Hoffmeyer Hall's Dining Room

Hoffmeyer Hall's Dining Room Today

Renovations Wasn't Hidden from Here Either. Us Ole Boys will remember that the long opening
you see above was actually smaller in our days. Food was served home style whereas after
the opening was expanded, food is now served cafeteria style. This is now considered a
lunchroom for the younger students and as in the past, this room continues to serve
various meeting and banquet functions.

Although the original tables and chairs has been replaced, the younger boys of E and D
groups were seated to the left of this picture, followed by C group, then B, then the
A group to the right of the picture. The small metal closed window between the
two doors on the right is where the dirty dishes would be placed for washing.
The panoramic above and pic below was taken on June 7, 2006.

Ahhh! Shades Installed! Finally, after all these years there are shades! The A group hated
this part of the dining room because of the glare of the evening sun of the fall and spring.

Meals at Hoffmeyer Hall During Our School Years
Way back in July of 2006, D. Crump helped Ye Ole Webmaster in picking the brains
of our Classmates to recreate the the daily menu of the meals we had at this
dormitory. And finally after merging and and processing the responses that
he received, the Debris Team hopes this article leaves you hungry.

Originally this was to answer a question on meals served at NCSD in the 60's, especially after
a round of complaints by the students about meals served at present day (2006) NCSD...

Then, I made an off the cuff remark, "You pretty much could tell the day of the
week when you sat down at breakfast"...and the unexpected question was asked
"What did you eat each day?"

All I could remember was...mmmm, Wednesday's breakfast would be donuts and
applesauce....Friday would be square fishes....Sunday evening - cold luncheon meat.

Boy! That's stretching the brain cells a bit there! So, I asked some of the guys about the
meals served at Hoffmeyer Hall. Here's what it looks like for the menu of the week in the
days of 60's up to our graduation in 1970...

Monday
Lunch: Unknown
Supper: "Fried bologna", pinto beans, chopped onions, fruit cocktail, and cookies.
Fried bologna was actually baked bologna where sliced bologna was piled high on
a baking tray and baked until cooked through.

Tuesday and Thursday
Lunch and/or supper was rotating menu of: liverwurst, chili, salmon
patties, or spam meat cooked with pineapple with some type of veggies on the side.

If fried chicken was served, it was always for lunch then for sides;
rice or potatoes and gravy and spinach (or was that turnip greens?).
If pork chops were served, they were either baked or fried.

Spam meat cooked with pineapple to me was new and different. The way it was
cooked then was just like bologna on Monday nights. Us boys made sandwiches
with them (pineapple and spam) slathered with mayo. Others would be the old
fashioned but good ole sandwiches with just spam and mustard. Oh, yeah,
this was a supper menu.

Liverwurst was also new to me. I ignored it for two years till I saw a boy make a
sandwich out of it with ketchup and onions, wow, mm, mm, good.

Bologna, spam, and liverwurst...bad for the heart...but good for the soul!

Wednesday - Best Breakfast of the Week
Breakfast - doughnuts and apple sauce, milk, fruit drinks - orange juice
Lunch - spaghetti, salad, milk.
Dessert was cake.

Lunch was guaranteed to be spaghetti, but if either fried chicken or fried pork chops
was served, spaghetti was served for Wednesday's supper .

Someone mentioned that sometimes supper was Wednesday's lunch's leftover spaghetti and
there's a collection of disagreements on this one. Well, I can settle this easily here
and now: I used to wash dishes on weekends (yes, it was a paying job) and food left on
plates, serving bowls and platters were thrown in a 30 gallon galvanized garbage pail. I asked
one of the dietitians in the kitchen where does all this food garbage go.
"Oh, that's slop for the pigs."

Friday
Lunch: If it is a going home after 12 noon, would always be hot dogs cooked in
sauerkraut...yuk...because it was not MamaPat's recipe.
Supper - Fish, French fries, and milk. Although there are some that claimed
that sometimes fish was served for Thursday's lunch and Friday's supper was something else.

Saturday
Breakfast; Boiled eggs were likely to be served on this day since we ate at 8am on
weekend mornings, this gave the cooks an extra hour since boiled eggs take longer
to cook (...hey, I'm just taking a logical guess on this one).
Lunch and suppers are unknowns.

Sunday
Breakfast was also a favorite as most times it was Wednesday's copy.
Lunch - Fried chicken or ham, vegetables, cake, milk.
(on special days...turkey during the week before Thanksgiving vacation and Christmas vacation)
Supper - cold cuts (usually luncheon meats and bologna) for sandwiches. Peanut
butter, mayo and mustard were the usual condiments.

Breakfast Items
DC recalls, "We had bacon, sausage ("patty" kind), oatmeal, grits,
cold cereal (available at every breakfast?), scrambled eggs (although I don't recall
fried or hard boiled kinds) served at breakfast".
Toast was also served but I don't remember biscuits.
Ye Ole Webmaster says: Only patty sausages? I swear we had link sausages, too. And
I also kind of agree cold cereal was available for every breakfast. I also remember
on the major going home weekends, when school let out at 12 noon on Fridays, because
the dormitory population was very low, it was easier on the cooks to fry eggs, make
pancakes or French Toast for the Saturday morning breakfast. Also, I'll agree
with Randy that hard boiled eggs was served once in a while.

