Well if You Didn't Have Ovaltine, What Did You Have?
Fine! I've been bitch-slapped by all of you. Whatever. I don't care.
When I'm wrong, I'll admit I'm wrong. It shocks me that only a few of you drank Ovaltine. Most of your comments cracked me up, some of them left me scratching my head, and others made me roll my eyes.
All this Ovaltine talk made me thirsty, hungry, and thinking about foods from my childhood. When I was growing up, the most uncool thing you could do was to buy your lunch at school. One exception to this rule was pizza day. Then and ONLY THEN was it acceptable to buy lunch. The rest of the time, you brought your lunch from home. In the early days of elementary school, you brought your lunch in a rad lunchbox (me, I had a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox). Later on, like in 6th grade, it was only cool to bring your lunch in a paper sack.
My favorite things to bring for lunch were peanut butter and jelly with tortilla chips. I also had a list of snacks that I loved, none of them particularly healthy. (Healthy snacks like apples or bananas were also terribly uncool.)
1. Kudos "Granola" Bars in Cookies and Cream Flavor. I use the term "Granola" very loosely in this context, as there was more chocolate and cookies and cream flavor than actual granola.
2. Fruit Snacks, preferably Farley Fruit Snacks in Strawberry Flavor. All other fruit snacks are inferior, but this Farley Brand is quite difficult to find. Even to this day, if I see Strawberry Farley Fruit Snacks, I'll buy several boxes and eat them by myself. (I'm not a good sharer.)
3. Fruit Roll-ups. This was in the days before Fruit Roll-ups had cut-out shapes, which I feel really screws up the enjoyment that is eating a Fruit Roll-up.
4. Fruit Leather, specifically Grape Flavor. They are similar to Fruit Roll-ups, but are far superior. I could take hours to eat just one, taking time to savor each bite. These are also hard to find, but again, when I do, I buy several and eat them by myself.
5. Capri Suns in any flavor. These were the most delicious drink ever when I was a kid. They never had enough in one and I always needed like four to quench my thirst, which pissed my Mom off since they were so expensive. Hi-C and those little cheap barrel drinks were pretty good, too, but couldn't compare to the coveted Capri Sun.
6. Ho-ho's (not to be confused with Swiss Cake Rolls). I loved to peel the chocolate off the Ho-ho then unroll it, eating the icing, and finally the moist, delicious cake.
7. Hostess Cupcakes. Everybody loves these, please tell me that I'm not wrong about this, too!
I also loved (and still love) grape Hubba Bubba Gum, watermelon Jolly Ranchers, red Tootsie Roll pops, Skor candy bars, Frozen Snickers bars, Kit-Kats, and 100 Grand Candy Bars.
Carson has not yet had any of the aforementioned goodies (except fruit snacks). I wonder if these snacks will still be cooler than apples and bananas when he's in school.
So what snacks did you eat as a kid? Do your kids eat those same snacks?
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Speaking of all this junk food, check out my recipe blog for a spectacular brownie recipe submitted by Anna from Hank & Willie.
51 People are even more brilliant:
Being the diabetic child of a nurse, I got yummy (seriously, to me) things like plain yogurt with chopped pineapple in it (I love this stuff, still), arrowroot cookies (still yummy), fruit salad. My oldest kid hates the pineapple/yogurt mix (I'll do better with the youngest once he's on more "solid" feeding ground), tolerates the cookies and hates fruit salad.
He'll eat all my husband's vices, though - mostly because they're all sugary and both of them (hubby and oldest) have the metabolism of a cheetah and could live on sugar alone if they wanted (and if I'd let them).
I TOTALLY DRANK OVALTINE! And my kids do love it...my nearly four year-old daughter is one of those who begs for it by the spoonful. Gotta part with you on the Hostess cupcakes...they taste like plastic to me.
Fave childhood goodies: Charlie's chips and french onion chip dip...yuuuum. Pretzels and lemonade. Lorna Doone's. And yes, my kids love them! What's not to love?
