Well, we have a lunchbox thread, how about school lunches?

[haele]

2. They started getting away from actual cooks when I was in High School.

But in Elementary school and Jr. High/Middle school (They did the switch the year I started Jr. High), I remember we had actual cooks that would start making both a hot and cold lunch every day for everyone around 8 in the morning.
There was always a snack "tray" with a choice of a piece of toast, veggies (primarily a piece of fruit, carrots and celery - though occasionally, we'd get snap peas in season) anti-pasta (cold cuts and cheese), and boiled eggs.
And by 10am, we'd be smelling hot lunch; big trays of lasagna, beef stroganoff, fried chicken, all sorts of casseroles, chicken-fried steak, the ubiquitous meat loaf and mashed potatoes, fish sticks/mac n' cheese on Fridays. Soup of the day, along with the toast.
They also made pudding, cookies, "tarts" or sheet-cake for dessert - in elementary school, they made us bring back our lunch tray before we could pick up a dessert; had to eat something "healthy".
The cooks weren't too bad, either - and you'd always be encouraged to get as much as you felt like eating, and there were many kids in my school where the school lunch was the biggest, most complete "real meal" they ate all day.

Once in a while, the school would get fast food (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burgermiester) for special events, but usually it was a last day of school before one of the breaks.
In High school, I had my first - and last - commercially provided school lunch. I went home to make my own hot lunch after that.

I swear the hot lunches back in the 1960's came from the same Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my Mom got at school when she took Home Ec.

Haele