Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce for February 10, 2012

Lets rally around a fight song about soggy fries. and the injustice of it all.

Chad, consider yourself lucky to have french fries in school; here in singapore, french fries in school is a dream

Good point. They are.

2/10/12. Equal.

I have a feeling Chad love food!

I’m with Chad. Most school cafeterias overcook food anyway, so undercooked fries have no excuse for existence.

I’m on the go tomorrow, so I thought..what the hey?

Rah potato, Rah potato, sis boom bleaaa

I think someone’s gone off their meds today…

For those interested, I can tell you why school fries are soggy – my grandmother used to be one of those school lunch-ladies, and I asked her once.The first problem is that most school districts do not allow deep fryers to be used in food preparation(side note – some don’t even allow a grill to be used, all food must be “cooked” in an oven or microwave). Also, most districts use precooked foods, like frozen pizza, etc. whenever possible to shorten the cooking time. The fries they use are blanched or precooked, usually in an oven, then flash frozen. When the school cooks them, they first dump ‘em on a large cookie pan, maybe spray lightly with cooking oil, then they bake ’em. The soggy part is mainly because baked fries do not have much of a “shelf-life” after being cooked, and the school has to cook large batches for longer than a deep fryer would take to cook them. Also, the school my grandmother worked in did not have enough ovens to cook all the food required, so they had to “rush things”(her words). That usually meant that they didn’t wait for the ovens to come back up to the cooking temp. before placing more fries in. Each oven she used could hold four 2′ × 3′ trays of fries, while those fries where cooking some was setting up the next four trays, which would sit next to the oven waiting to be cooked until the first set was done.They had to do this because they had no way to pan the fries and then place the pans in the feezer – this would lead to soggy fries in an oven that wasn’t hot enough to cook them properly.

Basically it comes down to the fact that schools do not have enough equipment to properly bake french fries and that they are not allowed to use deep fryers.

Dude, just post something relevent to big nate at least once.

Dude, why are you acting like your interviewing Nate.

But soggy fries ARE an outrage!!

he is right. lets make a petition. XD

I don’t even get fires for lunch… :(

I AGREE WITH YOU CHAD though my school doesn’t even have fries