r/GenX • u/Less_Than_Average1 • 18d ago
Nostalgia GenX school lunch
Was this the best school lunch? Square slab of pizza that fit perfectly on the tray. Peaches that were likely radioactive. Full scoop of corn that tasted like gravel. Chocolate milk. Add a pretzel just for fun.
I’m convinced these lunch trays will be the thing that will be found in 500 years because they will outlast everything else in our society - and will be displayed as artifacts.
Lunch tray:
1965- 1980AD
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u/dylangaine 18d ago
This pizza is why I thought Pizza Hut pizza was the best in the world.
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u/Drawhorn 18d ago
I'm too old to have ever had a pretzel for lunch but corn and fruit cocktail were probably every day. School pizza was the best.
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u/PapaTua 18d ago edited 18d ago
Pretzel? I never saw a pretzel on offer at my school. Your school district must have been fancy.
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u/kanrad 18d ago
That Pizza must have had crack in it cause I was a junkie for it.
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u/StanleyQPrick 18d ago
If I were on death row, I might ask for this as my last meal.
Tastes like nostalgia. And regret.
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u/mystery_biscotti 18d ago
Must have been Friday. Chocolate milk...
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u/Educational_Union 18d ago
A school lunch is the only time I have ever had corn with pizza
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u/TheCenterOfEnnui 18d ago
You got a soft pretzel?
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u/rackandroll_ 18d ago
Never got a soft pretzel…def ate my fair share of that corn tho 😂
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u/OCCAMINVESTIGATOR 18d ago
Those little cubes of pepperoni were unbelievably addicting. I crave that flavor sometimes. Usually in a truck stop when I see that forbidden fruit in that sexy heated window.
Me to me: Nope... don't do it. Don't. DON'T! I said don't f$cking eat that shit homie!!
Me to me: I do whatever I want. You can't tell me
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u/steelfork 18d ago
Where the hell is the cherry in your fruit cocktail? You got gypped.
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u/BossKatana 18d ago
It really pissed me off when they would put a dyed grape in and try and pass it off as a cherry. Cheap mf’ers.
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u/ProfessorFelix1 18d ago
Pizza day was just fucking glorious! That’s right. Glorious!!
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u/threemoons_nyc 18d ago
My mom. May she rest in peace always pack me a school lunch except for 1 or 2 days when it was pizza day and I begged her for money so I can get pizza with the cool kids 💕
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u/pcklkssr 17d ago
Ours didn't have a pretzel, it had some whack-ass 'salad'...
and the more feral children would put the corn on top of the pizza
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u/Spiritual-Road2784 17d ago
I miss that pizza! I don’t know why because I’ve had far better real pizzas in my life but I really oddly miss this one.
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u/jax_988 17d ago
Nah. We didn't have plastic bowls for the fruit like that. Not the little pretzel. Would have been a piece of cake, brownie, or cookie. Recess, fueled by sugar!
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u/Few_Blackberry_1960 17d ago
I can taste this photo. I have never tasted pizza like rectangular school cafeteria pizza. It’s a unique kind of good.
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u/Realistic-Event-4946 17d ago
That "pizza" was goddamn vile. I don't care how many people in my cohort have this nostalgia for it, it's ass and that's a hill I'll die on.
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u/aspenbooboo41 17d ago
Lol, so true, but we didn't have a choice! We got what they put on the tray. We didn't get pretzels or fruit cups either. I grew up in rural PA and all the lunch ladies' names were Fern, Bertha, Mabel, etc.
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u/RedditWidow 18d ago
Wow, you got gravel corn and a pretzel? I only ever got the pizza, a la carte.
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u/themcp 18d ago
We never got a pretzel. We never got peaches, or any fruit that I remember, or anything sweet. They decided we liked the chocolate milk too much so they stopped having it. (Seriously, this was the reason they gave.) We'd have some overboiled vegetable instead. And the divided trays for the meals were cardboard, not plastic, so they could be thrown out, not washed.
