Portland Fridge
By Lucy Fulton
Photo by Leah Harb
The Vancouver Fire Department is made up of nine stations spread out across the rapidly growing city. More than 150 firefighters respond to 20,000 emergency calls each year. At Station 81, the A-Shift is comprised of six men who live and work together for 24 hours straight every three days: Jack Anderson, Paul Coolimore, Adam Gibson, Rick Huffman, John Larson, and Jeremy Stuart.
When the team is not busy taming flames and answering other types of emergencies, they spend their time at the station house, ready to jump into action as soon as they get their next call. One of their favorite things to do while hanging out at the station house is cook.
ADAM: We have a full kitchen. It’s built symmetrically, with two double ovens and two stovetops, one on each side. We’re getting a remodel because the kitchen is not friendly enough. I mean, the kitchen is social, so we want to open it up and put in diner-style flat grills. Still, we use what we have and turn out great meals.
Each shift has its own refrigerator. Then we all share a condiment fridge with tons of stuff: mayo, Tabasco, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire. Salsa, definitely. Groceries we buy daily. We know that the ads change on Tuesday nights, so Wednesday morning, first off, we’ll look at what’s on sale. Collectively we say: What do we want for dinner? We haven’t had lasagna in a while so that’s why we chose it for tonight. Plus, John was craving lasagna.
You might think Adam would pull out a few commercial frozen lasagnas and stick them in the oven, but you’d be wrong: The whole team comes together to create a fully homemade meal. John and Paul pull out the cutting boards to start chopping onions and slicing coins of zucchini. Jeremy is busy opening cans of tomato sauce. When the prep work is done, John sautés the onions while Paul starts constructing the lasagna in an extra-large casserole dish. It doesn’t take long to realize these guys are pretty serious about food prep.
