It's middle school in the 90s or 80s and it's PIZZA DAY.
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@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly
Yeah neither her nor my mom are reliable witnesses when recalling which of them caused what family drama.
Iโm sure there was an incident probably standard stubborn kid stuff, mom over reacted, sis over reacted and as a consequence my brother and I are making the only sandwiches 2nd graders can make somewhat reliably.
Although it is something of an art to get peanut butter on bread without tearing the bread, as I recall.
@MCDuncanLab
Heh. Without recognizing it as drama my mother happily relates how the "kids make their own lunches" protocol happened in our family. Apparently when my elder sister was 6 she was taken to task for bringing her sandwiches home uneaten for a week. She countered with the sandwiches not being made the way she liked them (maybe it was margarine not butter?) and from that day on lunch making became the kid's job. Including our eldest sister, who was not involved in the exchange at all. When the younger siblings started school we got our lunches made for us for a week. I recall a lot of margarine and marmite sandwiches. On brown bread.
@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly -
@futurebird @jgordon @llewelly
I realize I totally hijjaked your thread with sandwiches. Iโm sorry. ๐ฅบ
@MCDuncanLab @futurebird @jgordon pizza is a topless sandwich.
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@Wyatt_H_Knott @llewelly @futurebird
Yeah I donโt get the Mac reference, but I do know the apple indent in a sandwich.
I did eventually graduate to ham sandwiches and an apple dent in a ham sandwich was quite the tragedy, all crushed lettuce and slimy mayo bread.
@MCDuncanLab @Wyatt_H_Knott @llewelly
Macintosh apple?
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@MCDuncanLab
Heh. Without recognizing it as drama my mother happily relates how the "kids make their own lunches" protocol happened in our family. Apparently when my elder sister was 6 she was taken to task for bringing her sandwiches home uneaten for a week. She countered with the sandwiches not being made the way she liked them (maybe it was margarine not butter?) and from that day on lunch making became the kid's job. Including our eldest sister, who was not involved in the exchange at all. When the younger siblings started school we got our lunches made for us for a week. I recall a lot of margarine and marmite sandwiches. On brown bread.
@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly@RedRobyn @jgordon @futurebird @llewelly
Dang, your mom and mine were cut from the same cloth.
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@MCDuncanLab @Wyatt_H_Knott @llewelly
Macintosh apple?
@futurebird @MCDuncanLab @Wyatt_H_Knott
that must be it, because the only other macintoshes are the boots and the computers, and presumably neither boots nor computers would be in school sack lunch, being too tough for youngsters to chew. -
@futurebird @mina We originally got standard sheet-pan pizza (corners and all) and didn't really have much bickering over which bits of it (You could ask for a specific type of piece if you wanted, but most people didn't care that much) but around my junior year they switched to a different supplier that appeared to just be segments of a continuous conveyor-belt pizza with only two "crust edges" (It looked like someone took a rectangular pizza and sliced the crusts off the short ends). Given that the crust on the old stuff were both A: enormous, and B: practically made of granite, the new stuff was objectively an improvement...
@becomethewaifu
If you're craving school lunch pizza, you can find the recipe the the USDAs high volume cookbook used by many schools in the 80s
It's on the Internet archive
https://archive.org/details/CAT92970475
You'll find the classic cheese pizza in section D-30 (~p 188) and crust in B-14 (~p 72)
It makes 100 servings (5 full sheet pans)
@futurebird @mina -
@MCDuncanLab
Heh. Without recognizing it as drama my mother happily relates how the "kids make their own lunches" protocol happened in our family. Apparently when my elder sister was 6 she was taken to task for bringing her sandwiches home uneaten for a week. She countered with the sandwiches not being made the way she liked them (maybe it was margarine not butter?) and from that day on lunch making became the kid's job. Including our eldest sister, who was not involved in the exchange at all. When the younger siblings started school we got our lunches made for us for a week. I recall a lot of margarine and marmite sandwiches. On brown bread.
@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly@RedRobyn @MCDuncanLab @jgordon @llewelly
I remember doing "margarine and marmite" well... just marmite. But it was another attempt at "exotic food" no one in Ohio knows about marmite but my grandmother had some for some reason and let me take the jar.
I'd read about characters in some book eating "marmite on toast" so I brought that for lunch one day.
It was VERY sticky and got stuck in the little plastic sandwich bag. "This is what they eat in LONDON"
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@RedRobyn @jgordon @futurebird @llewelly
Dang, your mom and mine were cut from the same cloth.
@MCDuncanLab
When I became vegetarian at 17 the response was "that's fine I like your cooking" ie she didn't intend to cook meatless meals for me, I'd just unwittingly volunteered to be the family cook.
@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly -
Thing thing about only "poor kids" bringing their lunch wasn't really true at our school. Most of the kids who brought a lunch just had very fussy mothers who thought the cafeteria food was terrible.
They were not totally wrong.
