Parents rejoice! Teachers sulk! It’s that time of year and kids are ready to go back to school. Today at Girls on Food, we reminisce over our favorite lunchtime items. Wanna trade?
When I was a little girl my mom always packed my lunch. I was a white wonder bread, slice of American cheese and butter kind of girl (the cold grilled cheese, you could call it). Held in my nifty wonder bread container. My mom would pack it up in my purple lunch box, I had “CATHRINE” written in black permanent marker on the flap.
My favorite part of my lunch was reading my napkins. My mom would leave notes and pictures on the napkins for me. It was like getting mail at lunch everyday, I loved it. I never threw the napkins out and made sure they stayed safe inside the lunchbox till I got home. My mom continued this up till high school. I didn’t take lunch often 9th-12th grade but when I did I always got a napkin.
My favorite part of lunch was (and continues to be) string
cheese. It’s perfectly packaged and so fun to eat. When I was a kid, my mom would pack a pretty healthy, delicious lunch but I would move everything to the side and focus on the string cheese. If you have never eaten string cheese (which is weird-please go purchase a pack right now) make sure you eat it properly. One time I ate it by just biting off a piece and it was not the same. It did not have the same taste at all. Pulling off string-by-string is very important. As an adult, string cheese is a low-fat, high-protein option. But mainly, it’s an important reminder of everything that was good in your childhood.
I always tease my Mom and tell her how I can’t eat pork chops to this day because of her “Mexican Pork Chop” recipe I despised as a child. What I don’t tell her enough, is how I remember her waking up at the crack of dawn to prepare the best lunch possible within the entire Sakamoto Elementary School, for me. I would always have a deluxe sandwich complimented with all the fixings and trimmings, a baggy of chips, a drink (because I REFUSE to drink Milk) and a chocolate hostess cupcake or a squishy bag of fruit snacks. But that wasn’t the only thing that came in the lunchbox. Every time I would open up my metal Holly Hobby box, I would feel an enormous sense of love from her. Thank you Mom, for not only giving me a kick ass lunch every day, but for filling my lunch box with eternal love and heartfelt memories.
There was always one treat I would not trade anyone, for anything. Mine happened to come in the form of little bite sized nuggets that oozed liquid sugar. Gushers! Do you remember them? I’m not sure when I had my first one, but I know that I coveted them after soccer games or as my dessert in my lunchbox. As I look back, I’m completely grossed out by these things. But as a kid, textural things were more intriguing. I truly felt like I was eating a gem, as I popped each one Gusher into my mouth. I didn’t care what the flavor was; I was just in it for the ‘gush’!
I was an extremely picky eater in elementary school, so my lunches usually consisted of a green apple, a PB & J on Iron Kids bread and Cheetos. I ate out of necessity and wouldn’t say I was particularly pumped to eat the items. But what I would get excited for was the Capri Sun!
Reflecting on Capri Sun, I’m not sure why I was so into it. Remember when it would squirt all over your hands and you were stuck with the stickiness all day? Or when you accidentally stuck the straw so far in you couldn’t get it out and were stuck sucking on the hole? What exactly is Pacific Cooler favor anyways? I never knew (and I still don’t know) what exactly fruit drink is. It’s just flavored water, something I would never drink today. I think Capri Sun’s marketing was so 90’s and so brilliant with the special effects taken from “Terminator 2” that I was just excited to morph into a pile of chrome sludge and slide away.
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