That's lunch??

Last week I went to my daughter's school and surprised her with a Subway sandwich for lunch.  I did this mainly out of guilt.  It was "education week" (what's the rest of the time they spend in school, I wondered, but I digress) and they had some special dealio that I couldn't attend due to a prior commitment I couldn't get out of.  Whining and crying commenced, and I ended up bringing lunch.

The girl doesn't eat much lunch at school.  She likes maybe five of the items they offer, and she's not a big milk drinker, so she rarely goes through the line.  That day, she was supposed to buy their "Thanksgiving special" lunch consisting of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce.  A few exceedingly disturbing things occurred while I was there:

1. I got a LOOK at this "Thanksgiving special" lunch.  To call it "special" is so over the top it's not even believable.  To call it something to be thankful for is even a stretch.  The stuffing was all pale, at the bottom of a large cup.  On top were exact cubes of turkey, think what chicken nuggets would look like if they were naked.  Mull on that for a bit.  Naked, perfectly cubed, looking obviously processed, turkey.  Covered in pale gravy.  I tell you, the only thing I'd ever seen before was the cranberry sauce.  Yeah, it was the from a can jellied kind.  Secretly, I have a bit of a yen for it every year.  I know it's bad, but leave the Martha Stewart stuff and give me that sugary jelly any time.
2. A little girl across from me ate her lunch, every last bit.  She had cold cocktail weenies, pretzel sticks, and ketchup packets.  I'm hoping beyond all hope this was just the desperate day before grocery shopping gets done and there's nothing else in the house.  She was pretty adept at opening that ketchup, though.
3. My girl was looked upon like a circus freak because she had spinach (and lots of it!) in her sandwich.  One girl said "I don't think I've ever SEEN spinach."  I'm hoping their moms, like me, have simply been lying and calling it lettuce.

Not sure when I'll be back, because it's definitely not an appetite-inducing place.