anyone else having problems with school dinners?

fletty

ok so I've just returned home from feeding 150 kids there dinner, todays choices were (and today's dinner in my opinion is one of the not so good day's) chicken and sweetcorn lasagne, Quorn sausage casserole, baked potato with tuna, Sandwiches(egg mayo and ham and tomato) and also home made sausage rolls which i'm expermenting with for the new menu next year (very popular). The carbohydrate choice was mash, baby baked potato's or garlic bread and the veg tinned tomato or cauli and carrots (mixed together). There was also a salad bar with mixed green salad, coleslaw, fruity coleslaw and beetroot.

The sausage rolls went first and then surprisingly the sausage casserole went next (last time it was on I through some away!) untill all that was left was lasagne so the last 10 kids had no choice (luckily evryone was happy) .

As i've said before kids tastes change i made the same amount as always and someone could have been disapointed but luckily this didn't happen.

I hope you get it sorted with your child, you could even ask to speak to the cook we're not monsters. I personaly love meeting parents and wish there was some way we could get them in with the kids to see the changes that have and are being made to school dinners, good luck. x

newcook

I have always loved scampi!! In summer months my mom would often serve sardines and salad for tea!

Mushrooms and tomatoes were always a no go for me (even now I will only occasionally eat raw tomato!) and just the thought of liver turns my stomach!! I think the only times when my mom has done a separate meal for me is when she has cooked liver and onions and I usually had oven pizza as mom and stepdad don’t like pizza!!!

thatgirlsam

mrcow wrote: »

Me too.

I ended up anorexic for years and nearly ruining my heath/body.

Perhaps if eating hadn't been such a stressful thing for me when I was younger, that wouldn't have happened?

thats quite interesting, not meaning to be rude but were you quite a fussy eater and were you served food you didn't like every day or how often?

i know someone who is battling with anorexia and she thinks it came from her childhood but its not about the food, its about control

its a terrible disease and im glad you came out of the other side of it, one of my friends mums actually died of it

Spendless

Scampi can be expensive I see the OP's point there, but so can other things. My son's fetched home a meal planner today 1 day out of the 3 week period they have salmon portions (also an expensive item) but when it's put as part of a meal planner where cheaper items such as mince and sausages are on you can see how it works out overall.

butler_helen

mrcow wrote: »

Me too.

I ended up anorexic for years and nearly ruining my heath/body.

Perhaps if eating hadn't been such a stressful thing for me when I was younger, that wouldn't have happened?

Yup with you there, we had to eat everything we were given at home or sit there till we did. I remember a few hours infront of dry mash and sausages (I hated those at the time). Then in secondary we were made to eat at set times-even when I wasn't hungry- so I skipped lunch and just ate tea.

I don't see the problem, in hindsight just letting me make my own packed lunch was the breakthrough (obviously limited to what was in the fridge).

I don't have children but I'd be careful not to make as big a deal out of food as it could become. I remember crying at school because I didn't want my packed lunch- my choice but teachers and my mum took such issue with it- I simply wasn't hungry and had no intention of eating cold sausage sandwiches

our lunches at secondary were always healthy and included cheesy pasta- best thing on the menu and available from 12-14 - brilliant for the fussy eaters and those more interested in doing sport over lunch.

bonty44

fletty wrote: »

ok so I've just returned home from feeding 150 kids there dinner, todays choices were (and today's dinner in my opinion is one of the not so good day's) chicken and sweetcorn lasagne, Quorn sausage casserole, baked potato with tuna, Sandwiches(egg mayo and ham and tomato) and also home made sausage rolls which i'm expermenting with for the new menu next year (very popular). The carbohydrate choice was mash, baby baked potato's or garlic bread and the veg tinned tomato or cauli and carrots (mixed together). There was also a salad bar with mixed green salad, coleslaw, fruity coleslaw and beetroot.

Can I just say, this sounds like a fab menu! If this is one of the 'not so good days' then I'd love to see the rest! :T

mrcow

thatgirlsam wrote: »

thats quite interesting, not meaning to be rude but were you quite a fussy eater and were you served food you didn't like every day or how often?

i know someone who is battling with anorexia and she thinks it came from her childhood but its not about the food, its about control

its a terrible disease and im glad you came out of the other side of it, one of my friends mums actually died of it

I was fed food I didn't like for years on end and was expected to finish my plate. Every night (well it probably wasn't every night, but in my memory, those are the nights I remember), the family would finish thier dinner and I'd be left sat there looking at a cold meal that I didn't like. Sometimes I'd be shouted at and sometimes my Mum would shove it in my mouth. As I got older, obviously this didn't happen, but I just didn't eat it.

I think it certainly developed a damaging relationship with food. It certainly was nothing to do with control (although I understand that that can be a factor to many). It sort of ended with me telling my mother I was vegetarian and she stopped cooking for me altogether - which was better as I prepared my own meals (when I ate) - but for a lot of the time, I wouldnt eat anything for days on end.

It was only once I'd moved out of home for the first time and had complete control of what food was purchased and prepared that I finally started to overcome it.

I don't blame my parents at all. They worked hard and loved me very much. They grew up with the "eat this or don't eat" philosophy and I guess it worked for them. Doesn't mean that it works for everyone.

