It's middle school in the 90s or 80s and it's PIZZA DAY. Yay!
One of the square slices behind the counter has a bubble. The dough has somehow acquired an air pocket. It's huge. The size of a tennis ball.
Everyone is talking about "The Bubble"
How do you feel about the bubble?
Ok so picture this, there is pizza day, but your parents only let you bring a sack lunch.
(I actually didn’t like pizza, but it was sad for kids who did like pizza and had to eat a sack lunch…I just realized this is probably why me and my misfit of sack lunch eating friends tended to eat anywhere other than the cafeteria)
This surfaced forgotten memories. I was fascinated by the concept of "bagged lunch" begged my mom to let me have a bagged lunch. (I thought it was very exotic like in an anime)
My mom was so confused and annoyed to her "bag lunch" was for "poor kids" and she didn't work in the math mines all day to have her daughter eating out of a paper bag.
Also since she was a math prof she had no time to make a lunch ... and tried to get Dad to do it who was baffled.
It quickly came to: "if you really want to have a bagged lunch you need to make it yourself."
I was excited to try!
It was a disaster!
I think I gave up after a few months. But the strange little plastic containers and boxes I found hung around in the kitchen for years.
Later I was obsessed with a "factory lunch" and using the old lunch pail that belonged to my grandfather when he worked in the mills.
That went a bit better.
That sounds much more responsible. I didn't really have a planning skills to pack a lunch so I'd just... find things in the house, and around the house and put them in the box to figure out later.
My older sister was a pain in the butt, at one point maybe when she was in 2nd grade she pitched a fit about what my mom made. Mom said fine 2nd graders make their own lunches. When I hit second grade that meant me too.
I ate peanut butter and butter sandwiches every day probably until 6th grade.
We also got a gross red delicious apple, and two chocolate cookies, which my sister was in charge of making, and I did get a milk card.
@MCDuncanLab @futurebird @llewelly
Nuts are no longer allowed in school.
I think they allow sunflower butter.
Plus im pretty sure making a 2nd grader make their own lunch is a no no these days.
Cookies are probably also banned.
Most schools I've encountered will have a strict nut and/or peanut ban if there are YOUNG kids with those allergies. And it's sensible.
There is no reason to have a ban if that isn't the case. The other case may be high sensitivity students ... then the ban may last longer.
Hilariously I'm deadly allergic to sunflowers and sunbutter. Eyes itch if I'm near it... but not peanuts.
I had the vague notion that a lunch should have such things. But I would end up with a can of creamed corn, a can opener, candied ginger from the back of the kitchen cabinet, a pack of hot chocolate, a thermos of water too cold by lunch to make the coco, a slice of white bread with thick slices of cucumber on it (since I read about "cucumber sandwiches" in a book but didn't know how to make them.)
I had this idea that it was a "fancy lunch"
It was awful.
At least it amused my friends to watch me unpack the box (which I pretended someone else made for me) and explain how it was going to work.
@futurebird I have to know, did you give up on the "cucumber sandwich" after you tried it, or did you finish it determinedly while telling your friends you were in fact being FANCY and they just didn't get it?
i'm pretty sure I know what small me would've done and it would not have been the wiser choice, lmao
Chewing and chewing with watering eyes "they serve these at country clubs, you know? you have to cut the crusts off..."
*chew chew chew*
Just thick chunks of cucumber with the skin on and nothing else but the wonder bread.
@futurebird @Sharksonaplane
Cucumber sandwiches are so good with cream cheese.
My mom would sneak Gerber baby plums in my lunch in a yogurt tub or something. It was like applesauce but with plums. So good but I was embarrassed to let my friends know it was baby food 😄
I had a metal lunch box in plaid that I loved. The latch broke and I had to hold it closed. I don't remember the metal ones being very well made.
Pizza day always included corn and chocolate pudding, too. Always.
This is why I have soft spot for strange somewhat hard headed kids. TBH.
@futurebird @MCDuncanLab @llewelly Once I hit fourth grade I was responsible for my own lunch.
Things I learned:
You can generally substitute cream cheese for mayo in sandwiches as a bread spread and it's often better.
A sandwich consisting entirely of bread and mayo is not good.
This started because one day I was having trouble finding ingredients and decided to try a sandwich containing only white ingredients: white bread, mayo, and cream cheese. Do not recommend.
A "c" sandwich containing cucumber and cream cheese, on the other hand, is really good.
@robotistry @futurebird @llewelly
In high school, I made some of the most amazing lunch sandwiches (kind of guided by my mom). One of my favorites was pita, cream cheese, sliced black olives, cucumbers (peeled and sliced futurebird), and roasted red peppers.
Gosh, it was so good. I bet it's amazing with home grown peppers and cucumbers. I should definitely try it this summer when the garden is in full swing.
@robotistry @futurebird @llewelly
By the time I got to high school, my parents were much better off so we had all those high-end ingredients. Well, I think they are high end, even if the black olives and roasted peppers came giant can or jars from costco that we *had* to eat once we opened it
@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly
Yeah neither her nor my mom are reliable witnesses when recalling which of them caused what family drama.
I’m sure there was an incident probably standard stubborn kid stuff, mom over reacted, sis over reacted and as a consequence my brother and I are making the only sandwiches 2nd graders can make somewhat reliably.
Although it is something of an art to get peanut butter on bread without tearing the bread, as I recall.
@jgordon @futurebird @llewelly
And why was it peanut butter and butter?
Could we not afford jelly? Was jelly too high in sugar?
We must have gone through so much butter because we all totally slathered it on.
Oh shoot it wasn’t even butter, i just remembered it was margarine. Was that cheap in the 80s?
@MCDuncanLab @jgordon @llewelly
"fruit preserves have too much sugar ... yes butter is much healthier?"
I mean, it's good I guess.
@futurebird @jgordon @llewelly
The goal was to make the ‘butter’ layer the same thickness as the peanut butter layer, so probably at least two tbps of both.
I was rail thin as a kid so it couldn’t have been too terrible of a diet.
@futurebird @MCDuncanLab @jgordon
my mother regularly made fruit preserves with 1/4 the normal sugar, so ...
... mold grew on it. Because, actually, the whole point of using so much sugar is to preserve the fruit!!!
@futurebird @jgordon @llewelly
I realize I totally hijjaked your thread with sandwiches. I’m sorry. 🥺
@MCDuncanLab @jgordon @llewelly
I'm learning so many things, and remembering others.
@llewelly @jgordon @futurebird
Seriously? I thought it was chemically modified vegetable oils.
Nah I just looked it up, they stopped using whale oil shortly after wwii at least in the us.
@MCDuncanLab @llewelly @futurebird Phew! I was about to check …
Yes. We are a lot of margarine
@MCDuncanLab @llewelly @jgordon @futurebird
I'm just shocked to learn that they ever used whale oil! Ethics aside, I wouldn't expect that to be either cheap (compared to vegetable oil) or good for eating (compared to other uses).
@RedRobyn @jgordon @futurebird @llewelly
Dang, your mom and mine were cut from the same cloth.
@RedRobyn @MCDuncanLab @jgordon @llewelly
I remember doing "margarine and marmite" well... just marmite. But it was another attempt at "exotic food" no one in Ohio knows about marmite but my grandmother had some for some reason and let me take the jar.
I'd read about characters in some book eating "marmite on toast" so I brought that for lunch one day.
It was VERY sticky and got stuck in the little plastic sandwich bag. "This is what they eat in LONDON"
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