Fire Hall Cooking with Jeff the Chef: Surefire Recipes to Feed Your Crew.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

We’ve found the answer to the “where’s the beef?” question. Apparently, it’s at the fire hall. So, too, are the chicken, fish, and pork. Well then, why not also lamb and venison? Simple: “I don’t cook Disney characters,” announces the author of this cookbook-with-attitude.

Firefighters, it seems, have big appetites, small budgets, and a lust for flavour. Mix these elements with a dedication to communicating on a guy-to-klutz level and you’ve got a cookbook that keeps you smiling as you cook up some pretty hot stuff. Stuff such as “vampire-free chicken,” “killer crab cakes,” “kick a** quesadillas,” or “hot pig sandwiches.”

The recipe selection includes breakfast things such as pizza (10 large eggs, half a pound of bacon, six sausages), rabbit food, thick soups, zany sandwiches, pasta, desserts, and enough meat dishes to work a butcher overtime. Sure there are vegetable dishes. Look under “Spuds and his buds.” There’s even a recipe for beans—it starts with a half pound of bacon.

There’s no nutritional analysis given for the recipes, but the author does keep your health in mind, suggesting alternative ingredients in case “your pacemaker is starting to balk.” Beer is a biggie. There are helpful hints given throughout: “Just say no to Fruit Loops” or “eat pizza incessantly.”

Some required techniques will be new to even experienced cooks. Depending on the recipe, you may be required to whip certain ingredients “to a wild frenzy,” “get your hands out of the batter,” or even “beat your chest madly and insert primal scream.” You will be required to roast meat until it “appears happy” and you’ll be warned away from using an “eclectic mixer.”

This is probably the only cookbook on the market that admits the existence of such things as margarine, imitation crabmeat, and packaged onion soup mix. Or that thinks potato salad is something to be prepared on the barbeque.

As if there weren’t enough humour in the recipes, there are frequent breaks to recount tales of pranks that prove fire halls could sub for frat houses. The recipes themselves will produce some seriously good grub.