Vegetable Items
Other vegetables mentioned: fried okra, turnips, spinach,
mashed potatoes (both white and sweet), snap beans, creamed corn, yellow corn,
lima beans, black eyed beans, and green peas (baby/young peas were never served),
and oh, yes, candied yams most times when fried pork chops was served. The
question mark is on collards, cabbages and Cole Slaw.

Breads
Sliced bread was served at just about every meal. Cornbread was also served a couple
of times a month usually when fried okra, turnips or spinach was served. The boys would
mix cornbread with their milk, which is a southern delicacy.
No one mentioned if biscuits was served.

Other Meats Mentioned
Fish was those fish squares, and liver with onions was brought up and it was wondered
when it was served...meatloaf was served most times with mashed potatoes.

Chili Beans
Two kinds of chili beans was served, one was better than the other due to the lack of an
ingredient. Now that our culinary expertise is more knowledgeable, the two chili beans
mentioned above are now identified as the Northern flavor and the Southern
flavor. The Northern Chili Beans had the extra ingredient that the Southern
Chili Beans did not and believe it or not it's called chili powder.

One question was asked: Did we have soup and ice cream every Sunday night?
Ye Ole Webmaster says: Soup was rare and it was vegetable soup. If soup was served,
it was on Friday nights. Peanut butter and jelly was mixed together to be made for
sandwiches to go along with the soup. I don't remember saltine crackers being
served with the soup but normally you would think so.

Now ice cream was a weekly if not twice weekly treat. I definitely remember
ice cream sandwiches, nutty buddy, chocolate covered ice cream popsicles and
those little round ice cream containers with those little wooden spoons.

And, no, we did not have soup or ice cream on Sunday nights, we had cookies. That
I remember because I used to sneak leftovers wrapped in napkins and have them
to snack on that night or later in the week.

Cakes mentioned were of the yellow kind with icing. Icing were either
white, chocolate, or coconut and the cake portions were cut in squares.

Our last year on Monday nights, I, as well as other Classmates, would make plain bologna
sandwiches from the leftovers on the table, wrap them with napkins, stuff them inside our
shirts and take them to our rooms. After study hour we would plug-in the two burner stove,
re-cook the bolognas, add our own condiments or have them plain, make coffee, and have
a nice before bedtime snack. We'd do the same thing on Sunday nights if bologna was
served. Yum, yum.

and was brought to all dormitories on campus from Broughton Hospital and
was also carried to Scout camping trips.

Tea, as well as milk, was served the first few weeks at the beginning of the
school year and the latter few weeks before the summer vacation. Tea
made in the Main Building's kitchen was also transported to Hoffmeyer Hall.

Those who played on the school sport teams (football, basketball, etc.)
would usually get a different meal on the game day as opposed to the
general student meals. These meals was served at Main Building's
dinning room.

Also, at the end of football games, the players would go to Hoffmeyer Hall's
dining room and have an after game snack consisting of sandwiches
milk/tea and cookies. I can't say the same for the basketball players
or the members of the wrestling teams as I was not a team
manager of those teams.

Food was brought from the Main Building's kitchen already prepared for our meals. There was
a 1940's service truck that was dedicated only to bring food to Hoffmeyer Hall and was also
possibly used to get the milk from Broughton Hospital.

Also, your shirt must be tucked in and if you were not wearing a belt for your
pants, you were refused entry and you were required go go back to your
room, put on a belt so you could eat.

One surprise that we discovered during this project was that the girls of
Main Building had hot meals for Sunday supper!

An Interesting Fact
When a few boys were cleaning up in the Main Building kitchen as part of the weekly
Saturday morning "workday", one took a look at one of the large cans of vegetables
and noticed on the bottom stamped "Packed by NC State Prison System".

Thanks To:
Jim Gibbs, Richard Glover, and Randy Caines, for contributing to the "menu study".
And I want to especially thank Don for collecting our Classmates' brain pickings
for another stroll down Memory Lane.

OK, lassies, it's ya'lls turn to tell us what you girls ate at Main Building in the late sixties.
Please e-mail

Deafinitions:
Cafeteria:
1. a restaurant in which patrons wait on themselves, carrying their food to tables
from counters where it is displayed and served.
2. a lunchroom or dining hall, as in a factory, office, or school, where food is served
from counters or dispensed from vending machines .
A good example would be Main Building's cafeteria aka dining room.

Homestyle Cafeteria:
1. esp. in schools: designated servers would bring foods in serving bowls or
platters. Milk/tea would be served from pitchers. The person on the
table that takes the last item in the bowl/platter or empties the pitcher
would go back and return with a refill.
Only example known would be the Hoffmeyer Hall boys 1955 to 1990s(?).