Split Pea Soup – Yum!

‘Tis the season of food. From Thanksgiving through Super Bowl Sunday food is everywhere in our minds, in our sight, and on our plates.  I’d like to give a little shout out to food that gets no respect. That’s right, institutional cafeteria food. In particular, high school cafeteria food. Even more particularly, Slatington High School food of the late sixties.

I loved it! I absolutely loved it!  Maybe that says something about my mom’s cooking. At home we almost always got the big triple threat: meat, potato, and vegetable. Oh sure, maybe an occasional casserole, but that was rare. After all, we were Pennsylvania Dutch!  So fifty years later I cannot remember a signature dish that I could call my mom’s best.

But I can remember high school cafeteria favorites of mine. Let’s start with Split Pea Soup.  Delicious!, especially when you found that stray piece of ham.  Almost all of my classmates hated it, so I often had more than one bowl. Yum!

My next favorite cafeteria food had a name change during our high school years. Meat potato burgers became porcupine meat balls.  I sure hope the change was a marketing ploy and not a change in meat source due to budget cuts. Yikes.  Either way, they were so good. A huge meatball of ground beef (or porcupine!) filled with onions and spikes of potato and topped by a delectable tomato sauce, all baked in an oven. Wow! The little potato spikes would stick out of the meatball making it look like a porcupine. Please, let that be the reason for the name!

There were patterns to what we were served. Thursday seemed to be big meal day and we got sausage or meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Split pea soup was always served with a small hoagie. On Friday, thank you Catholics, we always had fish advertised as Poor Mans Lobster with, of course, stewed tomatoes on the side.  Not my favorite!

Did I mention that back then, our delicious cafeteria meal complete with a carton of milk, cost a whopping 30 cents?

I was a leader in the change the dress code movement in our senior year. We threatened a boycott of the cafeteria to make our point. I was secretly hoping we would not go through with it because, like I said, I loved that food!!

I hope this sparked some memories of your own high school cafeteria food and experiences. They were good times. Delicious times. Well, at least they were in Slatington.