Pizza Day was the best day to eat lunch at school. That rectangular-shaped pizza was the best!
I had a friend who taught school. I would go by to visit and have lunch - but only on days that they were serving pizza.
Childhood lunches -- my favorite was a cheese sandwich: two slices of bread, slathered with mustard, and a slice of American.
Childhood snacks -- Frankenberry, Booberry and Count Chocula. Fruity Pebbles and Capn Crunch w/ crunchberries. The sad thing is that I still love all of the above. I went through boxes of Fruity Pebbles during both pregnancies.
No Ovaltine for me, but my Yankee husband drinks it to this day.
Little Debbie Nutty Buddy bars were my favorite.
I like weird sandwiches like peanut butter, mayonnaise, and banana or a cucumber sandwich with cream cheese and garlic.
Funny. Nobody ever wanted to trade with me.
My mom gave me every kind of junk known to man when I was little - which explains the mouth of bling-bling I sported after having caps put on all my chompers. I could tear up some Hubba Bubba.
Did your lunchroom serve corn with their pizza, too? I can't say I've had that combo since graduation.
Super B is very limited on what "junk" he gets because A)I don't want him ruining his teeth like I did and B) He's allergic to most everything on God's green earth. But he can tear up some fruit roll ups. But only if their Spiderman cut-outs.
I did in fact drink Ovaltine! I loved the stuff and it was either Ovaltine or Carnation Instant Breakfast. My son has yet to have either as he will gulp down glass after glass of anything with any taste...so I have to be careful when I give him anything flavored.
I can't really remember what I took for lunch other than PBJ. When I got to high school I either didn't eat lunch to save the cash (I didn't get an allowance) or ate at the salad bar (we were the cool school in the county).
One thing I do remember from my childhood was TANG...the drink of Astronauts! Loved it then...can't understand why I thought it was so great now. EW.
:-)
You forgot Chili-con car-NAY day, not for the grease pool of chili but the HUGE cinnamon roll they would place right on top of the grease. It was well worth the effort at eating every bit but the chili soaked bottom of the bun. Of course, the chili that was slided off the plate into the trash made many a starving child in Ethiopa cry.
Two words: String cheese. We'd go to Ungodly Large Proportions Store and buy a 10lb "wheel" of the junk. My goal was to eat all I could in one afternoon. My mom always wondered why I never pooped :|
Super B-
They served corn with our pizza too- whose great idea was that?
Pizza day sucked at my school. I was actually just the opposite. I would buy every day except for pizza friday.
Hmm snacks as a kid:I loved Doo Dads. I don't even think they make them anymore. Now all I see is Chex Mix...but it's essentially the same thing.
Then of course i ate all sorts of other crap which I try not to give my kids.
I loved Kudos. So yummy. You forgot Twinkies. Cause, how much sugar can you cram into one snack?
My hub knows if it were between 100 grands & him, I'd take the bar. Sex in a stick form.
I've never tried a frozen Snickers, but I hear in Scotland, they seriously deep fry them. Hmm?
Some of these, I don't know, as I haven't tried, but the Capri Sun is SO true. In fact, two weeks ago when SD got his first Lunchable for his 1st ever MDO, I saw it came with one, pulled it out & drank it in one gulp.
Ahh, thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Wagon Wheels. Crispy cookies with marshmallow in between all covered in chocolate. Oh the goodness.
And what a great name - Wagon wheels.
OMG I cannot believe somebody mentioned the rectangular shaped school lunch pizza. I would totally eat that now if I could find it.
You would too, don't lie :)
i used to have milo. it's like ovaltine, but not.
my husband never saw the sound of music - i just could not get over that!!
I was big on the Nutty Buddy bars...LOVED those! Other than that, I can't remember too many other snacks. I did get a Carl Buddig chicken sandwich every day. I don't think I could bring myself to take a bite out of the "meat" again any time soon. Bleh.
My mom sent me with carrot sticks. An apple. Pickles. Luckily, I could get other children to trade/share with me, so I had my share of Little Debbie snack cakes.
