Firefighters like to fix things–it’s what we love to do. Say you’re having a bad day, or a REALLY bad day . . . we come and try to fix it and make it better. Since we spend a third of our lives in the Fire House living as a family and away from our own support systems, we have to be pretty self-sufficient. We’re also all pretty handy with all kinds of tools. We do our own shopping, cooking, cleaning (windows, too!) and there are always a lot of “honey-do’s” that need taken care of around the station.
We like fixing and eating food as well–frequently with fire involved, though not always. 😉
Most firefighters are at least competent cooks and some are really excellent cooks (though personally, I’m not one of the latter). We had two firefighters submit three recipes to the Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund fund-raiser cookbook. Since two of our Coronado Firefighters were prominently featured, I got a dozen copies of the final cookbook from the publisher on consignment and had our two guys autograph their pages! If any of you would like one of these extremely rare autographed collector’s editions, contact me directly through my profile here at eCoronado.com or at: [email protected]
The book is called the California Firehouse Cookbook (co-sponsored by Jim Beam) and contains recipes from firehouses all over California. You can read more about the California Chapter of the Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund at their website: http://www.terryfarrellfundca.org/
Our local firefighters’ submissions had some pretty stiff competition from all over the state, so we are doubly proud to have had three of our own entries selected. In the book there are eleven appetizers & salads, ten soups & stews, 32 Main Dishes and seven desserts!
Here’s a sampling of some of the selections: “Nick’s Mom’s Sausage Meatballs”, “Frankie D’s Zoupa Toscana”, “Big Woody’s Stout Stew”, “West Coast Jambalaya”, “Station 21 Pacific Beach Clam Chowder”, “C-Shift Veggie Burgers”, “Flaming Chicken Macadamia Nut Enchiladas”, and “Pumpkin Cheesecake”.
Our own Coronado entries for the 2009 cookbook are:
Firefighter Tom Stepanof’s “Stuffed Pork & Beam (sic) Chops”. Always a hit, but they’re so beautiful it breaks your heart when the alarm goes off as the plates hit the table. 🙁
Engineer James “Pappy” Lynch’s famous “Beer Can Chicken” . . . known lovingly around the firehouse as “Beer Butt Chicken”, for reasons which will become obvious when you see the recipe and preparation 😉
“Pappy’s Geezer Salad”, which most of us would eat for EVERY meal! It’s one of the best Classic Caesar dressings made from scratch ever (coddling eggs is not as hard as some might think), though I usually add more garlic.
Speaking of garlic, here’s a funny story I love to share about life at the firehouse and our great cooks:
One evening at the headquarters station, Pappy made his famous Clam Linguine (lots of minced garlic!) and Geezer Salad with a roasted garlic on crostini appetizer. He must have used six bulbs of garlic as each of the five guys had their own individually roasted garlic bulb, plus he used another one between the linguine and the salad dressing.
We got called out on a traffic accident around midnight and got a little sweaty in our heavy turnout coats taking care of the patients and cleaning up the mess, but it wasn’t that bad . . . yet. So we all crawl back into the rack and a few hours later around three in the morning we get called out for a medical aid at the Coronado Shores high rise. We’re all looking pretty bedraggled and beat up by this time. All five of us file into the elevator headed for the 15th floor, with our gurney, four bags of medical equipment, long spine board . . . and one petite Coronado Police Officer wedged in amongst us. We’re really lucky in Coronado to usually get an extra hand from the PD on calls, but this officer really drew the short straw on this one! If you’ve ever been in one of the Shores elevators, you know there’s not a lot of room in there. Add a huge gurney taking up a third of that space and five big, slightly sweaty guys with morning breath off-gassing the most pungently noisome fumes crowded close together and this poor officer was overwhelmed: “What the heck have you guys been EATING?!?!?!” LOL!!!
You can buy the book directly from the link above for only $9.99 or the Coronado Firefighters Limited Edition Autographed Collector’s copy is available for $19.99. All funds go directly to the Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund (California Chapter).
