Since we're having a bit of fun with debating relative coolness....I thought I'd start something else that's sort of off topic but maybe timely. Winter is upon us, we have crews working on projects outside, and it seems like a civilized thing to bring them in and cook them lunch in gratitude. I know we have some people here who are experts in caboose stove and coal shovel cuisine......but few of us don't have some rudimentary kitchens in our faciltiies, some even have real kitchens to support the event catering activity that helps pay the bills.

Winter food should be comforting and satisfying......the ironic mixture of making you glad to be alive and eating it while it clogs your arteries and hastens your demise. Here's a recipe that I like for winter work:

Brown up some pork leftovers - chopped bacon, sausage, BBQ, whatever you got (nothing tastes better than pig)....and throw in some diced onion, bell pepper, any veg drawer leftovers that make sense. Season with garlic, a couple teaspoons of the chili flakes you stole from the pizza joint, whever you like for flavor. When it's nice and carmelized set it aside.

Boil up a pound of heavier pasta like penne rigatone or jumbo elbows.

While the pasts cooks, slice up a half a brick of plastic cheese about as thick as a side sheet with stays at a 4.5" pitch. Find some not yet expired cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, prewrapped sandwich slices etc in the deli drawer and throw it all to one side.

Drain the noodles and toss in the cheesy stuff. Mix well, when it's melted together add the browned pork and veg. Divide it into two bread loaf pans and bake for about a half hour at 350. If you want to get fancy, throw on some bread or cracker crumbs and brown (running over the bag of stale stuff with the forklift works well).

This can accomodate any variety of leftovers you want to use up, and anybody who teases you about the plastic cheese doesn't get any - who do they think they are the F&%#ing Vanderbilts?

Please add your favorite winter comfort crew pleasers to this thread if you are so moved.

dave

Skyline all the time

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About a quarter-century ago, when I was a volunteer working on a certain unmentionable steam locomotive in Altoona, a farmer who was also a volunteer would often cook lunch for us. It was usually fried eggs, brown potatoes with onions, and country bacon, though he occasionally substituted sausage or even scrapple. Talk about good, stick to your ribs food, mmmm boy!

Yeah, I think it has as much to do with context than ingredients if not more. I was part of a Barbecue breakfast at Puffing Billy one morning.....eggs, sausage, toasted bread all cooked on a sheet of steel over a wood fire. made a great break from wiping down while raising steam on a Na. Better than Ruth's Chris and free.

dave

First of all, I'm LMTO (laughing my tender off.) That's so dang close to the way I cook in quantity (when I get the chance)...

Ahem. Back at OSU, everybody got paid on the last of the month, which meant we were all broke on the day before, and no one else seemed to know how to cook so they'd show up at my place hungry. In the late Seventies, a package of potato flakes cost twenty-nine cents. This is what I did with them:

All month, I'd chuck any leftover bits of sausage into a freezer bag, along with bits of cheese or stray amounts of cream cheese and any leftover cooked onion.

When the masses were making noise about coming over, I'd boil a quart of water and dump my freezer bag and a chicken bouillon cube into it until everything thawed and/or melted. If there wasn't enough onion, I'd add more dried flakes. In went the package of potato flakes and a can of evaporated milk (if I had any) or cup and a half of milk. When that all warmed through and the potato flakes had dissolved, I'd taste it and add whatever I had in the way of cream cheese, a couple of tablespoons of butter, chopped chives or onion tops if they were around, and, if it looked really thin, some fine-cut homemade egg noodles (one egg, cup of flour, tablespoon or two of water, tiny amount of baking soda, toss together with fingers until it makes a light crumbly dough and sprinkle into the boiling soup.) If you have a real microwaved or baked potato to slice and throw in, it's even better. I have made this by boiling raw potatoes, but for some weird reason the processed ones tasted better, go figure.

If you've never made almost instant halushki, buy a bag of precut coleslaw mix and drop it into boiling water for a couple minutes. Take it out, add a shredded onion and throw it all around a frying pan (fry up some bacon or sausage if you have it, then drain off most of the grease and use what's left) until the cabbage smells good and is translucent. Dump water on it again and shred a recipe of homemade noodles into it, then boil until the noodles are tender.