Mmmmm....hoho's.
I can not recall if I commented on the ovaltine...but it makes me thing of TANG - which i did always have, and loved.
when i read "Grape Hubba Hubba" just now, I got that saliva feeling in my mouth that I used to get while chewing it.
we were more ring dings, ding dongs, and devil dogs. I think it's regional. all the same crap but called something different.
Thanks for making me hungry.
I loved Fruit Roll Ups. The whole shape thing they have now just ruins them. Also fruit leather, too, but it was harder to find. Capri Sun rocked. As did Ho Hos but not Ding Dongs. I like grape Bubble Yum, green apple jolly ranchers and Blow Pops, Skors and the best of all - Cheetos. Frankenberry cereal was delightful as was Cookie Crisp. I loved Magic Shell on ice cream, esp the butterscotch flavor they no longer make. As I type this I see that my mom wasn't so much into nutrition.
I've had everything on your list, but the only thing we got regularly was fruit roll-ups. And that was a pantry snack at home, along with oreos and chocolate chip cookies and anything else my father liked. My mother sucked and never made us lunches. I remember one day in the 3rd grade I told her that you could BUY lunch and I thought that was so weird. My mother's face lit up and said "would you like to buy your lunch too??" and that was that.
I loved pizza day, for 50 cents you could buy TWO slices! That was some good pizza. I also loved the vanilla pudding and the fruit cocktail (mixed, of course)
But otherwise no real snacks other than fruit, bread with apple butter, foraging for leftovers. Boring. Even now I feel silly buying "snack" items.
well, at the risk of sounding all forlorn and needing a pity party...we didn't have a lot of money when i was growing up, so there weren't a lot of cool snacks goin' on.
we had corn flakes for breakfast...that's it. i had never had a sugar cereal until i stayed at a friend's house when i was like 10 years old! fruits and veggies constituted most of our snacking material. we had saltines...triscuits or ritz crackers were a big treat....ya...that's pretty lame, right?
the best was when our parents were going out and we were either alone (when we were old enough), or had a babysitter. my mom would buy a small bottle (remember when they were glass and you needed a bottle opener????), and like a bag of m&m's or something...and we got to share them as a treat. that was a huge deal!
wow...my childhood was totally lame!
My breakfast all through high school was a can of Pepsi (not diet) and a Baby Ruth candy bar. Seriously.
LOVE the swiss cake rolls. And I peeled the chocolate off first and then unwrapped them and licked the creme out with my finger.
I had Ovaltine as a kid sometimes but preferred Milo. Milo sprinkled on top of vanilla ice cream is the best way to have it. Yum.
We had some same and some different snacks here down under - I recall my favourite was Cheese Twisties.
It was so cool to buy your lunch - I was a big dork because my mum lovingly made my lunch. But we don't have lunch room type things like I see in TV shows - more like a little sandwich and takeaway shop as the school canteen.
I have Ovaltine in my pantry right now! My kids can have it once a day stirred into milk, and I sometimes stir it into coffee!
My mother was diabetic, so we never had sugar in the house. I don't remember eating a lot of cafeteria snacks in middle school, but in high school I bought Nutty Buddies (peeled apart each wafer layer, licked the peanut butter, then ate the wafer), Ho-Hos (also unrolled them like you did), and these pudding/cake cup things that are sold at KFC of all places, for some reason we had them at school. Vanilla pudding with a layer of chocolate cake-YUM.
My fondest memory of lunch was when I thought I was getting OJ in my thermos for whatever reason (magical thinking?), so I would flip the big, hunky plastic straw thing up, lift up my thermos to mouth, take a BIG drink...only to realize it was full of milk.
The only time I drink milk nowadays is when I have something super sweet or with cereal. I just don't like milk, nor so I like being fooled into drinking it!
My childhood loves: Susie Q's and french cut green beans (don't ask).
I still can't believe we're in the Ovaltine minority. Hrmph.
