School cafeterias are the best proof that there is an active conspiracy to commit student genocide. Please share your stories of school food related atrocities.
I was living in Sproul Hall on the UCLA campus in 1970, long before many of you were even a gleam in your father's eye, and was discovering the glories of college life.
The Hall's cafeteria was not exceptional in appearance, but after a few meals it became clear that something dreadful was being conducted behind the doors leading to the kitchens, through whose windows could be seen occasional flashes of Tesla coil lighting strikes. Creation of alien life forms? Experiments in fusing together super pathogens? Raising the dead? Anything was possible.
Just how bad was the "food"?
I tried an experiment. On a day when they were offering "chocolate pudding parfait", I emptied the contents of the parfait glass, after carefully removing the "whipped cream" rosette. This rosette was made from a substance called silicon vibrafoam, impervious to any utensil, capable of shattering one's teeth, and probably developed for use in shooting protesters.
The glass emptied of its contents, I made up a mixture of chocolate syrup, mashed potatoes with mashed peas and minced gristly fat stirred together into a pulsing brown glop, refilled the glass, topped it with the indestructible rosette, and snuck it back into the rows of parfaits. I breathlessly watched to see if a guinea pig would take it and one did!
From my spotter's position in the main dining room I followed the parfait, perched on a fiberglass tray, as the subject of my experiment carried it to a vacant seat at one of the tables, sat down, and began to sullenly eat his lunch while reading a textbook. I waited in anticipation as he slowly consumed his meal.
The moment arrived as he pulled the faux chocolate parfait, flicked off the rosette, and took a bite. Then he took another. And another. And he consumed the entire horrid mess without noticing anything amiss. He even scraped the walls of the parfait glass, took the tray to the conveyor belt that lead back into the bowels of the kitchens, and departed. I was dumbfounded. My experimental results were not what I expected, but they validated my worst fears.
But, back to that worst meal. To be honest, it's not a meal that I ate. I might have been dumb, but not that dumb. However, it remains as the most memorably awful meal that I have witnessed.
The occasion was a celebratory dinner to honor the newly appointed Dean of Women, who was a Latina, and the kitchen had concocted something they labeled Chicken Mole. I took one look at the vat of brown bubbling mud and opted for the garbage soup instead.
Many of the other students went for the mole, which I later discovered contained Bosco chocolate sauce mixed with Skippy peanut butter. As many students were to discover, that combination, boiled with mystery chicken, made for a powerful laxative.
About 45 minutes after the meal, the mole erupted in the guts of several hundred students, which precipitated a mad rush to the Hall's inadequate toilet facilities. I'll spare you, gentle readers, the details of the pandemonium that ensued, except to add that the entire plumbing system backed up under the assault, and a large cleaning crew was dispatched to deal with the ecological disaster.
So, anyone else have a story to tell?
I was living in Sproul Hall on the UCLA campus in 1970, long before many of you were even a gleam in your father's eye, and was discovering the glories of college life.
The Hall's cafeteria was not exceptional in appearance, but after a few meals it became clear that something dreadful was being conducted behind the doors leading to the kitchens, through whose windows could be seen occasional flashes of Tesla coil lighting strikes. Creation of alien life forms? Experiments in fusing together super pathogens? Raising the dead? Anything was possible.
Just how bad was the "food"?
I tried an experiment. On a day when they were offering "chocolate pudding parfait", I emptied the contents of the parfait glass, after carefully removing the "whipped cream" rosette. This rosette was made from a substance called silicon vibrafoam, impervious to any utensil, capable of shattering one's teeth, and probably developed for use in shooting protesters.
The glass emptied of its contents, I made up a mixture of chocolate syrup, mashed potatoes with mashed peas and minced gristly fat stirred together into a pulsing brown glop, refilled the glass, topped it with the indestructible rosette, and snuck it back into the rows of parfaits. I breathlessly watched to see if a guinea pig would take it and one did!
From my spotter's position in the main dining room I followed the parfait, perched on a fiberglass tray, as the subject of my experiment carried it to a vacant seat at one of the tables, sat down, and began to sullenly eat his lunch while reading a textbook. I waited in anticipation as he slowly consumed his meal.
The moment arrived as he pulled the faux chocolate parfait, flicked off the rosette, and took a bite. Then he took another. And another. And he consumed the entire horrid mess without noticing anything amiss. He even scraped the walls of the parfait glass, took the tray to the conveyor belt that lead back into the bowels of the kitchens, and departed. I was dumbfounded. My experimental results were not what I expected, but they validated my worst fears.
But, back to that worst meal. To be honest, it's not a meal that I ate. I might have been dumb, but not that dumb. However, it remains as the most memorably awful meal that I have witnessed.
The occasion was a celebratory dinner to honor the newly appointed Dean of Women, who was a Latina, and the kitchen had concocted something they labeled Chicken Mole. I took one look at the vat of brown bubbling mud and opted for the garbage soup instead.
Many of the other students went for the mole, which I later discovered contained Bosco chocolate sauce mixed with Skippy peanut butter. As many students were to discover, that combination, boiled with mystery chicken, made for a powerful laxative.
About 45 minutes after the meal, the mole erupted in the guts of several hundred students, which precipitated a mad rush to the Hall's inadequate toilet facilities. I'll spare you, gentle readers, the details of the pandemonium that ensued, except to add that the entire plumbing system backed up under the assault, and a large cleaning crew was dispatched to deal with the ecological disaster.
So, anyone else have a story to tell?
