School Dinner Nightmares.

I was thinking about the way sprouts were so ruined for me by school dinners. Similar thoughts do come up in conversation occasionally and having made no new years resolutions I'm thinking about tackling some of these ruined foods and reclaiming them. For instance- its taken me a long time to manage to eat a fish cake. Anyone else remember those grey patties of unidentifiable stuff? Grim. Very grim.

My husband loved the 'Chicken' pie (there's no way those cubes were actual chicken....). And I have lovehate feelings towards those enormous pieces of sponge (plain, ginger, chocolate, treacle, lemon) smothered in quickly congealing custard, on special days this might even be pink custard- what was that about- really... Remember cheese pinwheels? And bad bad bad macaroni cheese. Also, cauliflower- why take a wonderful vegetable and boil it to within an inch of its life- why why why do this to us?

I took advice recently to try thinly slicing Spam and frying it, I was told this would be just like bacon. Not true. It is still as bad as you remember- the spam fritter has now been identified as one item I never never never ever need to re visit.

So I may undertake a small project in 2010- to recreate quality versions of those awful foodstuffs eaten off plastic plates in noisy rooms, with not quite clean cutlery, sitting opposite a child who's parents haven't seen fit to teach it how to blow their nose, tottering with a tray laden with runny gravy and toxic orange squash, skidding on trodden on chips and spilled custard.

Any ideas? Anything you think I should have a go at? Fishcakes is easy place to start.... watch this space.