Fast food, the Red Cross way

When the 18-wheel Red Cross mobile kitchen rolled into the Pan Am hangar at Pease Trade Port late last month, it was ready for any emergency. With four ovens, two steam tables, and several sinks, the kitchen can be used to prepare up to 5,000 meals in one day.

But the Red Cross workers in crimson aprons who assembled at the airport were not responding to an emergency; they were preparing for one. The 300 beef-stroganoff lunches and 300 turkey dinners they made as a training exercise were not devoured by hungry hurricane victims or exhausted firefighters, but instead were donated to local homeless shelters, among them St. Vincent's Kitchen in Hampton, but they could have been.

"The mobile kitchen is always ready to go," said Colleen Fitzpatrick, emergency services director of the Great Bay chapter of the American Red Cross. "If something happens tonight, it will be back out on the road."

The mobile kitchen is permanently stationed in upstate New York. The Red Cross has five such units in different regions of the country.

When emergency strikes, the vehicles are towed by tractor-trailer to the site where these trained personnel can start cooking.

Last year it responded to floods in Pennsylvania and New York. It was in Portsmouth for a one-week training session for Red Cross workers from as far away as California.

"They will learn to operate and supervise the kitchen and teach other Red Cross workers what they learned, " Fitzpatrick said.

It is gratifying work.

"We don't get paid in money; we get paid in smiles," said Grace Hernandez of San Antonio, one of the Red Cross workers who participated in the training.

A couple of days after they delivered the meals, the Red Cross workers sat in a conference room above the hangar and discussed what they had learned.

"It was the first time I ever saw a recipe for a meal that fed 1,000," said Kathy Bostrom of Durham.

"It was the first time I made apple crisp from scratch," said Patricia Foster of Apex, N.C.

Hernandez said the menu had to be tailored for local preferences.

"You have to be sensitive to the cultural preferences of the people you're serving and cook for the lowest common denominator."

"They made the training realistic," said Alfred Saxe of Pacific Grove, Calif.

"We had to learn to improvise. When the turkeys arrived, they were frozen. We had to substitute beef for lunch. And we served celery instead of salad."

Dick Desmaris of Bomoseen, Vt., said he had to get used to working in close quarters.

"I'm used to cooking on an aircraft carrier and there was always plenty of room," said the Navy veteran who was a cook on the USS Boxer.

"I learned how to wear a hair net and to wash my hands all the time," said Frank Beaupre, a general contractor from Troy, N.H.

The trainees were from many walks of life, among them a postal worker, anesthesiologist, a corrections officer, and a Maine guide.

"It was a real melting pot," said Lauren Zimmerman, a Red Cross instructor from Chicago.

"People have come from everywhere, from California to the deep South. We heard everything from 'y'all' to 'youz.' "

Zimmerman said the group developed not only the skills needed to cook for large numbers in tight quarters but a sense of camaraderie.

"We didn't just make dinner. We made friends. The first day we were strangers, the second day we were acquaintances, and by the third day we were family."

But were they good cooks? Fitzpatrick said a worker from one shelter "told me they'd never had so many people ask for seconds."