I haven't baked Grandma Steadman's sugar cookies on a shovel, but I know it can be done, and they can also be baked on a hot sheet of plate if you have a torch:
Two and a quarter cups of flour
Two eggs
One cup sugar--white, brown or any combination
One tablespoon (not a misprint) baking powder
One-half cup something approaching butter or margarine
One teaspoon vanilla extract, or lemon, or almond, or some combination
Beat everything together without being overly worried about how. Thin batter with a little milk until you can drop it by spoonfuls on the intended baking surface, preferably greased with something edible. Bake by any means necessary until just set, but not brown; if the dough doesn't look wet, it's almost ready. This amount serves one hungry guy for an evening, but the recipe doesn't seem to care how often you double or triple it, whether you put cocoa powder or chocolate chips in it, or anything else--Grandma ghave birth to nine kids, so her recipes couldn't be fussy.

I hesitate to add this one, because it might violate the spirit of rib-sticking cast-iron food, but it might do if you have fancy people in town: buy a large graham cracker or chocolate pie crust, a can of pie filling of your choice, two containers of vanilla Greek yogurt and two blocks of fat-free cream cheese. Soften the cream cheese and beat it into the Greek yogurt. Pile the mix into the pie crust and smooth it out. Dump the pie filling on top and decorate with anything you think will work. Small pie crusts only need one cup of yogurt and one block of cream cheese.

Could not resist sending this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zb1qsVqjwg

David Notarius, London UK, ex New Hope PA

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Thanks for the recipes, Becky. I like the potato flake leftover-burner thing.....Potato leek soup made thick like a chowder with hunks of hamhock would be nice. Back in Colorado I'd make a huge pot of hamhocks and beans and eat on it for a week, and we had about 8 months of winter in a row out there.

College days....my ex and I moved into a duplex, on Dartmouth Avenue in U City I think, with another couple and shared the kitchen. The previous tenants were Hassidic Jews, and left an assortment of interesting kosher dehydrated things in the cabinets. The weekend we moved in - nobody owned a car, we looked like gypsies hauling boxes down the road in an old shopping cart - was the day anybody could throw out anything 2 men could load up and the trash collectors would collect it, so we furnished our place for free. That tired us out for grocery shopping, so I put a big pot on the boil, and added some of the kosher dehydrated onion soup, vegetables, chicken stock, and a big bag of barley and let it simmer for a couple hours. Perfect! The next day we trried to reheat it and the barley had turned to a thick wallpaper paste.....but still tasty when thinned and warmed.

Maybe Utah will contribute his chili and brats recipe, and Matt his skyline recipe....whatever that is.

dave

Skyline and 5 Star are the 2 big chains of Chili restaurants in the Cinncinnati area.

Jeff

The best crew feeding arrangement at a museum that I've seen is that of the Rockhill Trolley Museum adjacent to the East Broad Top R.R. in Orbisonia, PA.
No doubt this is driven by their relatively remote location but also indicates they have volunteers skilled in this area.

They have a well laid out kitchen with professional equipment and people that know how to use it. They have the capabiity of feeding large groups and I really enjoyed the meals that were provided deuring a winter museum gathering a few years back.

Gord McOuat
Halton County Radial Ry.

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Surprised no one has already linked this. So inspirational.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2er6pypuuII

This is a great subject! Here's a couple of hints for caboose cookery. If you have the standard Estate caboose stove (have no coal above fire pot), try to get a couple of extra lids for it. Season them like a fry pan with crisco or lard and keep them for cooking on. They're just right for making pancakes, or my favorite, Jaxon fried mush. Your supermarket probably carries it, at least in the midwest. The Lodge Logic 5 qt dutch oven is handy for chili or stew and leaves room on the stovetop for a coffee pot and a frypan.

A good source for replacement coal stove parts is:

http://www.woodmanspartsplus.com/4845/W ... Parts.html

I sure would like to find the inside grille casting for Estate stoves, though. Then we could do roasted potatoes. Does anyone have a good stovetop biscuit recipe?

I'd once had a bacon & eggs breakfast with toast fried on the shovel in the firebox of an ex Southern Railway (UK) C class 0-6-0 on the Bluebell Railway while on the footplate with the crew one very foggy really early spring morning about 15 years ago. Funny thing was, we all talked about breakfast at Moms diner in Ringoes NJ, a hangout for Black River & Western Crews (only near restaurant to the BR&W engine house). The engine crew visited the US a year before to see various lines in NJ & PA. and fell in love with one of the waitresses. They also loved the shoo-fly-pie at a place where the Strasburg RR crews ate. Eggs are better with a bit of a bituminous taste. Even the tea brewed in the cab was fine (give me coffee before noon or give me sleep!). I'm off for pancakes now - David Notarius, London UK, ex New Hope PA