We were all amazingly rude
about school dinners then. In the early days a
Grace was said before the meal was started. We sat there with heads bowed and
dutifully mis-intoned, "For what we are about to leave, may the pigs be truly
thankful." or "This piece of Cod, which passeth all understanding, be
with you, and remain with you, now and forever, amen."
Although school food tended to include boiled cabbage and potatoes remarkably often,
we would in fact race to finish our meals so that we could go up for
seconds and a good deal of ingenuity and effort was also devoted to putting the
more sensitive eaters off their food so we
could eat it for them. Generally a thoughtful discussion of their dinner's
former life-style and possible diseases would do the trick quite quickly.
Actually Scrote loved school dinners. Bland and probably
largely devoid of vitamins, they were reasonably filling, utterly reliable
and hardly ever contained unpleasant surprises.
Scrote first learned to really cook when, as a student, he became forced to
eat and even survive his own preparations. Up till then these had extended
little further than being able to fry things. Scrote subsequently shared a
condemned house in the red-light district of a university town
with a number of other students. It was
initially decided to take turns at cooking, and from time to time Scrote had
to produce food that everyone would eat and pay for the costs of the ingredients.
Even today, Scrote reckons almost any fool, armed with some expensive cut of meat,
wine, cream and pre-prepared vegetables, can produce something that is still
reasonably edible after their ministrations. But it takes a cook to make
food that is nourishing and delicious from what is available and can be afforded.
Even in 1970, it was something of an achievement to be able to produce a filling
palatable main meal for under 10 pence a head.