Ask Naperville firefighters Les Adamski and Al Woitovich which of them is the best cook and the answers differ sharply.
”Oh-me! Me!” Adamski replies emphatically.
”We all have our own specialties,” Woitovich replies more diplomatically. ”Some guys cook a little more elaborate dishes than others.”
But when informed that Adamski was quick to claim the cooking crown, Woitovich adds: ”That would be Les. I wouldn`t put it past him.”
Nevertheless, the two are good buddies.
Their comments are just the normal bantering over cooking at Fire Station 1, where Adamski and Woitovich, like all firefighters on regular shifts, rotate the cooking duties.
Adamski, 38, a firefighter for 7 1/2 years, and Woitovich, 30, a 9-year veteran, have been with the Naperville Fire Department about 2 1/2 years. Adamski previously was with the Forest View Fire Department, and Woitovich was with the Lisle-Woodridge Fire Protection District.
”Both those guys are pretty good,” says Capt. Bruce Moeller, the emergency medical services coordinator and public information officer for the department. Moeller, who is based at Station 1, says he often has lunch at different stations, depending where meetings or training sessions take him.
Capt. Mike Rechenmacher, the department`s training officer, says cooking is not one of the firefighters training courses.
”But some of them could use it,” he says, continuing the time-honored tradition of ribbing the cooks.
The culinary kidding ”helps break the monotony of the day, the stresses of the day,” Moeller says. ”The guy who was cooking today-and it wasn`t Les or Al-I gave a lot of grief on his choice of meals and made some (derogatory) comments on his cooking.
”This is what provides a focal point for that family-type atmosphere we encourage. It helps add some cohesiveness to the work group. We need that teamwork when we go out into the field and are dealing with emergencies. Many times, you develop that in the kitchen around the dinner table.”
Although a few fire departments have regular cooks, at Naperville-as in many suburban departments-all firefighters take turns cooking. At Station 1, it is usually someone assigned to the ladder truck because the vehicle is normally dispatched only to major fires. The firefighters rotate assignment among the ladder truck, the ambulance and the regular fire truck.
Each firefighter pays about $5 a day for food. At Station 1, 8 to 10 firefighters, depending on vacation schedules, are on each shift.
From the second-floor lounge, which adjoins the kitchen, the cook typically looks out the window at the grocery across the street, Adamski says. ”We decide on the meal by looking at the (grocery) window to see what`s on sale,” Adamski says. The cook for the day does the shopping, he says.
However, he sometimes has other incentives for choosing food, he adds.
”We have a lieutenant here who hates carrots. If he aggravates me that day, I`ll make sure the vegetable is carrots.”
Usually lunch is a light meal such as a sandwich and french fries, Adamski and Woitovich say. A more elaborate meal is served at 6 p.m.
”If dinner or lunch is not on time, you get a lot of harassment,”
Woitovich says. ”It`s constant around here. And if you mess up a meal, you`re marked for life. There is no mercy in this place. I was a little short of food one time, and I never heard the end of it.”
”We`re on each other all the time,” Adamski adds. ”If it`s one minute after 6, you ask-sarcastically-`Do I have to come back tomorrow for dinner?”` Adamski and Woitovich list pot roast and roast pork, respectively, as their specialties.
”We`ve got quite a few guys that hail from the Bohemian areas like Berwyn or Stickney,” Woitovich says. ”We grew up on that stuff.”
Adamski says he starts with a seven-blade roast, which he slits and stuffs with garlic. He covers the roast with a paste made of onion soup mix, adds a few sliced onions and cooks it covered in a 325-degree oven for about three hours.
”You also cut up carrots and add a dash of water around the outside and it makes its own gravy,” he adds. ”For the last 15 minutes you take the top off and let it brown.”
Woitovich says he relies on plenty of caraway seeds for seasoning his pork roast and sauerkraut.
He usually cooks a six-pound boneless pork roast covered with crushed garlic and caraway seeds. Caraway seeds also go into the sauerkraut for flavoring. While the roast is cooking about two hours at 325 degrees, Woitovich says he takes some of the fat and uses it to saute onion and garlic for the sauerkraut.
He also steams bread dumplings and makes gravy from the roast drippings.
”When you`re eating dumplings, it`s like someone put a sinker in your stomach,” Adamski says good-naturedly.
”We`ll usually go downstairs and shoot some baskets to work off dinner,” Woitovich adds.
Although there is plenty of kidding about the meals, firefighters aren`t really that picky about their food, Woitovich says.
”Whatever you cook, they eat,” he says. ”But you learn real quick (to be a passable cook) or they harass you.”
Adamski says one key to survival as a fire station cook is to make the food look good.
”You make something that looks like you took a lot of time but it`s really a mishmash. Like, you make a meat loaf, roll it up with broccoli and cheese, and it looks good.
”I`ve never been at a fire station where I didn`t eat good. I like to eat good, but I don`t like to waste my whole evening doing it.”
Few of the firefighters worry about calories, cholesterol and other dietary annoyances, Adamski says.
”I eat anything I want, and my cholesterol is real low,” he says. ”Oh, you get your `weight heads` (diet-conscious firefighters) and once in a while you appease the health nuts. We`ll go on a two-day fish-and-nut binge, and then it`s back to the regular stuff.”
The ”regular stuff,” Woitovich says, can take just about any form.
”One guy cooks-you don`t know what it is, but it`s good.”
Another was making a taco salad and forgot to drain the fat from the ground beef, Adamski says. He improvised by crushing some potato chips and mixing them with the meat to soak up the grease. ”It was real good.”
Meals also can be a source of pranks, the firefighters say.
Woitovich recalls one time when firefighters at Station 3, responding to an emergency, forgot to take their food off the outdoor grill before leaving. ”They called and asked us to take it off for them,” he says. ”We took it off okay, but then we hid it in places around the station. They had to call (when they returned) and ask us where their food was.”
Adamski adds, ”At Station 4, they cook (enough) for 35 people, and there are only four of them. When we go over there, we raid their refrigerator,” he says. Sometimes personnel from Station 1 are dispatched to cover at Station 4 when it is on a call.
Ambulance duty, usually the busiest of the assignments, is the one most likely to ruin a firefighter`s meal, Adamski says.
”As a rule, people get into accidents around dinner time,” he says.
”That doesn`t interfere with the cooking, but the people who eat it have to go. It might have been a good meal, but when you come back, it looks like some kind of unusual art form.”
Adamski says he often helps his wife, Kristine, with cooking and other household chores because she, too, works. He says he cooks primarily fish and meat, including roasts, and casseroles.
”My wife is really a good cook. She makes all kinds of dishes. We eat a lot fish at home. I like casseroles. They are always something different. She cooks a lot of everything-she`s a real experimenter.”
Woitovich says his wife, Pattie, usually doesn`t arrive home from work until about 6:30 p.m., so he usually handles the evening cooking.
”In the summer we eat light. I`m on the grill all the time,” Woitovich says. ”I cook fish on the grill-steaks, chicken, just about anything you want. In the winter, I`ll cook roasts or fish or chicken.”
Woitovich says his wife doesn`t eat nearly as well at home when he is on duty.
