Nick Benninger, Champion for Charity, adds fundraising to the menu as full training begins
By Jeff Hicks
KITCHENER —
Fish sticks baked slowly in his childhood kitchen.
The battered-haddock odour wafted through a Stanley Park home.
Young Nick Benninger, a belly full of teenage temerity, complained to his mom Bonnie.
“What are we eating for dinner?” he snapped. “It smells gross.”
No problem, Bonnie responded with all the patience a mother of three could muster.
“If you don’t like what I’m cooking for you, you can make your own food.”
So Nick — future chef, entrepreneur and one of Mandy Bujold’s Champions for Charity first-time boxers — groaned and got his own grub together.
Maybe it was a modest platter of salsa-spattered nachos or a humble plate of mustard-drenched hot dogs. Benninger can’t remember exactly.
Could have been his mom’s delicious pesto pasta with Cajun chicken breast or delightful seafood linguini. It doesn’t matter anyway.
Nick ate his hastily-prepared fish sticks substitute with his family. That’s the important thing.
Eating together was non-negotiable.
“That was a rule that wouldn’t be broken,” recalled Benninger, 45, twirling his trademark Rolly Fingers moustache in the childhood home he still lives in with his own family.
“I think, in that moment, I understood the importance goes beyond what food is on the plate. It’s more about breaking bread together.”
Community togetherness is what Champions for Charity, at heart, is all about too.
Not the multi-course gourmet meal on a Black Tie Night on April 12th at Cambridge’s Tapestry Hall. Not the 10 bouts featuring 20 community business leaders taking their first jabs at boxing.
Benninger, a wisened frying pan palooka with his own Farm to Fork television show, will trade charred-knuckle hooks and knockout recipes with a financial planner to help raise funds for McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation.
“I think it prepares me well for a fight,” said Benninger who first became smitten with kitchen culture during summer camp food prep duty as a teen at a Camp Wabanaki in Huntsville.
“There’s an aspect to gritting it out in kitchens that I hope has hardened me for this occasion.”
Benninger is softened to help a children’s hospital too. Parenthood, raising daughters Tatem and Georgia, will do that to you.
When first daughter Tatem was born with a hole in her heart, she was treated at children’s hospital in London. Nick and wife Natalie feel fortunate. Tatem’s heart issues healed with time.
But the memory of that overwhelming feeling of helplessness that comes with having a sick child sticks with you like the odour of unwanted fish sticks dipped in a stomach-turning tartar sauce of fear and anxiety.
“We know how crushing that can be,” he said.
“The love of your children never goes away.”
So Benninger will leave the Tie-Dye Crocs he always wears meeting local farms and cooking outside on a fire for them on two seasons of Farm to Fork at home.
The Where The Wild Things Are tattoo sleeve on his left arm — for his favourite book — will dart at his opponent’s chin. In the ring, he can retreat into the comfort of his creativity just like in one of his kitchens over the years.
It could be locally famous pork burgers smothered in forever onions, fish tacos or his signature dish made popular at Nick and Nat’s Uptown 21, Choucroute garnie.
Benninger will be ready. His moustache, big and bold and wild, will be impeccable.
“It’ll be waxed and looking triumphantly vintage for fight night!”
To Support Nick and make a donation to McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation – Click HERE
