Perhaps you've heard about changes in the school lunch program this year. Perhaps not.
Our students have been a bit vocal in their displeasure with the offerings. A team of inspectors is in the district this week. Today they were at Newmentia. Here is today's menu, as observed on the tray of Mr. Kitchen Sink, the colleague to my right. Please consider the fact that he had a TEACHER lunch. Normally a bit more...um...filling than a student lunch. That's because teachers pay the grand sum of $2.80, while students (who pay) fork over a mere $1.80.
Chili-styrofoam bowl the size you would get full of sweet & sour sauce with your Chinese take-out
Carrots-raw, sticks, (like a large carrot cut in the middle, then quartered into spears), eight pieces
Apples-two, red, small, size of billiard balls
Sunbutter-paper cup of the kind used to deliver pills to hospital patients, one-third full
Crackers-saltine, two packets of two crackers
Milk-half pint of regular or chocolate, 1%
Bon appetit!
The tonnage of carrots and apples flung into the garbage can was astonishing. I would have run screaming to rescue them, not for people, but for the horses across the road from the Mansion, had not my inner Non-Spectacle-Maker grabbed me by the throat, right across my thyroid scar. The lads who lunch (my sistren abandoned me today) commented that the custodian would not be able to drag that bag out to the dumpster.
I'm sure Mr. Kitchen Sink expected more for his $2.80. Those poor kids must have been starving twenty minutes after lunch. Had they eaten everything on the tray, problems were no doubt in the offing. The doorless bathrooms would have had revolving doors, due to the massive ingestion of fiber. A shock to the delicate systems of fast-food youth.
My frozen microwaved sausage egg biscuit was much more filling.
It makes you long for the good old days...Vending machines that would dispense soda, chips and candy bars for truly balanced lunches for the kidlets.
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteYes, we used to have them right there in the cafeteria. And a snack bar, too, to raise money for the junior class.
At least students weren't starving back then. You can lead a kid to healthy food, but you can't make him eat. You can, however, make him see snacks as something forbidden that he must get his hands on.
Ick. I'd be crabby too. Makes the government issued macaroni and pizza and canned green beans that I had in grade school and high school seem "good"
ReplyDeleteChick,
ReplyDeleteAt least they were rib-stickers. We used to get ACTUALLY COOKED FOOD when I went to school. Like my mama made. Not just thawed and reheated.