Volunteers working in Albion, Maine, at the north end of the WW&F, are routinely served Sloppy Joes made with Moose meat for lunch. No word on whether or not the Moose was road kill...

This is as good a time as any to mention that store-bought mush is convenient, but hardly necessary. If you boil twice as much water as the cornmeal you plan to use, then pour the cornmeal in and stir heck out of it and leave it on the back burner until all the water absorbs, you've got a good start. You can eat it like that or fry it off in meat grease. Mom liked Scrapple, but was grossed out by what she knew was in it, so this is how she made hers:
Brown one pound of crumbled pork breakfast sausage, the more sage and onion the better. Remove the grease (not liking a lot of fat, she usually poured off the grease and then rinsed the meat, but you might want some later). Add the amount of water you'd use above, bring to a rolling boil and stir in the cornmeal. When the water absorbs, turn off the heat and let cool. Slice and fry or broil.

I always make Mazola's biscuit recipe, so not a lot of help there, although one of our friends bakes cookies on his big propane grill all the time.

To get some decent food into the extremely hard working crew during the 24/7 marathon rebuild of the RDG.2101 into American Freedom Train # 1 we positioned an ex-NYC diner next to the roundhouse and served 3 meals/day 7 days a week for the entire 30 day exercise.

On average we'd feed approx. 150-200 people every 24 hours heaviest on weekends when the volunteers who could only participate on weekends kicked in. On some Saturdays we served as many as 300 meals in 24 hours.

It was mainly every imagineable breakfast item served around the clock plus some chops/steaks thrown in.

I served as grill cook on the early shift ( Midnight-8am) and can report that by far the favorite day in day out was the corn beef hash made per the below recipe. This batch would last us 24 hours on average.

60 lbs. corned beef- cooked briskets
30 lbs. white potatoes
20 lbs. white onions
10 lbs. red onions
4 dozen jumbo eggs
1/2 cup chopped garlic
4 cups parsley
1 cup salt
2 cups white pepper

Peel and boil potatoes until semi firm. Dice into small squares
Peel dice and skillet brown onions
Dice and lightly skillet brown corn beef
Mix corn beef/eggs/onions/parsley/salt pepper in mixing bowls
Place in large baking pans and oven bake at 350 for 40 minutes
Serve with poached or fried eggs, homefries & toast, caboose coffee & rolaids
Send men into roundhouse

On busy weekends we'd go through 2 batches in 24 hours.

Must have worked as the force of 52 full time paid staff plus a total volunteer force of 155 men&women took the 2101 from a junkyard relic ( literally) into a compliant mainline steam engine in 30 days and 30 nights.

Guess we could debate how much of the credit the hash deserves but it certainly worked good in those human furnaces.

Merry Christmas to all. Ross Rowland

I've had the pleasure of working with a few people who also enjoyed cooking up on the engine. A few things I've personally tried are:

Fish with peppers and citrus.
Steaks, pork chops, chicken, noodles, and vegetables.
Sausage, bacon, and eggs with potatoes.
Burritos, sandwiches, and anything you'd like as a leftover...

For most of these, all you need is a good cooking oil and aluminum foil. I take the deck hose and clean the scoop of coal dust, then dry the head with the heat of the fire before adding the oil to the heated scoop to get a nice shimmer. You'll need to get a feel for watching the scoop for a proper temperature for cooking and the smoking point of your oil which needs to be adjusted by the addition and removal of the heating surface to the firebox.

Before I continue I'd like to mention that I do not condone this as a practice if it is a distraction to duties, performing other tasks around the locomotive, or if the firebox conditions are taking a second place to proper engine care. When I've cooked in the cab, the engine was sitting idle and there were not other obligations at that particular time.

For the fish, take whatever fish you like and dress it with any herbs you choose. I'd recommend salmon with rosemary and sage or a white fish with parsley and cilantro. Place the herbed fish on open and oiled aluminum foil. Taking the prepared scoop as described above, add some lemon slices and caramelize them with high heat. (If you do this at home, you can do the same thing and add some white wine or rum to this step, but Rule G doesn't allow for that on a locomotive.) Once the lemons are caramelized a bit, add them to the foil with the fish and herbs. If you like, you can also add some slices of jalapenos, poblanos, or green chile peppers for a bit of spice. Wrap the foil tightly around the meat and peppers and cook them quickly on the scoop or place them by a steam line and rotate occasionally to cook slowly. Once the meat is cooked through, it is best served on warm flour tortillas.

For steaks, use a knob of butter on a clean scoop. Just before the butter browns, add the steak to the head of the scoop and prepare it in whatever fashion you like. I've done this with steaks marinated in an oil based salad dressing for an alternative method because the oil in the dressing keeps the meat from sticking to the scoop in the cooking process. The same method can be applied to pork chops, chicken cuts, and prepared noodles. Once the meat is cooked, set it aside on the oil tray and cook mushrooms, vegetables, or noodles in the remaining fat.

Noodles simply require being steamed or boiled, and then on high heat with a cooking medium (water, oil, or both) on the scoop. Cook them down so they char slightly. This works well on ramen noodles with some soy sauce and an egg thrown in at the last minute.