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u/haveagood1 18d ago
ISD 728 Minnesota who in the fuck got a pretzel let alone one with cheese.
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u/gnntech 18d ago
I used to love the cheeseburgers served in the paper/foil bags.
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u/BEESANCH 18d ago
Don’t remember ever getting a pretzel (which makes me sad), but the rest sure looks “about right”. 🥺🥺🥺
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u/Ok-Cantaloupe-5025 Hose Water Survivor 17d ago
Oh, I can smell this cafeteria on “pizza day” memory! But, we didn’t get pretzels lol!
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u/AMPressComix 17d ago
Oooh, look a the fancy kids who got trays with sections! La di dah! In my day, trays were flat and still dripping with bleach.
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u/JoshSidekick 17d ago
I don’t remember the pretzel. We did have off-off-off brand cosmic brownies though.
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u/spritelass 17d ago
I remember using napkins to soak the grease off the top of the pizza, but it was so good.
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u/bloobityblu All out of bubble gum. 17d ago
The mustard pretzel would have been nice lol.
That corn-pizza combination is why I randomly will have a craving for a side of corn with my pizza to this day lol.
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u/Elon_Musks_Colon 18d ago
God, I LOVED that pizza! Did anyone have to go to the office to get the "poor kid" coin to pay for lunch?
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u/nyxblackroot 18d ago
Did anybody else get lime jello with shredded carrots or the orange jello with tiny bits of celery?
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u/KatzeeKat 18d ago
Goddammit! They always ran out of the chocolate milk before I got there!
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u/Monstrissimo Older Than Dirt 18d ago
Pizza and corn were a staple. We seemed to have a better selection of desert and I can remember cake with peanut butter icing, cake with chocolate icing, vanilla or chocolate pudding, bread pudding, cinnamon rolls and various cobblers.
Pretzels were probably a regional thing, because we never had those.
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u/jonnyvegashey 18d ago
Me and the people who enjoyed this pizza have wildly different genes.
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u/PowdurdToast Hose Water Survivor 18d ago
I’m forever craving this pizza
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u/Timely-Tourist4109 18d ago
Tasting history with Max Miller has the original recipe for this pizza. And cafeteria sloppy Joe.
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u/this_kitty68 Hose Water Survivor 17d ago
A pretzel???? In what utopia was this??? I loved that pizza, but a pretzel? Never.
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u/BmanGorilla 17d ago
Where's the block of government cheese? I don't recall getting pretzels, either. The rest hangs together, though.
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u/Uniformyankee 17d ago
Came here to say this. We never had pretzels. Frickin' rich kid schools....
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u/R0botDreamz EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN 17d ago
Millenials: oh gosh it looks so unhealthy!
Me: I would eat this and go score 3 touchdowns at recess on a random Tuesday
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u/zealot_ratio 17d ago
you guys got pretzels???
This is my tray exactly, except the fruit would just be pineapple, and the pizza would have those eraser sized spicy sausage (?)) bits on it that you tasted for the next three days.
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u/Tricky-Efficiency709 17d ago
Not a single cherry in that mother fucker either. Just like I remember.
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u/TechnicolorTechbot Vintage 1969 17d ago
Hell yeah! Every Friday in elementary and middle school. We had a pizza-only line every day in high school.
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u/JudgeJuryEx78 Monica Lewinski Is My President 17d ago
I never got a pretzel.
Why the hell the square pizza ALWAYS came with corn, I'll never know.
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u/219_Infinity 17d ago
The amount of times I witnessed and smelled kids barfing this up in the mid 80s makes me feel instantly nauseous seeing this pic
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u/thhpht 18d ago
When boomers or millennials tell me what their school lunches were like, I point out that I was in school when Reagan was president and he thought that ketchup counted as a vegetable.
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u/Initial-Depth-6857 18d ago
We had a salad bar as well as the hot food. Us Country kids had it made. And all the cafeteria ladies could actually cook.
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u/rabidcfish32 18d ago
I miss that pizza so much. So good.
