i clicked on a random link today, and it took me to a website about school lunches, and then i clicked on a link from there, and… did you know there’s a whole genre of blogs out there devoted to documenting school lunches? fascinating!

the kid brings a packed lunch (and recess) to school each day, in her rather fetching apple print insulated lunch bag. within this are two or three smaller boxes. the biggest one always contains a sandwich: her favourite at the moment is cheese and apple, but on heavy rotation are cheese and cucumber; ham and tomato and cucumber; vegemite and cucumber. she really likes cucumber! last monday, she had bak kwa and cucumber, on infinity bakery pumpkin sourdough, but that was a special one-off. the sandwiches are almost always made on grainy wholemeal bread (is the bread helga’s? ja!), with butter, or kewpie mayo.

dessert is fruit: cubes of melon, or apple slices. sometimes grapes or berries.

recess is usually fruit too, but sometimes it might be a squeezy tube of yoghurt, or a box of raisins. did you know you can get raspberry-flavoured raisins in the supermarket? they get raisins, and then coat it in raspberry flavour. the package shows a large grape bisected at the mouth, about to eat a raspberry — amazing. occasionally, there will be a sweet biscuit in a little strawberry-print paper bag.

reading the school lunch blogs made me think about when i was at school, and wonder what we did about food safety and insulation in the tropics. and then i realised that i never did bring lunch to school. when i was in primary school in malaysia and singapore, there was a morning session and an afternoon session. the various grades were divided up, i guess to prevent overcrowding, so if you were in primary 3, you might be scheduled for morning school that year, while the whole of primary 4 would be in afternoon school.

morning school started at 7.30 — it meant waking up to darkness at 6am — and went until 12.30 or 1pm. afternoon school operated from 1 to 6pm. throughout my school career, i ate lunch at home, before school or after, depending on which session i was cursed with at the time.

i did have recess though. i still remember — not fondly — the slightly sour taste (and the slightly furry feel) of warm water or cordial that had been sitting for a few hours under my desk in a plastic water bottle.

once i came into the pocket money, i bought little tumblers of overly diluted rose syrup cordial from the drinks stall, for 10c a pop. the drinks aunty would have a raft of these scuffed plastic tumblers laid out before her on her stainless steel counter, and a pile of cold, wet coins. it was the perfect accompaniment to a soggy curry puff (bar the crimped edge — that was satisfyingly crunchy) stuffed with nothing but curried potatoes.

i’m sorry to say that i also had a predilection for the spring rolls from the fried stall. these were not your ordinary spring rolls, mind. sure, you could have had one filled with shredded vegetables, but more often than not, i ended up with the one stuffed with diced spam. or curried potatoes…

i really like curried potato!

my favourite recess snacks were the little packs of nutella with the foil tops you peeled off and the little plastic spatulas to facilitate eating, and packets of fried noodle cakes — mamee — that you ate crunchy out of the bag. sometimes i ate them together. take that, chocolate-covered potato chips!

as i progressed through high school, i started staying after class for extra curricular activities, and so had more of a chance to eat at the school canteen. it was a large open space with a roof but no walls, with several rows of long tables and benches, and a bank of independently run stalls dispensing all manner of noodles and ricey dishes (also, a drinks stall and a particularly well-stocked snacks stall — chips, puffs, biscuits, candy, nutella, pickled plums…). i usually had a plate of fried beehoon, rice vermicelli cooked extra extra stick-in-your-throat dry, with the barest of garnishings: a handful of limp beansprouts, tails still attached, and a clump of shredded omelette, all for 30c. no-one cooks beehoon as dry as that beehoon aunty at CHIJ toa payoh in the late 80s. i miss it, still.

i must say, i was slightly horrified today as i read the school lunch blogs, but my trip down memory lane is looking decidedly more like the path to ruin. it’s probably a good thing that i ate most of my lunches at home.

here are some of the more riveting school lunch blogs i found today. on the back of jamie oliver’s TED prize speech, a change is surely in the air.

– 6th graders from NY document their daily lunches
– non-judgemental roundup of school lunches form around the world
– a teacher raises awareness about school lunches, by eating them
– gaijin english teacher eats japanese school lunches
– two blogs about the state of affairs at DC school kitchens