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Food at CH

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 8:26 am
by time please
The other day I was telling my children about life at CH and we started talking about the food that was served, and I have found that my memory fails me on this subject. I remember that the amount of food served was adequate, sometimes better sometimes not so good. The one thing that I remember well was the huge toaster situated in the kitchen. Thanks to anyone who can jog my memory here. At CH 69-74.

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 3:58 pm
by J.R.
I left CH in '63.

I'd only describe the food as 'adequate'.

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:45 pm
by sejintenej
Time Please; you were there long after J R and myself. We had plenty of crug and flab but I can't remember if we had toast except on Sunday

During rationing the food was pretty awful though the quantity was OK - we survived. After the change in Superintendent it became a bit more adventurus (for examply the stinking tripe mentioned elsewhere and feared by all). Given modern norms it was bad - fried breakfasts for example but generally not too bad and good quantities. It wouldn't get a chef's toque let alone a star - perhaps a hangman's noose on a bad day

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:24 pm
by Mid A 15
time please wrote:The other day I was telling my children about life at CH and we started talking about the food that was served, and I have found that my memory fails me on this subject. I remember that the amount of food served was adequate, sometimes better sometimes not so good. The one thing that I remember well was the huge toaster situated in the kitchen. Thanks to anyone who can jog my memory here. At CH 69-74.
http://www.chforum.info/php/viewtopic.p ... potato+pie

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 10:42 am
by jhopgood
time please wrote:The one thing that I remember well was the huge toaster situated in the kitchen.
I remember the toaster well, but not for a good reason.
As a swab, I was designated to put flab in a jam jar and smuggle it back to house so that the monitors could put it on their toast in the evening.
I used to hold it under my coat through one of the openings.
Another swab was supposed to get the toast, but one day, I was asked to get both.
The toast came of an enormous machine and we then had to wrap it in paper and take it back to house.
Apparently it was ok to get the toast, but not the flab, and I didn't have enough hands to hold the jam jar and wrap the bread so I got caught.
I was not happy to be interrogated by Pongo,

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 1:53 pm
by LongGone
I always feel that the dietician must have calculated our needs to the nearest Calorie! When I left I was 6'1" and weighed 140 lbs, I suspect may percent body fat must have been close to zero.
As for quality, I actually had a few meals I looked forward to. Egg and chips (made into a sandwich), marmite fritters!, and roast pork (usually on a weekend to impress parents). At the other end were the pork pie (Mondays and using up all the rest of the pig) and fish pie that seemed to be 50% bones.

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 4:41 pm
by sejintenej
LongGone wrote:I always feel that the dietician must have calculated our needs to the nearest Calorie! When I left I was 6'1" and weighed 140 lbs, I suspect may percent body fat must have been close to zero.
At CH I ended up at 5'11" and 147 pounds (10 and a half stones). Later I started playing sport a bit more, after I got properly fit (not like CH's pretence) and had the CH caused injury treated, increased to 161lbs (11 and a half stones) and, with one exception have always been within a few pounds of that, even now. The exception was when I fell to a bit over 9 stone in a tent in snow on the Brecon Beacons in February. Disease and I had not taken my pills :-(
As for quality, I actually had a few meals I looked forward to..
Can't say that I looked forward to any. After the new supervisor came it became edible (with exceptions) but we were always so hungry that it went down. I was (during the time at CH) spoiled because my mother was chef in a "large house" so we got what the boss got! After she died (during term time!) the quality there dropped slightly but I was away for even most of the holidays.

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 11:47 pm
by dsmg
I'm about 6 foot and thin (and old!) and I reckon most of it is down to genes but some of it must be down to school food as I was a boarder in three different institutions till I was 21 (prep, CH and uni). I have some hazy memories of hating some things (bubble and squeak) and looking forward to others (toast and marmalade mostly!). What I do remember distinctly though is that I was head of house in my last year so ate on the top table (with Newsome) and the food was absolutely excellent, far superior to the other 6 years I was there.

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:56 am
by michael scuffil
I arrived after rationing stopped, after the new Lady Superintendent arrived, and after the kitchens had been modernized. The three events together were said to have triggered a huge improvement by those who'd known the old regime. Certainly you could never complain about the quantity of food; the quality was a different matter, but that could have been said about most British food, and all British institutional food, at that time. Visiting sports teams from other schools in the area always said our food was better than theirs.

I put on about two stone soon after leaving CH. I don't think this was due to eating more (after all, I had to pay for my food), but rather to exercising much less (and maybe the easier access to drink played a role).

Re toast: I remember ThB once had its toast stopped for a month because someone took a minimally browned slice of soggy bread to Hall Warden AL Johnstone, and said 'Would you like a piece of so-called toast, sir?'

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:23 am
by Straz
I have a vague recollection that food quality improved for a term in the early-1970s under a new Catering Supervisor.
I even recall that we applauded the supervisor and the catering team for the Christmas lunch that year.
However the next term the food quality plummeted to an all-time low.
That's because the supervisor had - allegedly - spent the entire year's catering budget in one term.
If that's true, it explains why the food quality was better for a few months.
I've got plenty of memories about the food during my time at CH.
My biggest beef was the toast.
Soggy, rubbery and utterly disgusting.
That's because once the bread had been toasted, it sat around for hours in the large heated trolleys around dining hall, soaking up all the moisture within the trolley. I rarely bothered with it.
My favourite meal was always egg and chips, closely followed by sausage and chips and Spam fritters. The apple crumble wasn't bad either.
I'm getting rather hungry now...

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:40 pm
by seajayuu
I don't remember ever having chips at Hertford. Can anyone confirm this?

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 8:41 am
by Katharine
I thought just the same when I read them mentioned here, Chrissy!

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 8:41 pm
by MrEd
Late 1970s start at CH, better first meal, which I can't recall, that big brother's deep-fried marmite fritters as the first tea a few years before.

Generally: Breakfast: some cereal, full fat milk, lots of butter, marmalade, white and brown bread including seconds (recycled bread, the very occasional nugget of pre-spread sandwich mixed in with it). Once only boiled eggs were raw, resulting in a huge egg fight with Barnes A c. 1980 on the way back. Porridge of great viscosity (on Tuesdays or Thursdays iirc). Tea, and a strange chicory flavoured coffee on Sundays only.

Lunch: Often a mince pie or mince cobbler, with some veg for the first course, chicken fricasse (a sort of stew), green, resulted in a letter home to presumably some alarm. Sometimes rather sweet-tasting burgers, suspected as horsemeat (but afaik Tesco didn't supply the kitchens), occasional pies, fish fingers with some strangely sharp but nice ketchup. Fish on Fridays, in breadcrumbs. Puddings usually some sort of sponge job with lumpy custard, most often the highlight of the meal.

I would say that the Christmas Meal was always superb, especially the pudding with the white sauce.

Tea: Bread as per breakfast but no marmalade, and tea. Toad in the hole (sausages and batter) might have been a tea staple, it certainly was a frequent meal.

That apart, looking at the Duke of Cambridge and looking for the bloke with two heads on the Verrio.

About 2002 I read somewhere that Blues now get croissants!

Re: Food at CH

Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 4:10 am
by sejintenej
MrEd wrote:
That apart, looking at the Duke of Cambridge and looking for the bloke with two heads on the Verrio.
Just to worry future parents, squits and strangers it is actually two blokes with one head. A Verrio CH version of siamese twins :? :D