[polymuser]

My dad did engine dinners sometime. Beef, potatoes, onions & carrots in many wraps of foil, tucked on top of the engine, when we did the hours-long drives up north (e-way was still being built, so two-lane state roads to get there).

We’d start smelling it after a couple hours.

[Calvin Locke]

There’s a cookbook for that: “Manifold Destiny”.

Probably outdated, given the current engines, and lack of free space under the hood...

[Vigilanteman]

Kids today wouldn't believe you. But I do because those old engines had a little hollow spot inside that would keep the food from falling off. Plus there was an insulated blanket between the hood and the engine. It was a standard safety feature in vehicles of that era.

We also carried baling wire and duct tape. I had a muffler come loose near Miles City, Montana back in the 1970s. I slid under the car and reattached it with baling wire, duct tape and a set of those fencing pliers.

That's the way it was.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

I knew a driller who was a master of manifold cooking. Bill would bring foil-wrapped packages of all sorts of stuff (usually built around beef, but sometimes chicken or pork, or maybe roadkill for all I knew) from home and put them in just the right place on the rig’s exhaust manifold, then go to work. Along about noon, or 300 feet, whichever came first, he’d shut down and we’d all eat. Great food!