http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/middlesex/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1244088339296360.xml&coll=1
Woodbridge Wegmans hosting competition
Thursday, June 04, 2009
BY RYAN HUTCHINS
For the Star-Ledger
Woodbridge Mayor John E. McCormac casts a foreboding shadow. He’s a tall, powerful-looking Irishman who says he’s ready to “throw down” against any other mayor willing to face him on his own turf.
“The competition better bring their ‘A’ game if they expect to win,” McCormac said in a statement handed out at a press conference yesterday.
That gathering, where McCormac issued a challenge to his counterparts throughout central New Jersey, was a prequel to the main event scheduled for Wednesday.
But it’s no boxing match set to appear on cable television, and the only gloves the mayor might wear would be of the oven-mitt variety. That’s because McCormac is hosting the New Jersey Mayors Wellness Campaign’s Healthy Cook-Off.
The leader of one of the New Jersey’s largest municipalities didn’t fare too well at last year’s event. Now he’s ready for his rematch.
“I didn’t win. I definitely didn’t win,” McCormac said at yesterday’s press conference, held at the same Woodbridge Wegmans supermarket where he’ll be next week. “I cooked a cedar plank salmon, which was very simple.”
This year he’s enlisted the help of that same upscale supermarket chain to prepare a “mean grilled brown sugar barbecue chicken breast.”
He taunted the one challenger who showed yesterday, South Amboy Mayor Jack O’Leary, saying he’s “another Irish guy like myself probably with limited culinary skill.”
But O’Leary wasn’t having it. “John’s right, we Irish don’t cook well,” he said. “I have a little edge because I have an Italian mother.”
He plans to prepare a beef dish — stuffed filet mignon. The stuffing? Well, that’s top secret.
Kidding aside, the mayors said, the wellness campaign is a fun and important program because it encourages Jersey residents to incorporate eating right into living a healthy lifestyle.
More than 400 people came to the event last year, according to Wegmans manager Kevin Bamford.
Mayors can still sign up, and so far the supermarket has received additional commitments from North Brunswick Mayor Francis “Mac” Womack, Haledon Mayor Dominick Stampone, East Brunswick Mayor David Stahl and Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy M. Malool.
State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) will be a celebrity judge. The event starts at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Woodbridge Wegmans.
Ryan Hutchins is a reporter for the New Jersey Local News Service. He may be reached at (908) 243-6236 or at rhutchins@njlns.com.