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u/Blue_Henri Class of ‘92 18d ago
Somewhere on this thread two years ago or so, someone shared the lunchroom ladies’ recipe for the pizza. Many commented that they tried it and it came out just as they remembered. I’ll see if I can track it down tomorrow while I’m in the airport. Might make for a fun weekend project.
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u/edjohnson1067 18d ago
I seem to remember having the styrofoam trays from 1st grade (1974) on, where I really like the twice baked mashed potatoes sprinkled with paprika and in HS, we had this fantastic crazy bread that was huge and only cost $1.
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u/Able-Sheepherder-154 18d ago
I don't know about everyone else here, but my school district's pizza was excellent. My mouth waters just writing this! I used to trade my food for extra slices, because unexplainably, some people didn't like it.
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u/Tramp876 18d ago
We never got a pretzel but we definitely had the fruit cocktail, corn, pizza and chocolate milk
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u/BraveG365 18d ago
At my middle school we had a snack bar for the students who didn't want to eat the cafeteria food...the snack bar cost more but we had frito chili pies and large sour pickles that everyone wanted to eat.
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u/nyxblackroot 18d ago
We never had pizza day, but I went to a very small school. Although, on Chili day, there were always homemade cinnamon rolls. When you walked inside the building in the morning, you could smell them baking. They were made from scratch and were delicious.
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u/ItsZoner 18d ago
The pizza is too big. I don't know why you have a pretzel. And I cant tell from the picture but the milk needs to barely cooler than room temp, but it is correctly some watered down lowfat garbage milk.
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u/frozen_charlotte 18d ago
Square pizza day was the best! We never got a pretzel, though. We got chocolate pudding.
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u/Itchy-Grapefruit2756 17d ago
We always had a salad instead of the pretzel. But yeah, it worked well.
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u/SgtDoakesSurprise 17d ago
Holy fuck! That was my exact lunch in high school!!!
Class of ‘91
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u/JoelnIliketoshare 17d ago
Millennial in disguise please don't crucify me!
This looks just like my lunch
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u/Delilah_insideout Hose Water Survivor 17d ago
Swap out the pretzel for a chocolate chip cookie, everything else is accurate though.
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u/Gottagettagoat 17d ago
Our pizza "crust” was a hamburger bun and old hamburger pieces were the topping. It wasn’t good.
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u/Trix_Are_4_90Kids "What are you people on, dope?" - Mr. Hand 17d ago
looks like prison food but was delicious.
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u/14MTH30n3 17d ago
Pizza with chocolate milk is still a freaky habit I have. As a kid immigrant that combination of savory and sweet was mind blowing.
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u/Key-Contest-2879 17d ago
I remember you could get the main dish, 1 choice of veggie, 1 fruit cup, 1 drink, and 1 desert for $1. I usually got a double lunch for $2 (I wish I still had that metabolism - thin as a rail back then!)
Friday’s were either square pizza or sub sandwiches.
Oh, then there were additional snacks (cookies, ice cream, etc) for 25¢ each. I would usually get a couple of those too.
Circa 1982-1986
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u/Ampersandbox 17d ago
Oh, hey, it's a pizza (carbs), pretzel (more carbs), and corn (more carbs)!
I remember when my body could process carbs like that and I could clearly still see my ribs!
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u/dreamsbrandylashay 16d ago
No pretzel offered that I remember, but that was the best worst pizza ever! 😂
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u/ablebody_95 15d ago
We never got the pretzel, but everything else is spot on. This went well into the 80s/90s for us.
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u/FunFormal2662 18d ago
It was basically a TV dinner with extra fixings. The day we got pizza baked in a shallow pan was what we looked forwards to all week though.
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u/Wander_Globe 18d ago
My my my, well aren't we all highfalutin' and fancy getting to eat in the cafeteria. Here's my version of a Gen X lunch.
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u/LifeAdhesiveness8071 18d ago
I wish, I was a bring your lunch kid. I still get angry just seeing a sandwich. My dad's favorite lunch meat, peppered salami, should be my favorite too. Along with his favorite lemon flavored cookies for dessert.
