After we were freed from Zoom School and the boys descended the mountain, our school system announced free meals. James and I gladly shoved the lunch bags to the darkest back corner of the deepest cupboard and embraced the simplification of our morning routine. True freedom and luxury can be found in eliminating the daily squeegeeing of shower glass and the packing of school lunches.
So every day when I pick-up Nate from school I ask him what he had for prison lunch. That about sums up his general feedback on the school lunches at Pacheco. I’m told the chicken strips are “wet,” the hamburgers have “sawdust,” and the cheese in the mac and cheese is radioactive and “glows.” He does like the orange chicken, but they only give you “two bites.”
Please note, this does not reflect all school district lunches. The ones in Merced are famously delicious and overseen by one of the best in the biz. She makes most of my holiday meals and my craft cocktails and that one knows how to cook.
As you can imagine, our prison lunch conversations are generally pretty entertaining. Nate likes the spicy chicken sandwich, but it’s never spicy enough. I mean this is Pacheco, where we’re learning in Spanish and English– we eat real Taki’s… not those faux Taki’s from Trader Joe’s. I once heard a parent use this fun fact to disparage our rival school near the country club.
We recently learned all of the lunches are made at Jacob’s school and then shipped out to the rest of the district. Apparently Laguna is the prison where Martha Stewart did her time. This may explain why Jacob loves just about everything they serve for prison lunch. Or he’s fourteen. He especially raves about their salad bar.
A few months ago, I pick Nate up and ask him my usual series of questions. He also likes to talk about PE… but that’s only Tuesdays and Thursdays which is definitely not enough for him. He’s looking forward to daily PE at Laguna. Just another middle school prison perk. So I ask him what he had for prison lunch and he tells me “dog food.”
“What? Dog food? C’mon now… it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“It was like a Lunchable.”
“I don’t understand. Was it like wet dog food or dry dog food?”
“Dry.”
“Like Kibble?”
“Yeah. It was pretty good.”
This exchange had previously earned itself top ranking in Letterman’s Prison Lunch Countdown. Till a couple of weeks ago.
“So what was for prison lunch today?”
“Goldfish.”
“Goldfish?! That’s not a lunch.”
“That’s all they had.”
“Seriously? What else was there?”
“Well, you could get a piece of cheese.”
“What about fruit?”
“Yeah. They had those mini orange things where you eat the skin.”
“Kumquats?”
Silence.
We checked the website and it said lunch was (sawdust) hamburgers. Nate said they don’t have a late lunch. They hadn’t run out of hamburgers and desperately turned to goldfish. I text Cruz’s mom for an independent third party data source. Unprompted, Cruz confirms goldfish.
I’m not one to really ever call the school except to lie about absences. They really do want me to lie. I hate it, but I can just tell that’s what they want me to do. So I call the school and Amy answers.
“Hi Amy. My son just told me all they served for lunch today was goldfish. Is that true?”
“Mmmm, that can’t be right.” She says as though it’s preposterous.
“I’m wondering if maybe you could look into that and give me a call back?”
“Oh yes, of course. I’ll check, but that just doesn’t sound possible.”
Yeah, I didn’t get a call back from Amy…