I loved the peanut butter Kudos (still do!) and the chocolate chip ones. Fruit Roll ups, yup. Don't know what those fruit snacks are, tho, but I had my own fave (can't remember brand tho).
LURVE me some hostess cupcakes. I would eat mine from the bottom up, so I could savor the frosting all by itself. Sickness, I know.
my mom never bought the cool fun junky stuff....she was having a party if we got get get Kix cereal instead of plain of corn flakes or plain cherrios! But we lived on red Koolaid!! I used to scrape the ice from the top of the freezer and pour cherry koolaid on it...my own frosties!
My friends from highschool and I had a saying if you like "Ding Dongs" as we call them here then you like "it" short and round, if you liked Twinkies then you liked them long and thin. Yeah were totally retarded.
I remember being one of the first in my 6th grade class to get the new fangiled thing called a Lunchable and every one wanted me to share a cheesy meaty cracker with them. I think I only got two stacks total after sharing.
My orthodontist of a dad never let us have sugared cereals. I remember loving Tang and Cheetos (in that blue cardboard cannister). I recently started buying the baked Cheetos for S.B.'s lunch treat.
I loved school lunches more than kids probably should. I even got excited over beefaroni (or "barfaroni" as all the other kids called it). And that hot buttered corn ... so much better than the cold unbuttered stuff we got at home.
My favorite packed lunches were cold chicken nuggets and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. I also loved the Quaker Oats and Honey granola bars (the 2-pack in that green wrapper).
Mmm fruit roll-ups! I also loved Wagon Wheels, but now the thought of them makes me shudder in disgust. I was also a huge fan of the candy cigarettes - remember those?
Okay, totally with you on the candy, which I bought myself at the corner store.
100,000 bars CHECK
watermelon Jolly Ranchers CHECK
AND what was that candy, called something like lik-me stix? You scooped out sugar with a sugar stick?
LOVED that.
Chocolate Milk with Hershey Syrup.
Dorito's
Popcorn
Devil Dogs.
No. Fa is not allowed to eat that crap.
nope, never had ovaltine either. And this post totally shows me how much OLDER I am than you because all that stuff you had? WASN'T EVEN INVENTED when I was a kid.
We ate rocks and dirt and LIKED IT! AND ASKED FOR MORE!
That was, of course, after having walked home from school, 40 miles, up hill, both ways, in snow up to our eyeballs - 12 months out of the year, for 12 hours a day. (not walking - school).
I'm going back to my rocking chair now.
I'm with Dawn on this one (except for the Ovaltine of course). I'll even be willing to bet that your Dukes of Hazard lunch box was plastic and not metal (painted with lead based paint of course). I never had the honor of having Capri Sun in my lunch. Rather, I got the plastic barrel looking container filled with colored sugar water.
I think my most favorite thing to take in my lunch was Ding Dongs. I still remember unwrapping them from their foil and using a coin or something to smooth out all the wrinkles. That was the cool thing to do ya know.
Wow...I think I must have had a food nazi mother. Remember the puffed wheat cereal? That's the only kind she'd buy. So I grew up with my favorite snacks being homemade cookies & ice cream, homemade too. Come slap me, but I've never even had a Ho Ho in my life. I use to get super excited to go over to friend's homes and eat twinkies there. Do you pity me?
I think my brother and sister drank Nesquick.
I love any willie wonka candy.
Ever have Goober grape? The peanut butter and jelly in one? Ahhhh, good stuff. One taste and I'm back in 1982.
For a short while, Fruit Corners made something called Fruit Bars which was like a really thick Fruit Roll-Up. I remember the commercial saying "They're ugly!" I loved them.
Reading this makes me feel old. And also sad that my memory is not as good as everyone else seems to easily recall their days of youth. I do remember that hot lunch was cool at our schools and they had good food. I hardly brought cold lunch. I know that's the way my kids will be too because I'll be too lazy to make my kids lunches.
