# DINING BY RAIL book



## MStrain (May 15, 2008)

For all of you home chefs, this little book is great. The first half details the history of the dining car industry on the nation's great railroads. The second half is a selection of recipes from the dining cars themselves. Its a great read and the recipes are wonderful! I have had to substitute a few things in order to keep it "healthy" (I don't use lard and rarely use bacon drippings, even in the South!!!!). The French toast recipes are my favorite though....interesting!

So, since we all like trains....this is a train cook book for my fellow home chef friends. Dining By Rail....got my copy on Amazon used. Bring the goodness of the old dining cars to your dining room table today! 

MStrain


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## Green Maned Lion (May 16, 2008)

I'll make you a suggestion for eating and keeping healthy. First of all, take any books that suggest to you how to eat for keeping healthy and place them in a big metal trash can. Then take an can of lighter fluid and pour it all over them. Then light a long match and carefully place it in the can (remember, you are trying to stay healthy!). Now that we have properly dealt with this ridiculous rubbish, we can move on.

Next, make a list of foods you eat but don't particularly enjoy. Stop eating them! If you dine at a fast food restaurant regularly, A) you should be ashamed and B ) stop. Only eat food you really enjoy and can prepare yourself regularly. Restaurant food has a lot of short cuts and cost cutters that tend to make it ridiculously bad for you. Restaurants are ok once in a while, but in general, they are best avoided.

Be willing to make preparing meals a major priority- preparing food takes a lot longer than you think. You can't make a perfect dish of scrambled eggs in under an hour. If you don't believe me, PM me for my recipe and try it! Prepare delicious, complicated, wondrous dishes that you eat slowly and savour in the flavor of.

Prepare only as much as you need to satisfy you. Eat only that much. You will find that since the meal was so good, you are sated after it- you have no desire to remove the taste of it from your mind or palette by eating more. Do not, however, pay any attention the metrics of that serving size other than its preparation requirements.

Do not check the calories, fat, cholesterol, dietary fibre, or anything else. Doing so accomplishes nothing and gives you the crazy idea that two totally different foods with the same nutrition numbers affect you similarly- which is not even close to true. Some foods are eagerly absorbed, some are barely absorbed at all. It is one of the problems with so-called diet plans. The only thing that works about them is their regiment and order, which prevents random snacking.

Which leads me to my next point- don't randomly snack. You don't realize you do it half the time. Make sure what you eat at meals is enough to make you not feel the need to snack! A large portion of calories is ingested through constant tiny snacks. If you cut those out, and add 15% more to your meals, you'll still be eating a lot less.

Notice I am not mentioning much about what kinds of food to eat. Thats because it is not particularly relevant so long as you comfortably sate yourself. I'll give you some example of what my girlfriend (a gifted cook) and myself make. One of our favourite recipe books is "The Nero Wolfe Cookbook" by Rex Stout.

*Breakfast*

*Eggs Burgundian:* Eggs, poached in a mixture of beef boulion and dry red wine and scallions, which is placed on an english muffin, and covered with a sauce made by reducing and thickening the poaching liquid.

*Scrambled Eggs:* Eggs, milk, butter, and touches of salt and pepper, put in a covered pan on a low flame, and left for 30 minutes, then the cover removed, and slowly scrambled to desired firmness. An optional sauce can be made with clarified butter and vinegar.

*Eggs benedict:* Its what you think, but we make our own hollandaise- home made is light years better than from pre-mixed ingrediants! Also, instead of poaching it in water, we poach it in white wine. This one is our own, btw.

*Griddle cakes:* Basically pancakes, but using flour, buckwheat flour, baking powder, and sour milk.

*Audrey's Famous™ Breakfast Sandwhich:* Thomas english muffins, toasted, with garlicy fried eggs, bacon, corned beef, pastrami, american cheese, parmesian cheese, romano cheese, and (the important part) goats cheese crumbles. Out of this world.

*Lunch*

We don't eat lunch often, but one of our favourites is:

*Eggs Boulangére:* This can be a problematic dish because it does not allow for leftovers. Potatoes, lots of butter, minced shallots, Romano cheese, eggs, salt and pepper, cream, and a little cognac. You slice thin and sauté the potatoes, with shallots, in the butter. This is placed in the pot with the eggs, cream, salt, and pepper, a little cognac is dribbled over it, and it is baked in the over at 375° for 10 minutes.

