I always used to say that breakfast is my favorite meal — it’s the one time of the day when you can justify eating dessert (pancakes! waffles! coffeecake!) as your main course — but lately my allegiance is swinging toward lunch. I still love breakfast, but usually I’m too sleepy to be any more creative than to eat my standard bowl of granola.

Lunch offers time for anticipation. Lunch permits a bit of planning. Which is not to say my lunch is always fancy or complicated — usually it’s not; often it’s a sandwich, or some leftovers, or a simple salad. Occasionally I meet a friend or even — when the stars align — my husband, and we’ll eat out. And one of my favorite lunches is in the school cafeteria.

I write about school lunch this month in my column for Literary Mama; here’s an excerpt:

My boys, as I tell them regularly, are incredibly lucky with their school lunch program. It wasn’t always this way. My husband went to the same school, in a time when on hot dog day one lucky kid was served a rubber hot dog, which meant free seconds and a bag of chips. I always wonder how many kids bit into that rubber hot dog (and how many of them took two bites before realizing their mistake). The school, like most schools, used to house vending machines full of sodas and candy. But then gradually — and not without difficulty or complaint — things changed.

The rest is posted at Literary Mama; click on over and tell me about your own school lunch experience.