1. School pudding with pink custard
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In this day and age when we have to remind ourselves to try and eat healthily every day, we’d really rather not know what went into that custard to make it illuminous pink! All we know is that, at the time, it tasted amazing with a square of delicious school pudding!
2. Square slices of pizza
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It was amazing being able to have pizza as school lunch – every day, if we wanted it – but one thing was for certain: they weren’t going to abide by a round pizza! It was squares or nothing, and let’s face it, the squares were never big enough because we always wanted more… like 10 more.
3. Mashed potato that looked like ice cream
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For some reasons, school dinner ladies saw fit to serve up mashed potato using those metal ice cream scoops, which meant all mashed potatoes were served in perfect balls. For a second, if we were half asleep, we definitely thought we were being served vanilla ice cream with beans and peas.
4. Cornflake tart (bonus: with custard!)
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The cornflake tart was another classic school dessert, usually made as one big circle tart where you’d get served a triangle slice of the sticky, glazed cornflakes with a biscuit bottom. As delicious as it was, the tart was very dry, so the best thing to balance it out was custard poured over the top!
5. The broccoli and cauliflower cheese you definitely avoided
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When they weren’t trying to serve you square pizza, they were definitely trying to force you to be healthy by a generous helping of a broccoli and cauliflower cheese concoction that oozed all over the plate. To be fair, it wasn’t the worst thing in terms of ‘healthy’ because the melted cheese was oh so yummy.
6. Sprinkle cake with white icing
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Who can still remember the taste of this even now just thinking about it? That sprinkle cake, with soft sponge and white icing, seemed to have a very unique recipe exclusive to schools across the country. It’s doubtful we’d be able to recreate that taste perfectly today, because there was just something about eating it from a school dinner tray…
7. Turkey twizzlers
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Those perfect corkscrew twizzlers were so fun to eat at school – and so delicious, too! How many of you had them lobbed at you by your friend’s tray? Or maybe did that yourself? For most people, they were too delicious to waste in a food fight – but they were eventually taken off school menus due to nutrition concerns!
8. Mint-flavoured custard
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Just like that specific taste of delicious sprinkle cake, nothing beats the memory of mint-flavoured custard straight from the school kitchen! We’ve no idea why grown ups thought that the one thing kids wanted was bogey-looking mint custard over something like chocolate or strawberry, but there we go (we’d never admit it, but it was tasty).
9. Chocolate concrete cake
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It might have sounded like it was a rock hard slab that we would never be able to break into, but luckily this school chocolate cake was concrete in name only! This chocolate cake was often served up with that pink or mint custard that we all loved (to an extent) – but would you rather have a piece of this or sprinkle cake?
10. Chocolate cornflake cakes
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Chocolate cornflake cakes were not only served up at lunch as one of the tastiest snacks around, but it was also something you often had to attempt to make at home with your mum to bring into school, maybe for a school event or as part of a class project. It always tasted better when someone else made it, though!
11. Cheese pie
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In theory, cheese pie should be one of the best things around for school lunch, because it was just melted cheese in a pie. But just something about pies to a school kid didn’t sound too appealing, and it’s safe to say this was perhaps one of the most divisive school lunch options…
12. Alphabet spaghetti
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You definitely felt like you’d earned the right to skip English class after you’d had this for lunch because you’d spent the entire time testing out your spelling skills on your plate. Granted, the words you tried to spell likely weren’t on the approved curriculum, but it still counts, right?
13. Your school’s version of a roast dinner
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Just like roast dinner on a Sunday with your own family was seen as a treat, when school served up a full roast dinner it felt like a special day or a treat before the Christmas break. The funny thing is, the school one actually tasted better than your mum’s a lot of the time… it does take some skill to get a Yorkshire pud just right, after all!
14. A Babybel in your lunch box
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We know these addictive cheese snacks still exist today, but there’s just something nostalgic about a Babybel knowing it was guaranteed in every school lunch box. You had your staple sandwich in cling film, a packet of crisps, a hopeful piece of fruit, and then one Babybel as an added extra!
15. Jam roly poly
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Jam roly poly was another dessert staple at school (seriously, there were more pudding and custard options than there were healthy vegetables!) and one slice of jam roly poly on a plate with a side of custard felt like such a treat after a busy morning at school.
16. A glass of milk
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Do you remember the glasses you had your milk served in, too? They were always those frosted colored glasses, usually blue, green or pink, with a small portion of milk in them. And they were always out ready on that huge tray so you could grab one for your own, even though you wanted two.
17. Meat and tater pie
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School dinners had to try and get a good dose of protein into their school lunches, and the meat and tater pie was a popular choice because it was so stodgy and warming for those cold school days! So much so many adults would still readily eat this for lunch today – and probably still do.
18. Manchester tart
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You won’t be surprised to be remember yet another less-than-healthy baked good available for school lunches, but the Manchester tart was a classic in the 80s dinner hall. The baked tart was the perfect mix of shortcrust pastry, custard and delicious jam – but it was up to you whether you liked the cherry on top or not!
19. Retro lunchboxes with bags of fruit
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The rise of the packed lunch came due to the very obvious lack of nutritional options at school, forcing parents to get more creative and try to promote healthier lunches. While it wasn’t as exciting to have bags of fruit and healthy sandwiches in your box, it was exciting to get to choose your retro lunchbox design based on your fave TV show character!
20. Potato smiley faces
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Is it better or worse to eat something that’s smiling at you? Is it supposed to make you feel more happy about eating something ‘healthy’, or is it supposed to make you feel guilty? Either way, those potato smiley faces were a bit unnerving… but it didn’t stop us eating them, because they were scrumptious!