*Dinner*

*Chicken Alfico:* Cream, tomatoes, bacon, oregano, and romano. (And naturally chicken!) It is served over pasta.

*Chicken Francaise:* Its a standard dish, we use white wine, butter, lemon juice, cream, chicken broth, garlic, parsley, and a little basil.

*Pork Stewed in Beer:* Pork cubed in inches, browned, dredged in flour, and put in a pot with cooked onions and beer, with garlic. Then simmered on the stove for about 2 hours.

*Shrimp Bordelaise:* Shrimp, boiled in a liquid consisting of carrot, shallots, garlic, parsley, bay leaf, salt, white wine, and cognac. The shrimps are removed and the sauce is reduced, creamed with flower and butter, and served on top of the shrimp.

*GreenManedLion's Famous Burgers:* I use 50% buffalo, and either 25% lamb/25% veal, or 15% lamb/15% veal/20% Venison. I prefer the second, but Venison is expensive. I do not use adult beef unless I can't avoid it. I mix these meats with romano, italian dressing, barbque sauce, garlic, oregano, and pepper, then drench it in red wine and firm with seasoned bread crumbs. I grill them fairly rare, and add provolone, sharp cheddar, goats cheese, and bacon on top. They are about a pound each, about an inch thick.

*Beef Braised in Red wine:* This requires marination overnight. Beef is larded with salt pork. marinade is made with wine, vinegar, salt, peppercorns, onion, carrots, celery, garlic, parsley, and a bay leaf. It is marinated in the refrigerator for 24 hours. You reserve the marinade, brown the meat, then it is put in a casserole with wine, tomato paste, rosemary, a second bay leaf, and the reserved marinade and simmered for several hours. Then the meat is removed from the liquid, which is then boiled and reduce to about half, being served as a side sauce. Meanwhile, the beef has warmed cognac poured over it and ignited. Its one of my favourites.

With my so-called unhealthy diet, I have lost 30 pounds in the past 6 months. I am proud of my recipe's, Audrey's recipe's, and our adaptations of Rex Stout's recipes. I will be happy to give you detailed ones if you're interested.

Lastly, make sure you exercise. Go outside to a park, waterfront promenade, railroad right of way, or any other place you like to spend time that has distance to it, and walk a few miles, every day. Pick a place you enjoy doing it in. Contemplate the world, think thoughts, lose yourself. If you have a friend, take them with you- converse. Don't think about the fact that you are exercising.


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## Rail Freak (May 16, 2008)

" Prepare delicious, complicated, wondrous dishes that you eat slowly and savour in the flavor of. "

You mean like a PB&J sandwich!!!


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## Green Maned Lion (May 16, 2008)

God forbid.


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## Rail Freak (May 16, 2008)

Green Maned Lion said:


> God forbid.


LOL<LOL<LOL!!!

:lol:


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## MStrain (May 20, 2008)

GML....you crack me up. I am not a healthnut by any means and I subscribe wholeheartedly to your way of life! I am going to try your burger recipe tonight!!!!!

MStrain


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## Bill Haithcoat (May 22, 2008)

MStrain said:


> For all of you home chefs, this little book is great. The first half details the history of the dining car industry on the nation's great railroads. The second half is a selection of recipes from the dining cars themselves. Its a great read and the recipes are wonderful! I have had to substitute a few things in order to keep it "healthy" (I don't use lard and rarely use bacon drippings, even in the South!!!!). The French toast recipes are my favorite though....interesting!
> So, since we all like trains....this is a train cook book for my fellow home chef friends. Dining By Rail....got my copy on Amazon used. Bring the goodness of the old dining cars to your dining room table today!
> 
> MStrain



I think possibly the single best known offering during pre-Amtrak times was something called "The Kings Dinner"(or something like that) on the Panama Limited. I may have to stand corrected as to the exact name of the dish. But it featured steak and lobster. About $5.95-- very high for those times, probably worth about $50 today. I bet it is in the book you mention.

Some others were the Northern Pacific baked potato, the L&N Seafood Platter. All kinds. .

The Panama Limited was a deluxe all pullman and parlor car 16 hr overnight streamliner from CHI to NOL. I believe you received a button to wear if you actually ordered it and finished it.

I remember a cook named Lewis Price who was famous for creating his own biscuits from scratch on the Crescent, or rmaybe it was the Southern Crescent before it. Sadly he died in a train wreck, on his own beloved northbound Crescent in Virginia, getting the diner ready to open for breakfast.


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