When serving breakfast is more than eggs, pancakes and OJ

Pulaski Fire Company prepares to feed 600 Palm Sunday morning, By Jeffrey Page Pine Island - Next week, in the final days before Palm Sunday, members of the Pulaski Fire Company in Pine Island will head out in their pick-ups and cars on a special mission. They’re expecting a few guests for breakfast. Among the jobs: picking up 38 gallons of orange juice, 20 pounds of coffee, 120 dozen eggs and, most significantly, 30 gallons of premixed pancake batter and four gallons of syrup. “We used to go out and get the flour, eggs and milk and mix our own but it proved to be a little too much work,” Fire Chief Rich Koziola said. The numbers may be startling - there’s also a little matter of 300 pounds of potatoes, 15 loaves of bread, 10 boxes of mushrooms, four gallons each of canned blueberries and strawberries - but if the official estimate is borne out, the Pulaski firefighters will be serving breakfast to 600 people who’ll consume about 3,000 pancakes. The pancake breakfast ritual is a form of fundraising by fire companies, ambulance squads and other voluntary and fraternal organizations. Expenses are low and the chances of turning a small profit are good. The Pulaski affair likely will be among the first of the season throughout Orange County and the rest of the Mid-Hudson Valley. 22 years of flapjackery The Pulaskis have been offering a pancake breakfast every Palm Sunday since 1985. The event has gotten bigger and more popular through 22 years mostly because of changes in the bill of fare, said Koziola, who has been a member for 21 years and chief for the last three. In his day job he’s a cop in the Warwick Police Department. So, sure, they call it an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast - and Koziola knows a Pine Islander who once consumed 21 pancakes and lived to tell the tale - but somewhere along the line someone got the idea of adding eggs to the holiday menu. And not just some desultory scrambled eggs lying about and waiting to be eaten. At the Pine Island flapjackery it’s eggs to order. “Scrambled, fried, Western omelets, cheese omelets, you get what you like,” Koziola said and recalls that the same guy who downed the 21 pancakes also had several omelets. No one leaves Pine Island hungry on Palm Sunday. The addition of eggs proved so popular that the fire company is thinking about adding French toast to next year’s menu. Koziola said the potatoes are an annual gift from Mark and Matt Rogowski of M&M Farms. Stanley Osczepinski of S & SO Produce Farms supplies the peppers and mushrooms free. The Pulaski Company pays for all the other ingredients. He said the company usually spends about $1,600 on breakfast. Any income over that is profit and goes toward the cost of dress uniforms for members as well as upkeep around the firehouse, which is on County Route 1 just west of Pulaski Highway. Admission is $6 with special rates of $5 for senior citizens and $4 for kids. For the 53 members of the Pulaski Fire Company, Palm Sunday is a grueling day. Doors open at 7:30 a.m., but by that time the Pulaskis will have been at their newly painted firehouse for a few hours, setting up. Breakfast ends at 12:30. Cleanup goes on until about 4:30 p.m., Koziola said. Everyone has his job Veterans have been handling the same tasks for years. One is Dave Paffenroth. If you’ve been to breakfast at the firehouse you probably know Paffenroth. He’s the guy in charge of omelets. You want one with mushrooms? You ask Paffenroth. You want one with cheese? You ask Paffenroth. “And if I get backed up, there’s someone next to me who can make an omelet, too,” he said. Paffenroth expects to make 250 omelets on Palm Sunday, and if you ask him how long it takes for him to consider even looking at another egg after the pancake breakfast, he smiles and says it’s not that bad. It’s just a lot of eggs; he can deal with it. By the way, you want some onion in that cheese omelet? Ask Dave Paffenroth. You don’t need an engraved invitation for breakfast. You just take your appetite and few dollars down to the firehouse and you’re as welcome as the first smells of earth in the early days of spring.