Every year around this time, the schools near Atlanta where I live invite parents to join their children and germ-covered classmates in the cafeteria to enjoy a wondrous Thanksgiving repast. It might not look like much, and boy does it not look like much.
I am one of those weird people that really enjoys institutional food service fare. I do not like to visit hospitals, but being surrounded by relentless reminders of my mortality and relative fragility somehow seems better over a plate of really bland baked chicken.
I’ve enjoyed a meal or two municipal cafeterias while reporting for jury duty that almost made me wish I’d been picked.
Part of me appreciates how unpretentious food served at these places is. Eat at a fancy restaurant, and there’s bound to be a chef in the back who is proud of the way they painstakingly developed the flavour profile of your dish, or how they are treating you to a magical food adventure.
No one is proud of this:
Or maybe my love for these kinds of institutional meals is because I can get a full tray of brown food with red accents for only $US3.50 ($5). That’s a price worthy of braving a cafeteria of a public elementary school and sitting among hundreds of coughing, sneezing and just generally oozing children.
Without further ado, my grand public school Thanksgiving feast!
Turkey – weirdly stringy, but tasted like turkey
I assure you, this is turkey.
It doesn’t look good, I will give you that. It looks like an aborted attempt at making turkey Jell-o. I imagine it slides out of a giant can in a thick, solid cylinder, much like canned “cranberry sauce.” That’s fine. School lunch isn’t here to look good.
What’s important is the texture and the taste. As horrible as this elementary-grade turkey looks, once it passed the eyes and entered the mouth, it tasted like turkey with gravy. For some reason it was shredded to the point it resembled under-cooked barbecue pork, but it was nice and savoury, if a bit stringy.
Seriously though, good luck getting past the eyes.
Stuffing – lacking in sausage and apricots, thank goodness
Sometimes it’s nice to get back to the basics. Over the years the stuffing served at Fahey family Thanksgivings has gotten more and more complex. What started as Stove Top when I was a wee lad has evolved into a casserole of tastefully soggy seasoned bread, bits of sausage and apricots. There might be walnuts in there. I think my mother just keeps adding things to see how far she can push us.
The public school stuffing was a ball of moist bread, flavored with some sort of poultry stock and mixed with small bits of I want to say celery and carrots. There wa no sausage. There were no walnuts. It was moisture and salt and the barest hint of flavour. It wasn’t horrible, but it did have me missing Stove Top.
Mashed Potatoes – in need of gravy
Mashed potatoes usually aren’t a flashy food. Some chefs like to mix things up, adding in sour cream or exotic flavored butters. School lunch keeps it simple. Potatoes, margarine, milk, salt, pepper, scoop and serve.
They were fine, but there was something missing. Back in my day, mashed potatoes at school were served with gravy. Here they were just sitting in a muted lump in the middle of my tray. If I had more time I could have strained some of the gravy gel off the turkey … remember the turkey?
But if I did that, what would I have sopped up with my wheat roll? Certainly not the juice from …
Wet Mixed Berries – possibly just like what the Pilgrims ate
I was hoping from cranberry sauce. This was not cranberry sauce.
What it turned out to be was blueberries soaking in strawberries that were beaten to death. Again, school lunches aren’t big on presentation. The taste wasn’t bad: not too sweet, not too tart. At least it wasn’t another starch.
Wheat Roll – another starch
This roll looked like it’d been through hell, but I can safely say that on this, the day after I ate it, it went through worse. Pleasingly chewy, yet unpleasantly yeasty, it served as the perfect means to clean up the remaining evidence that the turkey I’d eaten ever existed (but it couldn’t erase the photos).
Grade: Satisfactory
What our public school Thanksgiving feast lacked in looks, it made up for in being food that I ate. It was mostly bland and harmless. The germs also served in the cafeteria were not. I have a sore throat and a cough now.
This was a good meal. It was worth it and it was even better (?) than hospital food. Plus I got to hang out with one of my children. Beats the hell out of eating a TV dinner in a dark room.
Seamus brought his own lunch. Seamus is very wise.
Comments
13 responses to “School Cafeteria Thanksgiving: The Kotaku Review”
Can any americans on here explain the function of this event? I mean i thought what americans do on thanksgiving is have a big meal at home with your family. Not go to a school cafeteria and eat what looks like terrible quality food made as cheaply as possible.
The meal costing $5 screams to me you want to avoid eating it because its most likely going to come out of you just as fast and you put it in.
I’d guess it’s what you do on the last day of school before the actual holiday. It’s probably considered to be a good communal event supporting your kids school or some such malarkey.
Still, If i was a parent id much rather pay for a good meal and not school cafeteria food which is made as cheaply as possible. Could be this event was just a dinner that was a part of another event at the school or something.
If cartoons are anything to go by, there’s probably a school play about how nice colonialism is.
Yes, all those people who visitied the native americans treated them fairly and didnt murder any of them lol
Thanks giving is when you go into some one else’s house and tell then it’s your house now. Like the first Americans did and we did as well.
That slop is turkey? seriously?
The fact the meal cost $5 USD says enough about it really.
I’ve always heard people say hospital food is bad but every time I’ve been in one the food has been pretty decent
As a kid I used to be jealous of the American school cafeteria setup, or at least how it was portrayed on TV.
Putrid is a strong word….not that you said it.
That looks atrocious, and for the price I can see why. If there’s any nutritional value in any of that I’ll be a blue -nosed gopher.
Good on Seamus for bringing his own lunch…I still struggle to believe that’s turkey btw…
it’s a sad state of affairs when the above is classified as a “meal fit for active, growing kids”
Glad to be Australian.
Ikea cafeteria would have treated you with more respect.