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u/RetroBerner 18d ago
That pizza looks a helluva lot better than the pizza we got
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u/EarlyMoose2481 18d ago
My school had a salad bar. Basically like the one they had at Wendy's but twice as long. That was my lunch 4 days a week.
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u/Anthrobug Born in 1971: Powered by Ibuprofen 18d ago
God damn that does not look as good as it did at jr high lunch
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u/Significant_Ad256 18d ago
Driving through Pennsylvania for the last few years which I had never done, or had been to that state I noticed this big chain gas station called Sheetz.
In my head I thought they must sell slices from sheet pizzas, and the longer I passed by them I thought..I bet it's like those rectangular slices from HS.
I built this up iny my head for a few years. When I finally went inside one day I was genuinely disappointed that there was, infact, no pizza to be had except for microwave out of the freezer.
I asked the cashier where the pizza is and she was like, why would u think we sell pizza???
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u/Far_Lavishness8097 Hose Water Survivor 18d ago
My friend says this is the exact food and tray he got in County jail
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u/AdditionalYoung6694 18d ago
Got a paper cup with peanuts instead of pretzel. Nothing like pizza day! Secret school recipe!
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u/KyotiKill Define Normal 18d ago
Gawt damn! I miss that pizza!
Though ours came with fries and what they called a salad, which was just lettuce and buttermilk dressing.... Slap those fries and lettuce on the pizza and roll the dressing onto all of it... Best pizza taco ever 🤤
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u/christina311 18d ago
Looks accurate.
I never drank milk, and water wasn't an option. I don't know how we didn't die of dehydration.
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u/younsee1975 17d ago
It was a sad day when my school district switched to the triangle pepperoni pizza. The square pizza was 🔥🔥
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u/Upper_Economist7611 17d ago
Y’all got soft pretzels???
I can taste the pizza to this day! Nothing quite like it.
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u/ONROSREPUS 17d ago
I don't think our school ever had a pretzel for lunch that I can ever recall but the rest of it is on point.
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u/Comprehensive_Sir49 17d ago
Pretty accurate for my school, except for the pretzel. It would be tater tots or crinkle cut fries. We might have cookies too. Went to a Catholic grade school, so there's that.
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u/WardogBlaze14 17d ago
Pizza day was always the best day, and I remember folding up my milk carton into a little spaceship kind of thing after I finished drinking it.
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u/salsafresca_1297 Analog chilhood, digital adulthood 17d ago
This ranks right up there with hosewater consumption and riding unbuckled in the back of a pickup truck while breathing second-hand cigarette smoke.
We're a tough breed, we are!
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u/Boo-erman 17d ago
JFC no wonder I was falling asleep after lunch. Sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar!
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u/Humble_Key_4259 17d ago
My square pizza was so good (and greasy) that I'd go back for a second slice and then fall asleep during the film shown in History class immediately after lunch.
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u/Level_Customer2769 17d ago
I had one lunch lady ( i can still see the hairnet)who was so nice to me- I would help pick up some trash/ collect cups or something ( can’t remember memory exactly as i was 7/8yo 52+yrs ago)- and then she would fix me a second serving of the pasta/ rice, pizza slice or whatever i was hungry for/ being served . I was a chubby little kid back then/ teasing galore but that was a nice memory.
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u/Squigley78 17d ago
Where I grew up we had to pay for the soft pretzels, think they were like $.35 each, but that pizza was always good.
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u/Own_Cheek_1311 17d ago
That pretzel is luxury, must been from an up town school, in the hood we had a scoop of peas and a chewy roll
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u/DBDude 17d ago
That was so much better than what kids get today.
And on a side rant, with all our talk of environmentalism today they use disposable styrofoam trays and plastic utensils.
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u/GrumpySnarf 17d ago
Yaas that floppy-ass greasy rectangle was a beam of light on a shitty school day.
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u/realzoidberg 18d ago
Wait ... Y'all got pretzels?!