N.C. firefighter, chef teaches tasty safety lessons

By Brianne Dopart
The Herald-Sun

DURHAM, N.C. — How do you get a group of clever but restless middle schoolers to tune in to a lesson about fire safety?

If you're firefighter and executive chef Lewis Womack, you do it between twists of your whisk.

Womack is a 1986 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a certified executive chef. He's also a longtime Durham firefighter who believes that teaching kids about fire safety in the kitchen doesn't need to be all cut and dried.

Tuesday, while making a presentation to the students of Kimberley Coleman's "Exploring Career Decisions" class at Carrington Middle School, Womack tucked lessons about safe cooking techniques between ingredients, peppering his demonstration of how to make a frittata with tips about the proper alignment of pot handles.

"Why do I keep the handle of my pan on the side like this?" Womack said, motioning to the silver handle of the pan in which the early makings of his frittata were sizzling.

"It's so you won't knock it over," said Womack, sliding the pan's handle towards himself to show the kids how easy it would be to knock over. "How many of you have little brothers or sisters at home? If the handle was like this, they could come by and easily knock the pan over."

"That happened to me!" offered one student as others craned their necks to get a better look at Womack's tasty creation.

Womack spent the entire school day Tuesday giving cooking and safety tips to Coleman's "Life Skills" and career classes. While Coleman, who teaches in a classroom that doubles as a kitchen and a food laboratory, gives her cooking students safety tips all year long, she says students benefit from having a firefighter who works as a chef teach a lesson or two.

Especially for Coleman's "Career Decisions" students, the opportunity to meet and chat with a real chef was a valuable one.

"To see why he's a chef and his passion for us, gives them a better idea of [that career option,]," Coleman said. "Also, it exposes them to more. Most of my students haven't heard of — let alone eaten — a Lemon Napoleon."

As Womack impressed the kids with his chopping chops — he has won a speed chopping competition 14 years in a row, he said — he answered their questions about being a chef and offered tips he said they could take home to their moms and dads.

Sixth grader Ryan Hennessey said Womack's lesson gave him some ideas for culinary creations as well as some inspiration for a future job.

"I want to be a chef, one that cooks Italian," Hennessey said.

Jose Rodriguez, 11, isn't letting go of his dream of being a police officer, but he did get some safety tips that he said he wanted to pass on to his mom, including the one about the pot handle.

Sixth grader Katie Tran, 11, said she learned that "food can be different and that different food can taste good."