November 20-26, 2003

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Be Thankful for Our Firefighters Dinner

If you watch the Food Network, you know that firefighters don't just rush into burning buildings to save people and their cats. They cook large meals featuring personal specialties for their crews during firehouse downtime. So firefighters are often also foodies. It's perhaps appropriate, then, that Christina Pirello of national public television's Christina Cooks is the creator and host of Philly's annual Be Thankful for Our Firefighters Dinner, now in its third year.

Pirello, who is a Philly denizen, says she wants to ensure that people "never forget what firefighters do for us," and toward that end, the event, previously an appreciation dinner for Philadelphia fire and rescue workers, is now a benefit with tickets available to the general public. Pirello and her crew will prepare a multicourse menu featuring such treats as penne with roasted-vegetable sauce and oven-poached salmon with lemon and rosemary. Singer/songwriter Jon Michaels, hailing from Nashville, will perform a 35-minute set.

Funds will go toward the police and firefighter unions' effort to relocate the Police and Firefighters Memorial from its present location at Sixth and Arch streets to Penn's Landing. "They want to get it somewhere where there's more public access," Pirello says.

Wine will be included with dinner, a cash bar will be available and the union hall house DJ will provide additional entertainment.

Be Thankful for Our Firefighters Dinner, Tue., Nov. 25, 7 p.m., $35, Firefighters Local 22, 415-27 N. Fifth St. , 215-440-4414.

—Jenn Carbin

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