Piping hot, crispy tater tots. The carton of milk with the photo of the missing boy or girl. This is my memory of a public school lunch in Anacortes that I only had the pleasure of attending for a very short time, as I went to a small rural four-room Mennonite school in Canada for most of my education. So then.
My school lunch consisted of the following: a sandwich, peanut butter and jam, or, more often peanut butter and hagel slag - the dutch name for a type of chocolate sprinkles (not like any chocolate sprinkles you’ve had in North America!) made specifically for the purpose of eating on bread, usually with butter. The Dutch-American version (my parents being Dutch immigrants), is with peanut butter, of course. So basically a chocolate peanut butter cup on bread. When we first began attending that school - I was in second grade - Miss Hershberger objected to the brown sugar or hagel slag sandwiches, as she considered them to be most unhealthy. Now, older than she was then, I daresay she was correct, though at the time I thought her wholly unreasonable and bordering on cruel.
There was usually also in this lunch several snacks; one for morning recess and another for afternoon recess, or saved for the 30-minute bus ride home, in addition to one for lunch. So the snacks were: apples or pears or peaches, whatever was in season. Sometimes bananas. We were allowed two cookies, either homemade chocolate chip, peanut butter, or oatmeal of some kind. If we were especially lucky, speculaas or stroopwafels (both special dutch treats, though now they are ubiquitous in most grocery stores, especially the stroopwafels), and the Voortman brand cookies.
Fruit yogurt was common. Celery with peanut butter sometimes, or carrot sticks. Baby carrots had not been invented yet. Peeled and sliced cucumbers in lemon juice and sugar. Occasionally, there would be packets of cheese and crackers. You know the ones, with the little red stick to spread the soft cheese-like substance on the salty white rectangular crackers. I can’t forget the snack cakes. Ah, Little Debbie. The swiss cake rolls, and the nutty buddies were my favorites.
All of this was packed in a yellow Tupperware lunch box, with the accessories: the sealable sandwich size container, tall and short lidded cups for yogurt or sliced fruit or veggies. Upon reflection, there was an awful lot of sugar in my school lunch. It’s little wonder I struggle with blood sugar issues and sugar addiction.
My parents often made our school lunches together. It was a big production, making lunches for eight children. Eight children of various developmental stages, growth phases, and very distinct tastes. When I was about ten, my mother asked me to make a chart so that they’d get the lunches right, since apparently there were more than a few mix-ups. Nothing like walking to the High school room to summon your brother or sister and negotiate a trade. One of my sisters liked butter on her peanut butter sandwiches. And if that sounds unsavory, I was the one with by far the most distinctive and awful taste - I loved liverwurst sandwiches. So make this chart I did. My parents would line the boxes up and then, in factory fashion, begin packing the snacks. The sandwiches would be assembled separately and then stacked and sliced all together, a brilliant efficiency, though often one would find a smidge of jam on their ham or peanut butter in their cheese.
As there were eight of us there were also colors of lunch boxes. Three of us had yellow, three red, and two brown. I had a yellow one, along with my eldest sister and the elder of the twin brothers. My two other sisters both had the red ones, as did the younger twin. The two brown ones belong to my other brothers. This lunch production system went on for years until we moved to the big city a month before my sixteenth birthday, and three were off to college. Somehow the move had broken the flow and now as the oldest at home, I was making my own lunch, along with my younger sister. The three boys, as they were often lumped into the label “the boys” - still had their lunches made for them. Now at a bigger school, one with an actual cafeteria, I stood out more than ever with my yellow Tupperware lunch box. Once in a while, I’d use my babysitting money to buy a hot lunch, but they were never nearly as good as I imagined them to be.