But my lunches... they were worse. I have memories of friends taking up a collection to feed me because I'd brought something that made no sense... like two cups of white rice with ketchup and nothing else.
@futurebird yikes thatโs bad. How did that happen?
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@RedRobyn @MCDuncanLab @jgordon @llewelly
I remember doing "margarine and marmite" well... just marmite. But it was another attempt at "exotic food" no one in Ohio knows about marmite but my grandmother had some for some reason and let me take the jar.
I'd read about characters in some book eating "marmite on toast" so I brought that for lunch one day.
It was VERY sticky and got stuck in the little plastic sandwich bag. "This is what they eat in LONDON"
@futurebird
London marmite is very different from antipodean marmite. Ours is even more salty and dark, with less sugar
@MCDuncanLab @jgordon @llewelly -
It's middle school in the 90s or 80s and it's PIZZA DAY. Yay!
One of the square slices behind the counter has a bubble. The dough has somehow acquired an air pocket. It's huge. The size of a tennis ball.
Everyone is talking about "The Bubble"
How do you feel about the bubble?
@futurebird Shout out to my Gen X and boomer friends!
Who remembers listening to the radio in the mornings to hear them read out the school lunch menus and then decide if you should pack a lunch?
Our radio station covered several districts so we got to hear what kids in the region were eating.

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@futurebird @MCDuncanLab @Wyatt_H_Knott
that must be it, because the only other macintoshes are the boots and the computers, and presumably neither boots nor computers would be in school sack lunch, being too tough for youngsters to chew.@llewelly @futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott
Funny I grew up in Washington state and literally the only apples we ever got were gross red delicious.
In high school, I had a fancy Fuji apple and thought I was in heaven.
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@becomethewaifu
If you're craving school lunch pizza, you can find the recipe the the USDAs high volume cookbook used by many schools in the 80s
It's on the Internet archive
https://archive.org/details/CAT92970475
You'll find the classic cheese pizza in section D-30 (~p 188) and crust in B-14 (~p 72)
It makes 100 servings (5 full sheet pans)
@futurebird @mina@becomethewaifu
Side note: I've made a number of things from this, part for the nostalgia and part it's got decent and clear instructions for a lot of staples made with inexpensive and easy to obtain and store ingredients. I printed out, hole punched, and put tabs for each section and it sits in a binder next to other cookbooks
@futurebird @mina -
@futurebird yikes thatโs bad. How did that happen?
I found some descriptions of Japanese packed lunches that said you needed a bed of rice then to add "pickes" but the images showed red things (I now understand that things can be pickled other than cucumbers)
I reasoned that ketchup was a bit like relish so could work as a "red pickle"
... it did not work.
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@llewelly @futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott
Funny I grew up in Washington state and literally the only apples we ever got were gross red delicious.
In high school, I had a fancy Fuji apple and thought I was in heaven.
@MCDuncanLab @futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott
I have known about the macintosh variety of apple since about 1985, purely because I read a ton about computers when I was young, and learned that was the origin of the name of the computer. But I don't think I have ever seen or tasted an actual macintosh apple, so I often need to be reminded of it being something that exists outside of books and computers. -
I found some descriptions of Japanese packed lunches that said you needed a bed of rice then to add "pickes" but the images showed red things (I now understand that things can be pickled other than cucumbers)
I reasoned that ketchup was a bit like relish so could work as a "red pickle"
... it did not work.
@futurebird Thatโs much better than what I was imagining. Kind of adorable actually.
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@MCDuncanLab @futurebird @llewelly
Nuts are no longer allowed in school.
I think they allow sunflower butter.
Plus im pretty sure making a 2nd grader make their own lunch is a no no these days.
Cookies are probably also banned.
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I was on the east coast back then and in addition to pizza day we also had fiesta pizza day which was basically an Old El Paso taco on a piece of crust. Fiesta pizza day was only slightly behind regular pizza day for the best day of the week.

@victorvonvortex @Meowthias @futurebird
That reminds me of the school lunch I still miss: "Fiesta Sticks". It was some kind of crunchy/fried pastry shell and then filled with... well, I have no idea what they were filled with... black colored, oily, fibrous, and tasty filling. I'm 80% sure it was meat or a meat byproduct. (But could have been bean based, though that doesn't explain the texture). And always burnt to just the right degree of awesome.
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@futurebird Thatโs much better than what I was imagining. Kind of adorable actually.
matching your ketchup and rice with my ketchup sandwiches
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I think they allow sunflower butter.
Plus im pretty sure making a 2nd grader make their own lunch is a no no these days.
Cookies are probably also banned.
Most schools I've encountered will have a strict nut and/or peanut ban if there are YOUNG kids with those allergies. And it's sensible.
There is no reason to have a ban if that isn't the case. The other case may be high sensitivity students ... then the ban may last longer.
Hilariously I'm deadly allergic to sunflowers and sunbutter. Eyes itch if I'm near it... but not peanuts.