Lunch at school.  It's more or less like all school lunches I've ever eaten; it's fine. Not great. Not horrible. And not expensive. There are no little cardboard cartons of milk but you can buy a bottle of water or a glass of juice.

The menu changes every day but you can count on the fact that there will be some kind of soup, salad, main dish and dessert what these are any given day depends on the kitchen. Oh and there's always bread.  I think that's a given in Bulgaria. In the photo below, you'll see that the menu is in both English and Bulgarian.  English on top and Bulgarian on the bottom--sometimes there are really wonderful spelling mistakes in English but I can't think of an example right now.

[caption id="attachment_2171" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="School Lunch"]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dsc01509.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-2171" title="School Lunch " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dsc01509.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a>[/caption]

The lunch ladies only speak Bulgarian so depending on the lunch options sometimes you have to find what you want on the list in English and hope that you ask for the same option when you order in Bulgarian.<!--more--> Most of the time it's pretty easy.  But these ladies are like lunch ladies in the States--they don't have a lot of patience and they don't smile much. Oh and if you try to pay for lunch with a 20 leva note they get frustrated.  This sometimes happens with a 10 leva note as well.

I mean, I do understand why. When your total lunch costs 1.80 leva or 2.20 or even 3.10 it is really annoying to pay with a 20 leva bill. But sometimes that's all a girl has and on these days I try to smile and order clearly in Bulgarian in an attempt to win over the lunch lady before she tells me my total and has to count out change for me. This works with varying degrees success.

Then there's dessert. Yes. Dessert is getting its own paragraph. Dessert at school is good. There are lots of different options and generally I try to avoid buying dessert because well, it's just not that good for you. But there's one dessert that I love and I've convinced myself isn't <em>so</em> bad. It's the banana cream pudding. It comes in a little cup with whole bananas and vanilla pudding covering the bananas.  Sometimes there are sprinkles on top, sometimes not.  I think it's <em>almost</em> good for me because it has bananas in it.  Oh and I love this dessert so much that everyone knows and when I come into the lunch room usually one of the other foreign teachers will tell me it's being served before I even see it.  <em>Thanks!</em>

[caption id="attachment_2172" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Dessert at School "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dsc01508.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-2172" title="Dessert at School " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dsc01508.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a>[/caption]

Okay, okay. This dessert is not banana pudding but that's the thing not every day can be banana pudding day.

Now, about the prices. I have some followers who have questioned the prices I pay for lunch in the cafeteria. So I asked few questions about this recently. Here's what I learned: the school doesn't aim to make a profit on lunch.  Thus the price we pay covers the cost of the food and cost of producing the lunch.  This means the lunch prices are relatively inexpensive.

I wondered if previously if the lunch was somehow subsidized by the school but I am told it is not. And I don't doubt this.  I think that the lunch ladies make a lot from a little and often at the end of the week I see creative recycling of left overs--regularly in the shape of a creative pizza, a shepard's pie of sorts or a catch-all soup. And for an extra kick of sorts the pizza and shepard's pie are often spiced up with dill pickle.  Because apparently nothing say new and interesting like pickle does.

All in all, I think there's more to like about lunch at school than to dislike. First, is decent food for a good price. Second, someone else does the dishes. And third, there's banana cream pudding.