It's really hard as a parent to not allow dinner times to become a battlefield. You can spend an hour preparing a meal that you think everyone will like and then they all sit there and pick it over. It can be soul destroying. The rule in my house is that you have to at least try something if you've never had it before or if you haven't tried it in a while (as tastes change). I'll explain to them what's in it and what it should taste like.

I don't believe in making children eat particular foods just for the sake of it. My daughter has never (since she was weaned) liked fruit. She'll eat vegetables but doesn't like cold/wet food. It's not her being "fussy" she has a real panic about it. She can't stand being expected to pick fruit up and put it in her mouth. It took me about a year to get her to eat bananas (we started with small bits with a fork) which she will now eat readily and sometimes with eat small fruit if it's cut up and she can use cutlery to eat it.

And before anyone reads that and thinks that I'm being precious over her, trust me, I'm seriously too busy for that! She's the middle child of three and just has a strained relationship with certain foods - just like I did. My other two will gobble up strawberries like they're sweets - whilst she'll sit there with them like I've given her fried liver to eat.

On the flip side. she'll eat most main meals as long as she can see what it is - so go figure.

Sorry I'm rambling. My point is that if a parent (or the public) are paying up front for a school dinner for a child then the catering company should provide:

1. Something nutricious
2. That the child will want to eat (and enough choice to be able to cater for that)

If the school are offering a particular published menu one day, then they shouldn't be gearing up to running out of food every day whoch seems like what's happening in the OPs situation. They often provide the same menus on a rota basis, surely they can account for how many meals of a particular type will be wanted? If not, then perhaps they need to go back to the drawing board with their business plan? If the meals weren't purchased up front, then they'd be going out for business pretty sharpish.

HannahIOW

Know how you feel there mrcow, I can remember when I was primary school age being made to sit at the table for 3-4 hours until I had eaten my dinner, this was only when it was a meal I didn't like. Chicken casserole springs to mind lol. Plus by that time the food would be cold and so even worse!

Still have a bit of a funny relationship with food now, if too much is put on my plate to start with I panic about eating it and just lose my appetite. So I just put less on now (plus eat only foods that I like lol).

I don't blame my parents either for it, I just think they were a bit misguided. My mum looks after my neice a lot and when she doesn't want to eat her food, she just doesn't eat it (none of this being made to sit there til it's gone).

I used to love school dinners at primary and would often ask for seconds so I think the main issue was being made to eat things I didn't like.

Scone_2

There are certain things I can't touch that I was fed in my childhood (repeatedly)

Richmonds Irish Sausages
Pot Noodles
Hollands Meat Pies
Hollands Steak and Kidney Puddings
"proper" butter - i.e. country life and anchor - but can handle lurpak
Crumpets
Goblin steak and kidney puddings in a tin
Goblin Hamburgers in gravy in a tin
Fray Bentos tinned pies
Tinned Processed Peas
Tinned potatoes
Tinned Carrots

That was my basic diet for the first 16 years of my life

My SAHM mother was the laziest creature I've ever known and still is. She didn't bother learning anythign about nutrition and fed us absolute crap. I We were basically underfed and incredibly thin as children, my unworking parents preferred their cigarettes to ensuring they had three healthy kids.

I can't even begin to tell you had bad it was sitting in one room the five of us, without so much as a window open in months with two parents who smoked over 100 cigarettes A DAY between them - me and my siblings all have Asthma and I'm convinced its my parents fault for damaging our lungs as kids

When I was 16 I left home as I was terrified of my fathers violence. I went to live with a friend and his parents. They treated me like a princess, fed me up and I discovered what good food and fruit and veg was. I think that trigger an "opposite" to annorexia in me, whereby I became obsessed with food - I went from this tiny skinny creature to a size 12/14 within 3 years and I'm now a size 22.

I think that early experience with food is more crucial than we realise - I don't profess to be any authority on it but they way food has affected me personally says enough to me to ensure my kids are getting varied diet and eating things they like

anyway I don't know where all that came from! Its day #2 on packed lunches for my two and they are really happy this morning and helped make their lunches themselves! I wonder how long before the novelty wears off?!:eek:

dizziblonde

As for the free school meals thing. The kids generally know nowt about who is on that and who isn't. It's marked on the dinner register next to the child's name if they're F or not. I go down the dinner register - children say if they're dinners or sandwiches and as far as they know - I tick or S the boxes (some schools write an F in the dinner box). They don't see the dinner register, I don't ask for dinner money child by child - the box is there and anyone who has anything to go down to the office puts their envelope in (unless it's one where all the coins are coming out of the unstuck bit in the side in which case we play chase the pennies around the book bag and try to sellotape it all in).

Kids DON'T go in free dinners first - they go in either sandwiches first or dinners first depending on how the school's set up - and all the school dinners go in together. There isn't any stigma for free dinners V paid dinners - I don't think the kids even realize some do and don't pay to be honest. Even unpaid dinner money reminder letters from the office just come out in an envelope to go home with the child's name on, and considering how many other letters go out for selected groups of kids (music lessons, sports teams etc etc) - I really don't think any fuss is made about any of it at all.