Quantock School Cuisine
Quantock Cuisine: An (Un)forgettable Culinary Experience
Many of those who were at the school will remember the food we had at Quantock, and may well snigger at the statements made in various editions of the school prospectus about it. But the truth was in reality a mixed bag.
While I personally cannot comment on whether the food on offer in 1965 might have been as 'varied and appetising' as the prospectus from that year claimed, the gastronomic creations that emerged from the depths of Wally the German cook's kitchen during the 1980s covered the entire gamut of culinary opinion - from the completely inedible, the tasteless and the insipid through to the extraordinarily wonderful things such as the thickly-sliced fresh bread from the village and the full fat creamy milk brought in from the local farm. (As a matter of interest, everyone knew Wally as Wally, but I would suspect that her real name was Waltraud).
Above: Breakfast in the dining hall...
There were three main mealtimes which remained fairly constant throughout the life of the school: Breakfast, from 7.30am, Lunch, from 12pm, and High Tea, from 6pm.
The prospectus of 1981 also referred to two breaktimes, one at 10.30am and the other at 4.30pm just after final lessons; during my time at school only the latter applied, and was popularly known as Bread and Jam - although one could also find tea, squash, and alternatives to jam such as lemon curd and Marmite, always coming in what looked like the bases of sawn-off plastic bottles. Quantock was certainly ahead of most of the civilised world as far as recycling was concerned!
next »