[Sca-cooks] OOP request: Jellied salad???

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach DeeWolff at aol.com:
>In a message dated 1/22/03 8:36:25 AM, adamantius.magister at verizon.net writes:
>
><< Tomato  Surprise >>
>
>Hey, naming anything     "<insert food here> SURPRISE," pretty much
>guarantees negative comment. It brings up long forgotten memories of hairnet
>clad ladies with mustaches and wielding spoons, slopping "the surprise" over
>a piece of white bread and adding an apple and a half-pint carton of
>milk......
>
>Oh.....am I dredging up memories of grade school again????

Once upon a time, this was not the case ;-). But I agree that it has
become sort of a 'toon version of itself, and that the reality behind
it may no longer be taken seriously by most people.

It's kind of like croquettes, which once upon a time were an
extremely elegant dish, and now (in my experience) seem to be made
with badly-deboned, leftover, overcooked poultry.

I think maybe as food service kitchens in schools (and possibly the
military, but this is not something I have direct experience with)
become more geared to the kid-recognizable fast-food cuisine, we may
be seeing less of this kind of thing. One day soon, shrimp wiggle
(which I suspect has no direct basis in haute cuisine, but easily
could qualify as such, if only some cook would pay attention to the
darned thing and show it some respect, and themselves some
self-respect, too) may be a thing of the past. What are some other
school-specific dishes? Geoffrey Willans, in his books about Nigel
Molesworth at St. Custard's,  wrote about The School Cheese (kind of
like the Old School Song, the School Tie, etc.), and my favorite, The
Piece of Cod Which Passeth All Understanding.

Adamantius, to whom shrimp wiggle doesn't sound half bad, in theory