Feed Them Well

It’s true. People can talk forever about over-cooked meat, bitter sauces and spicy dishes. The conversation at a recent Alumnae Association meeting turned to our memories of caf’ fare. Naturally, there were the typical phrases too often used about high school cafeterias: mystery meat, plastic cheese and the lunch ladies. Everyone had a story, even me. You see I didn’t eat in the cafeteria too often because I always had a packed lunch, something I often wanted to trade for the excitement of something you had to line up for. Oh, so young and innocent.

My only vivid cafeteria memory was the ice cream sandwiches. I’d save up some pocket money or scrounge together enough coins to buy a delicious piece of chocolaty-vanilla heaven, with heavy overtones of wax paper. You couldn’t eat it fast enough, as it started to melt the moment you asked for one. By the time you got to the end, you were trying to salvage the mushy chocolate sandwich that was embedded in your fingertips and wiping the dripping ice cream from your sweater cuff. Still, they were a little bit of heaven.

My best friend ate in the cafeteria most days. She survived the mystery meat of the chicken burgers, which were hard to distinguish from the fish burgers served on Fridays (remember, it’s fish on Fridays for the good Catholics). Heavily breaded and topped only with a squashed bun, you were lucky to get a few sesame seeds or a random piece of lettuce. Still, somehow there was always a massive line up on chicken burger days. Some rather sympathetic teachers must have let class go a little early for so many girls to be lined up by 12:01pm, ready for their foil-paper wrapped “goodness.” No cafeteria is every complete without a few plastic cheese options. If you weren’t interested in a chicken burger or mystery pasta, there was always the nachos! Once you received your plastic dish of chips, you could pump as much gooey cheese as the little plate could handle. Clearly, salt-content, cholesterol and nutritional value weren’t priorities back then. It was cheap, easy, and sold well. You’ll still find that exact dish at most hockey games, though you’ll be hard pressed to gain such unrestricted access to the cheese pump.

Naturally too, there was the staple of all childhoods: macaroni and cheese. For some reason, the plastic cheese of the nachos wasn’t sufficient. Instead, the lunch ladies must have whipped up some “cheese powder” to make the not-so-smooth and very floury tasting cheese sauce to complement the overcooked pasta tubes. Those little tubes must have boiled away for at least an hour to have swollen up to the size of small kilt pins.

And of course, when all else failed and you’d missed the lunch ladies because you had to be a part of some massive conference at the lockers near yours, there was the vending machine. For about 75 cents, you could stave off complete and total starvation with some dill pickle potato chips or a chocolate bar of some sort. It seemed like only the Gr 12s, in their white sweaters of godliness, ever bought from the hot drink machine. I’m sure few of them were actually drinking coffee, but there is an aura of maturity and adulthood that comes with the grad sweater and a cup of steaming something.

These days, the cafeteria is a very different place. Far from the dungeonlike basement of the old library, it’s an airy, bright and healthy place to eat. Watch for an upcoming article on the cafeteria food served these days, under the careful eye of LFA’s famed Chef Paul. In the meantime, do you have memories of the cafeteria food and goings on? Share them with us below or by email at alumnae@lfabc.org