19 Comments

I had a visceral reaction to the pizza photo -- like I can remember the exact sensation of how your front teeth feel hitting the doughy crust lol.

Expand full comment

Or how your tongue involuntarily recoils at the moment it first touches the bottom, whereupon every nerve in the vicinity lets you know JUST how hideously soggy this "slice" is going to be.

Expand full comment

I can't believe you didn't put some M&M's on the homemade pizza and take a photo of the resulting Art!

Expand full comment
author

GDI, Paul. A clear missed opportunity. Haterade regrets the error.

Expand full comment

The truly grim thing about school lunch pizza is, as awful as it was, it was still probably the best thing you could hope to come out of the cafeteria.

Expand full comment
author

Pizza Day and Corn Dog Day were tied in my esteem.

Expand full comment

Oh, I'm not sure we even had corn dogs. Or if we did it wasn't often. I can only imagine how damp they would have been.

Expand full comment
Oct 26, 2022Liked by Liz Cook

So in the late 50s we had what they called hamburger pizza which was half a hamburger bun topped with basically sloppy joe mixture and a sprinkling of green box parmesan

Expand full comment
Nov 9, 2022Liked by Liz Cook

Your writing continues to make me laugh, think, and yearn for foods that I ought not to.

Expand full comment
Oct 27, 2022Liked by Liz Cook

The pizza is bringing back so many Jr high memories. Specifically the time Anna, who had just moved to central Illinois from the futuristic city of Houston, bragged that she had been listening to Shaggy like a whole three months before it got popular on the radio in Springfield. Not to be like Anna, but I don't think we had naughty tables! That's so mean!

Expand full comment
Oct 26, 2022Liked by Liz Cook

Wiener boats, the reason for my monthly trip to the naughty table. I can still smell them.

Expand full comment
author

I need to know more about these "boats"

Expand full comment
Oct 26, 2022Liked by Liz Cook

Wow can you write one of these for every school lunch item? Except for the taco salad. Wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

Expand full comment
Oct 26, 2022Liked by Liz Cook

So THAT'S what his middle initial stands for ...

Expand full comment

Dry milk powder apparently is the easy nutritional fortification. The military's MREs do the same thing.

Expand full comment

As the eldest child of thrifty granola parents who served a lot of lentils (not with actual spices - more the boil and serve variety) and baked their own whole grain brick-dense loaves of bread, I wasn’t allowed many school lunches of the 80s elementary years. (We didn’t go out to eat, either - too expensive, too unhealthy - unless it was for a baked potato or the salad bar at Wendy’s of yore.) But every week I stood in line at the cafeteria door without my trusty Peanuts lunchbox and waited for my turn to eye the ice cream treats with envy (cost extra for that chocolate gravel-coated “eclair” on a stick) and choose a carton of milk destined for mutilation prior to successful opening, and a greasy slab of government mandated pizza. It was so, so tasty to my Pizza Hut deprived, handmade clothes tortured self. I would’ve swooned for the M&Ms, right up until the moment anyone noticed.

Expand full comment

Wow, I feel this so. much. Did you have the yellow Peanuts lunchbox?

Expand full comment

I had the red! Did you have yellow?

Expand full comment