Go back to the 1980s and you’ll find me, knee-high to a grasshopper, attending a small primary school in South Manchester. It was a faith school of only about 120 pupils but it was by no means exclusive. We still had our ubiquitous, ‘girl who smelled of Spam,’ (thank Lee & Herring for that one) and none of us were from particularly affluent families. We all enjoyed our mid-morning bottle of free milk - quite how that survived the clutches of Thatcher the milk snatcher I’m not 100% sure - and we all enjoyed our school dinners.

It was a very simple affair, a two-course set meal usually consisting of sliced pork or beef with gravy and some boiled veggies followed by a sponge pudding or a crumble. There was no menu, no buffet to choose from and come to think of it I can’t even remember there being a vegetarian option. But it was good hearty stuff, not exciting I’ll be the first to admit, but a balanced diet. We were eating what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted. I wolfed it down anyway, of course. (This blog isn’t called Pernicketydave!)

In recent years school dinners have rarely been out of the newspapers. It took a celebrity chef back in 2005 to embarrass the authorities into improving what had become shockingly low standards. The budget per child that schools were being asked to work with was so low that their only option was to provide cheap, processed foods that were alarmingly unhealthy. The government’s response to the problem? As always, to appear on television and say they’ll throw money at it - money it was later reported they didn’t actually have. The ‘quango’ that was set up to deliver reform, the School Food Trust, was initially criticised for having a conflict of interests due to many of its board members having links to large catering firms that already supply to schools. These concerns do appear largely to have been redressed and the School Food Trust have compiled new guidelines for food standards which are now mandatory in English primary schools, with a looming deadline for the same in secondary schools. Of course, it wouldn’t be a quango if there weren’t conflicting reports on its success so far, but it’s early days. Let’s hope the shame that kicked this whole thing off is matched by an ongoing sense of responsibility to our kids.

Here’s a dessert from yesteryear, though one which is unlikely to appear in the SFT’s guidelines.

Gypsy Tart is a fondly remembered school dinner dessert, particularly in the South of England. A sweet pastry tart with a filling made from whipped evaporated milk and muscovado sugar, very basic ingredients for essentially a very basic pudding. It might be a little on the calorific side but nothing that can’t be worked off by shinnying up a rope in the school gym afterwards…
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Ynys Môn, better known to non-Welsh speakers as Anglesey, is an island that lies a short distance off the Northwest coast of Wales across the Menai Strait and is the fifth largest island off the British mainland.

A large part of the local economy depends on tourism thanks to its outstanding rural beauty and dramatic coastlines, very typical of North Wales, but that’s not to say entirely dependant. Industry and agriculture also play big roles for the population of 69,000 people, two of its largest employers being the Wylfa nuclear power station and Anglesey Aluminium (owned by Rio Tinto). However, Anglesey faces testing times in the coming years. Wylfa is provisionally earmarked for closure in 2010 (a good or bad thing is not for me to comment) and as a result Rio Tinto have decided that the aluminium smelters cannot viably survive without their cheap source of energy. Combined job-losses could total over 2000 people, obviously a devastating blow for a community of this size.

But Anglesey has a few rays of hope on the horizon. There are discussions to keep Wylfa open until as late as 2014 which will at least secure those jobs for the near future (and hopefully beyond the recession) after which, German company RWE npower have an option on the site. But Anglesey has also secured part of a £38m EU regeneration grant aimed at helping the most deprived areas of Wales as well as private companies looking to invest in the area. Further to this, a new scheme is being rolled out to encourage the placement of students with existing island businesses designed to stem the “brain drain” of high achieving school-leavers and university graduates from leaving Anglesey, a statistic recorded as a massive 89% by the 2001 census.

Hopefully the proposed support will make a difference to Anglesey’s inhabitants. My own countless holiday experiences in North Wales (albeit never across the strait) have always been a joy and it would be terrible to see their community degenerate as is currently threatened.

Okay, no more ‘heavy’ stuff. Let’s see what Anglesey has to fill our bellies! Here’s a very tasty dish from the island.

Ŵyau Ynys Môn (lit. Anglesey Island Eggs) is a gratin of mashed potatoes and boiled eggs, topped with white sauce and cheese. Very simple to make and is destined to be a regular at Chez Greedydave. > > Read on > >