For a contractor, David Horne carries an unusual cargo in his pickup truck. The local builder lays the foundation for neighborhood and community celebrations with his quantity cooking skills and a traveling barbecue grill.
Horne dons the chef's hat for his family of five sons and two daughters, for neighborhood suppers, church dinners and community celebrations.Celebrations like Alpine's birthday party when son, James, felt the tug of his father's generosity roping him into work on the cooking crew. The younger Horne joined his brother, Jonathan, in preparing 2,500 ears of corn for the town picnic.
Normally the city fathers recruit a volunteer support team to assist Horne with meal preparation chores, but a slip-up in crew assignments necessitated enlistment of Jonathan and James to complete the corn-husking task. "I couldn't have pulled that Alpine celebration off without the boys coming to my rescue. They always help," Dave acknowledges, "but sometimes they get double duty. That corn husking was definitely an extra effort, but they came through."
"I don't think I've helped my dad cook since," James laughs.
Horne's mastered the mass feeding routines by devising detailed plans and simplifying tasks. A meticulous record keeper, the quantity-cooking expert chronicles food amounts, prices, menus, preparation and serving tasks for each meal he serves, but he never uses a recipe.
With pages of organizational charts in hand, David Horne propels his family into action - action that feeds one community gathering after another and serves as many as a thousand people in 30 minutes.
Horne climbed into his feeding frenzies through the back door. "When they were kids, Dave and his friend, Bill Jensen, used to cook pigeons in a hut in the back yard," Horne's wife, Jean, says. "He worked in the kitchen with his mom, then took a cooking class in high school that he loved."
Horne remained content with preparation of family-size portions for years - the years before the Horne boys signed up for the Boy Scout troop.
From feeding the boys at home to feeding the boys at the campground was a natural transition for Dave.
"People knew I had a couple of big griddles, and I had the boys," Horne explains, "so the quantities I prepared quickly expanded. There's no way to feed a troop of Scouts without a lot of food."
"I think buying those cast-iron griddles was an excuse for Dave to get involved," Jean conjectures. "He was always telling me to get him a cooking job; he wanted to get in and cook for the crowd. It's a behind-the-scenes role he thoroughly enjoys."
Another piece of equipment broadened Horne's quantity-cooking capabilities.
"My neighbor, George Furgis, had a rotisserie apparatus that he used to grill lamb," Dave explains. "I'd never eaten such wonderful lamb and decided if you could get that result with lamb, beef would be incredible."
Horne placed his rotisserie order with a local blacksmith and waited.
And waited.
"I had a commitment to cook the July 24th dinner down in Emery County, and I didn't hear from the blacksmith until July 23," Dave sighs. "I'd ordered sides of beef, but I needed the new spit to cook the meat properly."
When Horne went to pick up his custom-made cooking equipment, it was too heavy to load into the truck.
"We had to get an overhead hoist to move the spit to the truck," Horne explains. "I drove it down to Emery County and cooked in the back of the truck. Even with lots of manpower, we couldn't get it out of the truck."
Horne returned the grill to the blacksmith to be redesigned.
"I asked the blacksmith to add wheels," he says, "and I've towed it behind the truck since."
Dave's penchant for unusual cooking apparatus occasionally found its way home.
"He's always cooked at home," Jean says, "the holiday turkeys and stuffing, all kinds of seafood and gallons of soup he throws together, but the day he came home with that stove was close to the end."
"I've bought something she's just going to love," explains Dave, remembering the mammoth purchase. "I took Jean out to the warehouse and showed her the stove. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world, but she raised one finger and shot down the whole idea."
The industrial strength stove now rests outside the Horne family retreat at Bear Lake.
Providing a holiday celebration for hundreds is routine for Dave Horne, but his 1990 Christmas order spread beyond his predictable tasks.
The building contractor with a love of quantity cookery negotiated shipment of food to earthquake-ridden Armenia.
"I was asked by a private donor to place an order for a million dollars worth of basic foodstuffs. That translates into amounts like 500,000 tons of flour or 100,000 tons of butter," says Horne, ". . . an order just a little larger than what I'd use for the Boy Scouts or even the town of Alpine."
Whether feeding thousands, hundreds or 15 in the family, Dave Horne nurtures a cut of beef like a master chef, then piles a plate with rolls, rice pilaf, salad, and a wedge of pie or cheesecake on the side.
All topped with a Horne-husked cob of corn.