East Naples firefighter heats up the kitchen with Regis and Kelly

Photo by submitted

East Naples Firefighter Craig Weinbaum

NAPLES — An East Naples firefighter’s bid to win a national cooking contest is heating up.

Driver engineer Craig Weinbaum, 38, will cook his grilled ahi tuna kabobs with mango salsa on Live! with Regis and Kelly as a part of their summer Coast-to-Coast Fire House Cook-off. The show airs at 9 a.m. on Friday on ABC.

Weinbaum entered his recipe, and when the show asked him to produce a home video, he got enough votes to earn the trip to New York and a chance to cook on the show. On Friday, he’ll make his dish and members of the show’s audience will judge his skills, giving him a score between 1 and 10.

Weinbaum is the last of 11 contestants to cook on the show in this round of the competition. Then, those with the top five scores will be competing for viewer’s votes online to make it into the final, two-person cookoff on Aug. 20. The winner gets $10,000 and their recipe featured in Better Homes & Gardens.

“Truthfully, I feel like I’ve already won, only because of the outpouring of support I got from so many places,” Weinbaum said. “… I could have never imagined having this many people pulling for me. As far as I’m concerned anything beyond that is gravy. This is such a blessing.”

The firefighters work shifts, 24 hours on and 48 hours off, Weinbaum explained, and they have a full kitchen in the firehouse, with a refrigerator and cabinets for each shift. They’re allowed a trip to the store, and so usually in the morning they’ll sit down to plan if they’re going to eat together, Weinbaum said. Then they go to the grocery store to stock up.

The video Weinbaum submitted to the show included goofy shots of him rescuing stuffed cats from a tree, pretending to use a defibrillator and putting out a fire. He also talked about more serious topics, including the prevalence of heart attacks for firefighters and how he strives to cook and eat healthy food.

“Everybody is just absolutely thrilled,” said Greg Spears, East Naples fire department spokesman. “... We hope Craig wins the championship, but whether he does or not, we’re proud that he’s going to New York and competing.”

The ahi tuna kabobs with mango salsa are a great firehouse meal because the prep work can be done ahead of time and it takes just 6 to 8 minutes to cook the kabobs, Weinbaum said.

“My inspiration is just the love of food,” he said. “I’ve just been around food all my life.”

At home, Weinbaum cooks most of the meals for his growing family. He and his wife have a 2-year-old daughter and a son on the way. If he wins the $10,000, he plans to take his colleagues out for a great meal and then put the rest aside for his family.

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