Make Mine Sushi.(school lunch menus)(Brief Article)

It was just before noon on a weekday. I was seven years old, and for the first time ever I was having hot lunch--a hot dog, french fries, whole milk and cherry Jell-O. I expected to bite into a frankfurter that tasted like the kind my mother made--hot out of the frying pan topped with the perfect amount of yellow mustard. But with that first bite, I got something so different, so completely distasteful, I couldn't finish it. The bun was stale, the hot dog cold and mushy and the mustard was combined with relish. Yuck!

It only took that one day to learn my lesson. From then on, I carefully reviewed the weekly lunch menu that my mother cut out from the local paper. I looked at the food my friends ate before deciding to try a certain lunch item. By the middle of first grade, I knew what I did and didn't like. The veal patty (which was a bright orange) served with "whipped" potatoes, gravy and whole wheat bread with butter was my absolute favorite. (I'm not convinced there were any real ingredients in the offerings, but they tasted great to me, nonetheless.) I also enjoyed the grilled cheese sandwich and soup, and I got to try other foods that we never had at home, like beef tacos. Those were the good things. But then there were the nasty meals, things that should have been tasty under normal circumstances, but somehow were transformed into the inedible. Like pizza. Every Friday was cheese pizza day when you'd get a soggy square of pizza topped with a good shake of oregano, limp "green salad" in a flavorless Italian dressing and canned fruit. The hamburgers tasted like cardboard, and the spaghetti was doused in a hideous meat sauce. I longed for the day when I would get to junior high where you could purchase items a la carte. (Older kids told us that you could buy soda at the junior high, but the rumors turned out to be completely unfounded.) When I finally reached seventh grade, I began a lunch ritual that I would stick to throughout junior high and high school: chocolate milk and french fries followed by a package of three chocolate chip cookies. Undoubtedly a lunch lacking in certain nutritional requirements, but boy, did it taste good. In my naivete, however, I thought for some reason that things would be different today.

With our ever-increasing knowledge about food and nutrition and eating habits, I somehow thought that kids today would be enjoying fresh, "real" food from the hot lunch line. I found out otherwise when I ...