I had posted a picture of my mom on social media, as we were celebrating her 88th birthday. Among all the comments of well wishes and birthday greetings was a message about her time as a cook at an elementary school. This friend of mine wrote how her “from-scratch meals was the best food he ever tasted!” Indeed, my mom is and always has been an incredible cook.

A while back I joined my oldest grandson for a lunch date at his school. His little kindergarten self filled me in on the rules: how to pick up your tray and plastic ware, and head down the line. He suggested chocolate milk, because “it is the very best to have with your food.”

I was amazed when we reached the point of decision. If a 6-year-old could figure it out, you would think his grandma could, but the combinations they were confined to and all the choices they had kind of blew my mind.

If you haven’t been through the cafeteria food line at your local elementary school lately, trust me when I say, “We’ve come a long way since those delicious from-scratch lunches.” There may be a buffet of choices, but none were choices I’d like to be making.

Good old days

When I was a kid, there were no options for meal packages, entrees or sides. You got what everyone else got — like it or not. And what you got were from-scratch meals prepared mostly by farm wives who worked in the cafeteria.

They were generous with their kind hearts and, fortunately, with their servings, especially when it came to mashed potatoes and gravy, and that glorious butter slathered all over the tops of those incredible yeast rolls. I can still hear real silverware being dried in bunches and laid out on big white dish towels on the counter. We never saw a plastic anything.

Even if you didn’t read the menu ahead of time, you knew when it was spaghetti day from the wafting aroma of those freshly baked rolls all over the building. After the spaghetti was gone, we sopped up any leftover sauce with the melt-in-your-mouth rolls. Unfortunately, there was always a side of spinach on that day. My tray always went back with that corner untouched just as it had been served to me.

At home, dinner on Saturdays meant cornbread and beans. I poured ketchup all over my beans to disguise them. It never worked, so I got full on mom’s cornbread. But twice a month, when the school menu read cornbread and beans, I took a brown bag lunch with a cold meat sandwich, chips or crackers, and a little boxed apple pie that had hard, clear icing all over the outside. Those were the days — when all it took was a brown bag to make it the perfect day.

The fact that little Ezra can successfully maneuver through the maze of choices while following the cafeteria rules as a rambunctious 6-year-old boy is quite the feat. Though I wish he could experience those gracious farm wives and their delicious butter-slathered food instead.

McClain writes from Greenwood, Ind.