Food for thought

Cooks keep the fires stoked from February to Thanksgiving

For those of you in charge of school lunchrooms and corporate entertainment, a gonzo-size bottle of Worcestershire sauce is a necessity, not luxury.

Some of us need years to exhaust the more moderate version in our refrigerator doors, but not Mary Whitesell. The petite redhead who feeds Jeff Gordon's and Jimmie Johnson's teams every weekend probably uses a gallon of the stuff each season, and if we do the math, that's 128 ounces of Worcestershire sauce.

Multiply it by four, and fill a bathtub. Mary has cooked for the No. 24 since 1999 (she's married to Brian Whitesell, Gordon's team manger), so adding the No. 48 to the shopping list this season means doubling ounces, pounds and family-size packaging.

Says Mary, as she piles seasoning bottles on a grill deck: "There's nothing a little Worcestershire and garlic salt won't help." It's pre-Pepsi 400 at Daytona. The late-afternoon heat emanating from pavement and sky nearly matches that from two jumbo grills parallel-parked outside Gordon's hauler. Over time, heat has scorched the edge of a coaster-sized sticker on one grill.

It's a mug-shot photo with the caption, "Mary's Cooking at 40," in black letters.

The subject grins, rolls her eyes. "My husband and two of my girlfriends had those made up for my 40th birthday and gave them to everybody," explains Mary.

Feeding Cup teams is no backyard barbeque. It happens from February to Thanksgiving, three days each week. In between, it's hot, it's cold, it rains. Strangers leer over your shoulder. Garage or track crises arise, and your creations sit untouched.

For hours.

Imagine cooking in your local supermarket parking lot on a busy Saturday, and you'll have an idea of what Mary -- and other NASCAR garage cooks -- face. But in spite of it, this upbeat, blast-to-be-around, 40-something excels. She whips up homemade lasagna. Kabobs good enough to win a contest sponsored by the Coleman grill folks. A mean pork loin. Her current project is helping compile a cookbook to benefit team owner Rick Hendrick's favorite leukemia-related charity.

Mary also knows when she's beaten.

"I cannot cook hamburgers," she confides. "The last time I did them, at Charlotte, the guys were eating them like this," mimicking a mouse nibbling around the raw center of a patty.

So for the July 4th holiday pre-race meal, Mary has summoned her secret weapon: a friend who's a chef, and a wizard with All-American hot dogs and hamburgers.

"Good," I tell her. "Maybe I'll learn something."

Jason Schenefield, a tall, friendly, anti-chef-looking guy in jeans and a polo shirt, expertly scrapes grill racks as Mary asks, "What do you need?" She scurries in and out of haulers with his requests. Soon, 24 burgers sizzle on each grill. Schenefield, the executive chef at Lakeland's historic Terrace Hotel, paints them with a mixture of Worcestershire and garlic salt. Unless there's a special request, he doesn't cook burgers past medium.

"Anything more than that, and it's just like that no-taste [low-fat] beef you were talking about," Schenefield says.

He asks Mary if she heats her hot dog buns. Horror suddenly crosses her face.

"Holy -- " she bites off the rest. "I forgot the hot dog buns!"

We cope, racing around a corner to a concession stand, where Mary talks an aproned concessionaire into trading 72 hot dog buns for an autographed Jeff Gordon hat.

"It's always nice to be able to rely on that," she says as we inspect our haul.

Being a cook also means being sociable. Mary hugs Miss Winston and other friends who stop by, something she does when she wields the spatula, too.

Schenefield, who cooked for the same Hendrick teams during Speed Weeks, flips, flops. Calls for holding pans. His wife Cheri, a regional trainer for the Estee Lauder cosmetic company, ably separates cheese slices from the deli bag Mary has unearthed.

She prefers the sous-chef role.

"I don't cook," Cheri says, sneaking a smile. She says when she received mystery kitchen gadgetry at bridal showers, she'd respond, "Thank you for the, uh ..."

The scorer for the No. 24 team, Michele Durkin, takes her burger right off the grill, between bun halves. Inside the hauler, Ken Howes, Hendrick Motorsports' director of competition, shudders as he peers at it.

"The bell's still on that one," he says.

Durkin emerges minutes later raving about, "the best burger I've ever had," and Schenefield demonstrates how to tell when one is medium rare, her preference.

Crew guys mill about, sniff. So do fans; several try to talk Schenefield out of a meal. Mary pops in and out of the No. 24 and 48 haulers with steaming pans, condiments. Aluminum foil. "Cook 'em all," she instructs when Schenefield asks about a remaining half-pack of hot dogs. "They'll eat 'em."

The chef, a Disney restaurant veteran, definitely gets more complicated on the job (think bittersweet chocolate and scratch puff pastry). "He'd cook gourmet every day at home if he could," Cheri says as her husband arranges the last dogs with a pair of tongs.

"They're already pre-cooked," Schenefield says of the dogs, inferring simplicity. I'm not sure I knew that, feel stupid. "But they need a little love, too," he adds as he sprinkles garlic salt, pepper. He says the secret to grilling hot dogs is buying top quality and not overdoing it; if they split, you goofed.

Hauler doors bang open and shut. Johnson's and Gordon's crew guys are changing into fire suits, doctoring Schenefield's handiwork. One has the sense of T-shirts, shoes, lettuce and onion slices all being flung about in the narrow corridors.

Outside, the Shenefields extend a gracious invitation to the Terrace Hotel (I can taste that bittersweet chocolate by now).

"Anytime!" Mary exults as I thank her. Then she says the only words that count: "Wanna eat?"

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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