I would have loved all of your favorite snacks, in fact I did, but I had to do it in secret. Snacks in our house always consisted of carrot sticks or apples, maybe some almonds. My kids have it way better than I did, although I have discovered that when your small children are starving half an hour before dinner will be ready, you really can't beat carrot sticks to appease them.
Still can't help you on the Ovaltine. Maybe one day. We always had Hersheys syrup though. I hated milk and that was the only way I'd drink it.
Favorite sandwiches were PB&J on wheat bread with Fritos inside it or a Ham sandwich on sourdough with doritios in it. Yes, I was picky. I only bought lunch on chicken nugget day.
Snacks...lets see: Kudos Bars; Fruit Snacks, I'm with you on the strawberry. Hell I still like them, although I don't buy them; Fruit Roll-ups, I would roll it on my finger and suck it off. Kinda gross now that I think of it.
Fruit Leather, cause my mom actually thought it was better for you. Hahahahaha. Oreos, we always had them, my mom was addicted. Capri Suns for sure. Hi-C's but I liked them better frozen.
You're not wrong about Hostess Cupcakes. My mom wouldn't buy them though. I only got them when I'd spend time at my dads.
I'm also with you on all the candy...I still love it. Just add Starbursts.
Oh but my lunch box was the Muppets. For years and years, I just loved the Muppets.
Jello-Pudding-Pops-baby! Hocked by the one and only Bill Cosby!
And I still love Fruit Rollups even though I can't eat them very often.
It's funny that Super B's mom mentioned the corn and pizza - she and I went to schools in the same district. I have to disagree though, the "stop sign" pizza was my favorite. It was "spicy" or "Mexican" style.
Skittles - but only the red, yellow and orange ones. I would pick through the whole bag and leave behind the green and purple ones (they're bitter) and The Mighty Hunter would be sooo disgusted with me. Now my TMJ prevents me from eating more than just a very few.
I'll take no jabs about the TMJ, now! wink wink
I totally forgot about smoothing foil with a coin! Only mine was the foil from my sandwich.
And I also just remembered that my mom used to put a can of soda in my lunch box when I was in the 2nd grade. What's up with that? I remember the old pull tabs and how half the time I'd break the tab and not have a drink with my lunch.
My dad would buy us hostess treats every time we were alone together. Or he'd stop at the quik chek at night on his way home from work and bring us Chunky bars.
also: lik-em-aid... sugar.. that you eat with a stick made of sugar... I'm there!
Well it's no wonder I'm so svelte these days.
The cool thing to have in your lunch when I was in elementary was
a) raw Mr. Noodle, crushed up and salty as hell
b) frozen juice boxes
c) little cracker sandwiches made with pickles, sausage and cheese.
I did not have any of these.
I liked honey sandwiches on white bread with butter. And Cocoa Krispies - several refills. Or Little Debbies.
And Sara Lee use to make this chocolate cake with icing in that silver foil pan container. I never see that anymore. I miss it.
Oh and those giant sweethearts. I'd work on one all summer long.
And Bosco!!
Ooops, I menat Sweetarts, not Sweethearts.
Sorry, no ovaltine here either. Nestle's quick, both the chocolate and strawberry flavors (pink milk!), loved apricot fruit leather -- so thick and sticky! Had to go to other people's houses for the coveted twinkies and ding dongs, cupcakes were okay but ding dongs were better, never did the swiss rolls for some reason.
My first act of independence in college was to buy a whole box of twinkies for my very own.
On the savory side I loved LOVED chef boyardee (ew???) raviolis -- again, at the neighbor's house, not allowed at home, and easy cheese on triscuits (neighbor's), and the one junky food my mom would make: stouffer's spinach souffle, believe it or not.
I loved our school pizza. Square, with little square cubes of some kind of meat product. Yummy. And ewwww!
No Ovaltine here but then again i have never actually heard of it so maybe in the UK its something diffrent. I remember drinking so much Coke Cola as a child (dads works there and used to bring it home by the crate load) that to this day i cannot touch it without throwing up. Such fun
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