Thursday, June 22, 2006
Foreman's feeding frenzy
Foreman's feeding frenzy!
It's a while since Cllr. Jimmy Foerman featured in this blog, but he certainly has not been a stranger to the pages of the Shields Gazette, once again he seems to be the Johnson Press model of the month! The Council Lead Member for children and young people never misses an opportunity to be photographed these days, perhaps he wants to get all of the photo-journalism stuff out of the way before he loses all of his hair. His favourite tactic these days is to turn up at a different school each week (probably at lunchtime) and he likes nothing better than to muck in with the dinner ladies, and probably sample their wares! This might explain the gradual increase in poundage Jimmy.
Tonight he was shown enjoying the delights at Ridgeway Primary School, ostensibly to help promote work to reduce childhood obesity and healthy eating. Cllr. Foreman took to reminding us of the quality of his own school meals, his favourites included lumpy gravy and rice pudding with a large dollop of jam in it. He will remember, as well as I do, such delights as smoked (yellow) cod on Fridays with an undercooked batter and a terrible tomato flavoured gravy, huge communal meat and potato pies with a mushy pastry, cheese pies, carrots and savoy cabbage so lightly boiled that the "crunch" could break teeth, prunes with (unsweetened) custard, lemon meringue pie, semolina pudding, and that other hardy annual the bakewell tart.
It was immaterial how good or bad it tasted, I had to march in formation from Barnes Road Junior School all the way up the bank to Dean Road Secondary Modern School for lunch, after that half-mile hill climb we were ready for anything! It was not unusual for troops of schoolchildren to be seen marching every lunchtime in the 1960s, because not every school in South Shields had a kitchen ("we'll build a land fit for heroes" said Dennis Healey on Labour's election win in 1945 - South Shields Labour Party were still thinking of laying the foundation stone when I was at school.) The daftest thing, in my case, was that Gilbert Street Infants had a kitchen and that school was only a hundred yards from mine, so now you know that Labour Councils in South Tyneside have a long history of making strange decisions.
Something else worth remembering about my school meals, there were no such things as "convenience foods" then, nothing arrived at the kitchens frozen, pre-cut, pre-chopped, or pre-packaged. It was all fresh local produce prepared and cooked by local women in the school kitchens in large quantities and it was cheap. So much for New Labour and it's "new" Jamie Oliver ideas, today's menu for change is a simple reversion to good old fashioned home cooking after many years of frozen pre-packaged E's and additives!
Tell you what Jimmy, I'd love to join you for lunch at Mortimer Road, the menu these days is fantastic, but what you really need is one of these - the "Foreman" grill.
Cllr. Foreman will be dining at a school near you soon!
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