You can also cook a whole chicken, seasoned and wrapped in a generous amount of foil, and place it among a cleared area of the grate surface (middle) for about 10-15 minutes until it is cooked through. Obviously don't try this while the engine is working.

With breakfast, cook the meats first, then the potatoes, and then the eggs, because they cook the fastest and you won't have to add a fat to the scoop to keep them from sticking. I like browning some sausage or bacon, setting them aside, then take parboiled shredded potatoes with onions and peppers and heat them through so re-introducing it at this time to the potatoes adds a lot of flavor because the starch will meld with the heated fats. Finally, remove the potatoes and add the eggs to quickly fry in whatever fashion you like. You can make burritos this way, wrapping all the ingredients into a warmed tortilla, or serve it on some foil or rags with a nice wheat or sweet bread.

When I was working in Chama, I tried to bring in breakfasts for the engine crews when I had the chance using what leftovers I had available. Take some flour tortillas, set in the meat (bacon, sausage, smoked chicken), cheddar cheese, green chilies, tomatoes, corn, black beans, onion, potatoes, and mostly cooked egg and a nice dash of hot sauce (Cholula is my favorite) and wrap the tortilla as a burrito and wrap with foil. The egg will finish cooking when it is reheated on the locomotive, along with melting the cheese. The same can be done with breakfast sandwiches. My favorite was leftover prime rib (from Osier), topped with eggs, cheddar, mustard, basil, and served on a crusty sourdough that had been toasted with olive oil. If I was firing, I liked to have mine heat up and I'd eat it on the trip, usually by Lobato.

The key to cooking on the engine is knowing when an appropriate time is at hand, being prepared with all the ingredients and utensils, and keeping the cab tidy. I wouldn't recommend using the boiler water for drinking (lots of chemicals and sediment) but rather have a clean camp pot for making coffee, tea, or cider with fresh water.

One last thing a friend told me about years ago was that on his visit to Texas State Railroad, he learned one of the engineers would take a leftover apple core or chunk and leave it on a hot washout plug. The heat made the apple release a pleasing "apple pie" scent for a good part of the trip. I've tried it myself and it does work really well, but I was curious to know if anyone else has heard a similar tradition elsewhere.

These guys know exactly how to cook on a scoop...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr_nirCbcmE

We run a vintage 1940's era flanger on The Battenkill Railroad in NY, and I'm usually the cook on the runs.

One of the main dishes I like cooking up is a pulled-chicken sort of dish:

One big size metal baking pan
One large bag of frozen chicken cutlets (I think they're 3-lb bags)
One large (or two regular) bottle of your choice of BBQ sauce
Two large Sweet Onions
Salt and pepper and all-purpose seasoning to taste
2 large scoops of snow (yes, I'm serious)

It's as simple as laying out the still-frozen cutlets in the pan, and slicing up the onions and spreading them over the cutlets. throw in the S&P and the seasoning. I usually use McCormick's Chicken Seasoning. Dump in the two big scoops of snow (make sure it comes from a CLEAN source!), and they pour the entire contents of your BBQ Sauce bottles over the snow. Wrap the pan up nicely with tin-foil, and then toss it on the stove and let it simmer.

You'll know when it's done and ready when the chicken almost disintigrates to the touch of a fork and it shreads with no effort whatsoever. Pull it all apart and serve on some buns that you've been heating up in the last 5 minutes or so.

I'm usually prepping this dish while the crew is finishing off the homemade breakfest sandwiches, as it usually sits on the stove and simmers away for close to two hours before we're all ready to eat.

Why snow? Because there's plenty of it around, it saves us from lugging bottles of water around to use for cooking, and it doubles as your refrigeration!

Eat up!

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Hard to be simpler and tastier. Here's a similar pork BBQ thing I've done at home in the crock pot that would also work fine on a slow braise on the stove:

Cut a 5-6- pound pork butt up into 3" chunks. Country style ribs also work. Coat with your favorite dry rub mixture. Drop in the pot with a half bottle of liquid smoke and a little apple cider - not much, the pork will release juices on its own. Cook covered low and slow for 5-6 hours until it reaches 190F internal temperature. It will fall apart of you threaten it with a fork at a distance if you didn't cook it too hot. Add your favorite BBQ sauce, pull, and serve on buns or whatever.

I haven't tried this yet but hope to soon, easily expandable for large crews:

Brown 2 pounds of oxtails in a dutch oven in a bit of oil. Just cook until they start to brown. Remove oxtails and lightly brown in drippings 1 large sliced onion, 2 peeled and sliced carrots, 3 minced cloves of garlic. Replace oxtails, add 2 quarts water and 1 cup barley, a bayleaf, 2 chopped celery stalks. Simmer until oxtail meat is tender and falls off the bone. Season with salt and pepper, adjust thickness with either reduction or added stock. Add 1/4 cup parsley flakes a few minutes before serving. You can put ketchup in an hour before serving if you like it sweeter. Good winter day fare.

Dave

On the more refined side of crew feeding, one of our members is a skilled chef (among many other talents) and hosted a "thank you lunch" for those who had worked on a project. The finishing touch was having the meal served by members of the Harvey Girl Society, in proper attire. Mr. Harvey would have been proud!