An Ode to School Lunch

On this episode, Danny waxes poetic about all things school lunch. He reminisces on the morning news lunch announcements, his go-to school lunch items, the advent of the salad bar, bartering fruit cups for more milk, his mishap with drinking too much chocolate milk, high school breakfast, his preferred method of eating a fiestada and more!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

What is good, good people? You are now listening to another episode of Since We Last Spoke with Danny Foxworth. I am your humble narrator, Danny Foxworth. And on this episode, listen, if you listen to the show long enough, you know that when I have guests on, the first question I ask them in the five questions segment is, What were your go-to school lunch items? So on this episode, it's going to be completely dedicated to school lunch. So, we're going to take it back to the very beginning. So, I don't know if y'all had it back in the day, but on the morning news, you know, you're getting dressed, getting, you're having your breakfast, and then on the morning news, before they go to the commercial break, they would have these school lunch announcements for each county on the local news. And it was Berkeley County, Dorchester County, and Charleston County. I live in Berkeley County, and I would always sit there with bated breath seeing what the lunch items were going to be for that particular day. But the one thing that always had me kind of looking sideways was whenever it got to the Berkeley County lunch announcements, and it would say manager's choice, which in a nutshell, manager's choice was basically, all right, we got a surplus of stuffed bell peppers in the back of the deep freezer. We got to get rid of them. These are the designated days that we get rid of them. And luncheon elementary school, I mean, it was it was it was pretty, it was uh it was pretty good. We had, well, in the Berkeley County School District, we had cheeseburgers, we had the square pizza with the white cheese, and then we had the pizza that was shaped like the hexagon with the yellow cheese and the ground beef, which was affectionately known as the Fiestada. Boy. The Fiestada was some good eating. And every now and then we would get Sloppy Joe's, we would get spaghetti. Like maybe once or twice a year, I think we would get fried chicken. I'm not 100% on that. I think the lunches normally cost about a dollar, but if you forgot your uh money that particular day, sometimes they'll give you a um, they'll give you a peanut butter sandwich and like some carrots and uh and uh milk. Lunch was everything to me. Lunch was probably my favorite subject in elementary school, if I'm being real with y'all. And I remember sometimes we would trade uh items on our lunch tray for extra chocolate milk. Learned about the barter system early and uh and other things we had on the lunch tray. Some days it would be mashed potatoes and gravy, and then we get the fruit cup. Now, with the fruit cup, it would either be like a cup of the peaches or it'd be a cup of pears. But if you got the cup with the mixed fruit, and buddy, if you got that little maraschino cherry in the middle of it, it felt like you hit the jackpot. That was like the ultimate bargaining chip. Sometimes you'd be in the lunchroom trying to make acquisitions and trades and stuff with other school lunch items with your uh classmates, and I would always exchange my fruit cup for another chocolate for a second chocolate milk. And the thing about chocolate milk, boy, I tell you, I learned just a quick side story. I learned about the dangers of chocolate milk at a very early age. I went to elementary school back in the in the early to mid-80s. I don't think there was a term for lack, I don't think the term lactose intolerance was coined just yet, but I remember one particular Friday, I stacked up on my fruit cups, and in the lunchroom, we were making exchanges, and I drank like five or six of those little cartons of the um Coburg chocolate milks, because that was like the ultimate beverage. It was like drinking liquid gold in elementary school. And two hours later, I'm sitting in Miss McMurtry's class in third grade, and my stomach was like on volcano status at this point, and I'm just clenched up so tight, and I'm trying to do everything in my power to not release any kind of uh noxious gases, so to speak. And so while in the middle of class, I raised my hand. I'm like, Miss McMurtry, can I, it's an emergency, can I please go to the bathroom? And she was like, Yeah, go take the hall pass and go to the bathroom. Because it was one of those situations where if you try to break wind, you're not sure if it's going to be air or if it's gonna be physical matter that could possibly run down your leg because you drank way too much chocolate milk. So, so I'm like speed walking like this down the hall, and I get into the boys' bathroom. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, every single one of the stalls in the boys' bathroom at Whitesville Elementary School, they remove the doors from every single stall. I'm like, oh my God, what are y'all doing? Y'all are not helping at all. The only thing I had going for me at the time was that particular time of day because there's very, there's like little to no traffic in the hallways during that time of the day. Between like 1.50 to 2 p.m. in the afternoon. So I figured the coast was clear. So I get to the toilet, I sit down, and basically try to do a hard reset, for lack of a better term. And I'm thinking I'm in the clear. And damn, if Tyrone Rolak didn't walk into, didn't walk into the bathroom, and this was the first time I ever heard a third grader cuss. And if you were smelling what I was cooking in that bathroom, you probably would have had the same exact reaction he did. He walked in, he smelt it before he saw who the culprit was, and he goes, shit, boy, it's somebody nanny up in here, isn't it? Now, now, when I'm from in the low country Charleston, South Carolina area. The term nanny basically is a geechy term for doo-dooing. And so he walked in and he smelt it and he made the observation out loud. Then when he walked in past the stall and saw who the culprit was, the entire school knew about it the very next day. They started calling me Nanny Foxworth for it. It was a bad