I must be a bit older than all y'all. We didn't have fancy things like shredded chicken, tacos, or BBQ ribs. Of course, this was in the Lyndon Johnson years, lol.
Kindergarten - milk and cookies snack every day. Just for that year, the half-pint cartons had a flat top with a foil strip on one corner which you peeled off and pulled back to drink. Only time I ever saw that
Mom packed my lunch to save money, but would let me buy every other Friday. I would peruse the menu each day and build up the anticipation. For all of my elementary years, lunch was 25 cents - if you just bought milk it was 2 cents my first year, 3 cents afterward. Mom would take the coins, wrap them in a Kleenex, and tie it in a knot so I couldn't pull it out of my pocket by mistake and lose it.
Here the classic grade school lunches that I remember:
- Hamburger Day! w/crinkle-cut fries or tater tots, veggie, dessert. Hamburger was almost always on a Friday. And who didn't "draw" a smiley face using ketchup on their bun and meat before smashing them together?
- Fish Sandwich Day! w/tater tots, etc. And the cooks put out bowls of large pitted black olives on our tables during Fish day. I could gross out my classmates by eating those
- Western Day! Ham, white bean soup in a bowl, cornbread - and apple crisp!
- Roast Beef Day! Thin, tough, impossible to chew. With the aforementioned mashed taters in the ice cream scoop.
- And ...... (drum roll, please) ..... Jonny Marzetti Day! Well, that one was hard to get excited about, but I could tolerate it.
Once in a while it was chocolate milk, which we loved. Other favorite items were chocolate no-bake cookies, and cherries for dessert (basically, pie filling in that gooey reddish-brown sauce). Lima beans, succotash, baked beans. Great stuff