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placed shortly thereafter by the Steward. That’s when the truth came out. The stew- ard informed him that he was cut off. Fortu- nately the guy was not a mean drunk. He groused at the Steward, then at me, all the while stirring a butter pat in his ice water. He eventually appeared to pass out — at least long enough for me to depart the table. I did pause to tell the Steward of his condi- tion, in case it was more than a drunken stupor. Son of Broadway Limited: At some


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point Amtrak downgraded the Broadway Limited, resulting in the loss of a dining car and the coupling of the west-bound sleeping cars to the Capitol Limited in Pittsburgh. Sleeping car passengers continued to get their meals — in my case this was dinner, but they consisted of a microwaved entree pre- pared at the snack bar in an Amfleet lounge car. Okay. We did have our own section of the food service car, complete with a table, a place setting, and salad, dinner roll and wa- ter awaiting us. I ordered Beef Stroganoff. When it was delivered, however, it was still wrapped in clear plastic, and had been cooked long enough to weld the beef to the wrapper. Because of this oversight, my meal was served complete with cooking instructions. What they taught me was that this entree was to have been heated on “High” for ten minutes, removed from the oven, and from the plastic wrap, and heated on “Low” for an- other seven minutes to finish. The attendant had instead microwaved the dish on “High” for 17 minutes. It was my good fortune to be working, and my first appointment in Chica- go the next day was to be with Jack Davis, who had just been appointed to head up food service on Amtrak’s long distance trains. I peeled the instructions off the meal and saved them. I shared my experience — and the cooking instructions — with Jack. He was apologetic, and promised an explanation. Not long afterward, he called. Turns out the at- tendant manning the snack bar had been left to work the run alone. That, plus a bigger crowd than usual left her overwhelmed (she may have been relatively new as well). Note: It wasn’t long after that Tim Costello joined Amtrak as Executive Chef, and it’s been up hill ever since (in my opinion). And About the Cantaloupe Pie: A food instructor in San Francisco wrote recently to report his use of recipes from Dining by Rail in a cooking class for youngsters. His experience preparing the Texas & Pacific Cantaloupe Pie from the book reminded me of the long history I have with that recipe. When DBR was just a proposal, I used the Cantaloupe Pie as an example of the unusu- al — dare one say charming — specialty dishes one would find in the book. With the book under contract, I next tested the recipe, foolishly doing so to use as dessert for a dinner party I was hosting. Making it first thing in the morning on the day of the party, I nearly panicked hours later when I found the filling had remained a thick fluid. In a stroke of ge- nius, if you don’t mind me saying so myself, I poured it out of the pie shell and served it over vanilla ice cream. It was delicious. I nonetheless remained determined to use


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the recipe in the book. But I could not get it to work. Pete Bordi, who was then the food preparation instructor for Penn State’s Ho- tel & Restaurant Management major, and who helped me test the recipes, suggested I just add some unflavored gelatin or corn- starch to the recipe. He felt the filling should have the consistency of pumpkin pie.


The Cantaloupe Pie, then, is the only recipe


in the book to which I added an ingredient (an unflavored one, I might remind you). But the story didn’t end there. The book


was published, and I get a call from the di- rector of Penn State’s Paul Robeson Center, headquarters for the school’s African Amer- ican Studies program. He wanted four auto- graphed copies of the book for family mem- bers. He ended the request saying, “You know, you have my father-in-law’s recipe for Cantaloupe Pie in the book. He’s going to get a kick out of that.” I was horrified. To think that the man


who created that pie for the railroad — Ed- die Pierce, who was then nearly 80 and lived in the Fort Worth, Texas, area — was going to now see his prize menu item modified by some neophyte writer of whom no one had ever heard. This was going to be an embar- rassment (at least). So I wrote Mr. Pierce a note to accompany his book, explaining why I’d wanted to use his recipe, the trouble I’d had getting the recipe to work (I’d found it in a post-World War II T&P employee maga- zine), and that the added ingredient was the suggestion of a professional such as himself. Two occurrences produced a happy out-


come. First, I got a kind note from Mr. Pierce explaining that there was a typo in the mag- azine (of course a chef would say that — no chef I know is willing to share the whole sto- ry behind preparing his or her signature dish), and that one should simmer the pie filling for an hour before putting it into the refrigerator and then into the pie shell. The magazine had recommended 20 minutes. Second, an enterprising food editor for the


Fort Worth, Texas, newspaper realized a culinary super star was living in their midst, and dispatched a writer to do a fea- ture on him. Mr. Pierce, as a result, was the front-page above-the-fold subject of a profile in the food section of the Sunday paper.


And In Other News . . . Minnesota Zephyr: As you may know, the Minnesota Zephyr has now been hauled out of Stillwater, Minn., to a railhead five miles away, where it is readied for shipment to a new location. For the latest, go to http://www.startribune.com/ and enter “Minnesota Zephyr” in the “Site Index — Search the Star Tribune” at the upper right. There you’ll find a link to a video report — “Last Train from Stillwater” — showing the train being loaded on flatbeds. The train’s owner, David Paradeau, a long-time acquaintance, described the stress associated with moving his six cars and two locomotives as “deadly.” He cited the cost for two cranes and eight to ten crewmen — in the neighborhood of $8000 a day, plus the cost of the flatbed trucks, of hauling loads of up to 160,000 pounds per car, of storage at a safe and reliable place, and of eventually loading each component onto railroad flat- cars for hauling to one or more new destina- tion(s).


PLEASE SEND correspondence concerning ON THE MENU direct- ly to James Porterfield via email at jamesdporterfield @mac.com.


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