Tarts. I lived on those for several years. Brown sugar cinnamon, S'mores, Chocolate, even the occasional strawberry. I'm not sure I've touched one since college or shortly thereafter, but apparently they're alive and well in school lunches!

* Lunchables. I used to think it would be the ultimate to eat a Lunchable. (They were never in my budget. So expensive for so little food.) And apparently some come with bite-sized candy bars!

* Crackers and cheese. Not the sandwich crackers with cheese in the middle. The cracker sticks that you dip into the nice hunk of processed cheese. I always wanted to eat the cheese with a spoon.

* Homemade delights. There were a few fun homemade things tucked in. A quesadilla, a wrap, and a couple of good old fashioned sammiches.

And then I came home and fixed Ryan's lunch. It was new for us on the home-front: a spinach, feta, chicken wrap with strawberries and ranch. For the first time ever, he raised an eyebrow and said, "Why are we eating strawberries with ranch?"

Just trust me, I said.

So he did. Probably in much better fashion than most preschoolers would have.

His verdict?

"Genius. You wouldn't think it works, but it does. I can't believe it."