day. It was a bad day, but it was a cautionary tale. Don't drink more chocolate milk than you really need to because it's only going to cause problems. But back to the topic of school, but back to the topic of school lunch. And sometimes we would get the fish sticks, but sometimes the kitchen ladies would pull an okie doke. It looked like fish sticks, but it was actually the veggie sticks, and that was the absolute pits. I'm like, oh, they serving fish sticks today. Then you bite into it, and this is like corn and peas in inside of the fried sticks. I'm like, man, this is garbage. I hated the veggie sticks. And then when we got to middle school, it was still served the cheeseburgers with the fries. And shout out to the late Gray Hamilton Martin. I actually adopted his method where I would order the fiestada, and I would just take all of the fries and I would put them in the middle of the fiestada, drizzle a little ketchup in the middle, and then fold it and eat it. Man, that was some good eating right there. And um also the advent of the salad bar. That right there was a game changer. I don't think I ate anything that they were cooking in the kitchen in the cafeteria. I want to say they introduced it like in the middle of the school year. And it had to have been like maybe seventh grade, I want to say. It was just a really nice spread. Like you had ranch dressing, you had French dressing, you had Thousand Island, you had blue cheese, you had honey mustard, and then the condiments, you had bacon bits, you had croutons, you had mushrooms, you had just a whole bunch of other different condiments to add to your salad. And that's the thing that really made me just become really addicted to salads. And uh, I don't know if y'all remember the Minute Made juice bars. It would be like in a triangle shape. It was encased in like a paper triangle shape. And oh my God. That was probably, I have to say that's probably my favorite side item as far as lunch trays go. Or you could get the little mini carton of the orange pineapple juice. But the orange pineapple juice for me, it always had to be like at least halfway frozen to give it that slushy like feel. And then moving on to high school, they kept the salad bar tradition going, but then in high school, they introduced breakfast. And honestly, I almost enjoyed the breakfast more than I enjoyed the lunch. And with the uh the breakfast, they would have the scrambled egg casserole. But my go-to breakfast item at the high school was they had the corn dogs, but instead of an actual hot dog, it was actually a sausage link inside of the corn dog, and they gave you a dipping syrup to go with it. Boy, I used to go back for seconds and thirds because at that point I had a job and I had enough money to buy enough of those uh those sausage link dogs. And then as far as lunch goes, they introduced chicken parmesan on Fridays. And that right there was, oh my God, to this day, that was my favorite item that the Berkeley County School District ever served in the cafeteria. I remember being in computer class right before the lunch bell would ring, and as soon as it rang, I bust out that door, and I mean, I'm making a Usane boat-like sprint across the courtyard to dash straight into that cafeteria so I could be first in line to get that chicken parmesan, man. They had the salad bar, and um I would eat that periodically, but um, they would I could go to the snack machines and then I could get like a honey bun out of the snack machine, or I could walk over to the ROTC building to the commissary, and I would just clean house on the Skittles and on the M's. And sometimes I would take those Skittles and I would sell them on the bus and make a profit off of that. But then my senior year of high school, that's when I felt like I was big time because my senior year of high school, I could actually eat off campus because my last class of the day, I would have to drive, to literally drive to the next town over to take that class. And McDonald's just so happened to be on the way to going to Goose Creek High School. So that was when, this is like late 90s now. So this is during the time when McDonald's had the mighty wings. Boy, the mighty wings used to go down. They were so good, and they just had the right, just like the right kick to it. Had the just the perfectly golden battered wings with that spicy kick to it. They were expensive as hell, though. It was like five of them for like$5, I want to say. But it was worth the$5. I would either go there or I would stop by the Sonic, and I'd get my slushie and I'd get my footlong cheese cone, and I was in business, and I would stop there and eat, and then I'd head on to class over at Goose Creek High School. And uh I also had a summer job at the um Berkeley County School Food Service working the summer feeding program. And at this time, I'm in college at Trident Tech. And first semester of college started after the first semester in high school. So while high school classes were going on, I was still able to work a little bit at the school food service. And I would deliver lunch supplies to the different schools in the district. Whatever items were left over in the deep freezer. The week before classes started at Trident Tech, my supervisor was like, Man, we got some boxes of fiestadas. If you want them, take them. I'm like, hey, you ain't gotta tell me twice. So that that uh them fiestadas got me through my first year of college. So shout out to Dennis R.I.P. and shout out to Edward Fashion. And that's gonna do it for this episode of Since We Last Spoke. Thank you all for tuning in. Make sure you like, download, or subscribe to Since We Last Spoke. Tell a friend to tell a friend about the podcast. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can find it at Danny Foxworth843. I'm almost at 500 subscribers, which is hard to believe. Just last month, I was sitting at like 451, and now like I'm rounding third and headed home. And I'm last I look, my subscribers are currently at 492. So thank y'all so much for subscribing to the channel. You can find videos of every episode of this podcast, as well as my baseball podcast at The Plate with Danny Foxworth, growing up low country with Liz and Danny, and my candle podcast, A Wicked Good Time, with Danny Foxworth. And until next time, y'all be good. Peace.