By Sadler Wilson
What are your favorite Thanksgiving traditions?
“We always get together with my husband’s family – we are going to Minnesota this year to visit them,” Mrs. Carol Cotrell said. “We always do a very traditional, big Thanksgiving lunch.”
“I get to celebrate two Thanksgivings, which is kind of fun,” Ms. Kristyn Wighton-Tiofack said. “Our Thanksgiving in Canada is actually the second weekend of October, and then now that I live here in the states, I get to celebrate this one… Because I get to do it twice, I do a more traditional meal for one of them and then for the other one I kind of take a different ethnicity and merge it with the traditional, American Thanksgiving meals to do something different.”
“Normally, everyone comes to our house,” Mr. William Taylor said. “I handle the cooking, but this year we are going on a Disney Cruise.”
“Mainly spending it with family that I love – I have family in North Carolina,” Chef Octavius Chatman said. “I normally go up to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, but this year I’m stepping a little bit outside the box. Me and my wife are going to Disney, so we will be spending Thanksgiving this year with Mickey.”
“My parents are from Haiti, so that makes me Haitian-American,” Ms. Christelle McClean said. “We have traditional dishes that we make from back home.”
What is your signature dish to bring to Thanksgiving? What makes it special?
“I would say my signature dish is the stuffing,” Mrs. Cotrell said. “It’s the croutons, the bread[s] that you put into it have to be very specific. It has to be different types of crusty, good quality bread. Then mix that with a lot of fresh sage and herbs and olive oil. It’s the thing my husband says I have to make each year.”
“It has to be some form of stuffing,” Ms. Wighton-Tiofack said. “When I did the different traditions, for example, I did Mexican food one year so I used chorizo sausage instead of regular sausage. They use a lot of raisins and stuff like that so I put that in instead of the cranberries.”
“Smoked turkey and cheese cake, pecan pie and jalapeno cornbread pudding,” Mr. Taylor said. “Lots of love and passion go into all of them.”
“Everybody loves my collard greens because I make them so well,” Chef OC said. “The key to a good batch of collard greens is making sure that when you are building the liquid that you’re cooking in… which we call pot liquor, making sure it’s seasoned well with chicken or turkey stock, apple cider vinegar, crushed red peppers. Sometimes I put some kind of smoked meat in it. Typically I like to use smoked turkey legs because everybody doesn’t eat pork.”
“One of the ones that I love we call it Haitian potato salad,” Ms. McClean said. “It’s pretty much potatoes, onions, and what makes it different is we put beets in it, so once you mix up the beets, it turns into a pinkish-purple color.”
What is your favorite part of WA’s Thanksgiving lunch?
“Thanksgiving meal is actually one of my favorite meals – everything about it,” Mrs. Cotrell said. “I really enjoy the turkey and dressing.”
“I do like the cornbread dressing I have to say,” Ms. Wighton-Tiofack said. “It’s different because we [in Canada] don’t make our stuffing with cornbread back home, so the first time I had it with cornbread was down here and obviously I love it… and then mashed potatoes and gravy.”
“Thanksgiving meal is always one of my favorite meals every year, so when we do it I get to have it twice,” Mr. Taylor said. “The cornbread stuffing is hard to beat.”
“Really you guys,” Chef OC said. “Just seeing kids happy with the meal… the mashed potatoes, the turkey with the gravy, the cornbread dressing, the cranberry sauce, the pumpkin or sweet potato pie… Just seeing you guys happy and content with what we put out there, that’s my favorite part of it because if you guys aren’t happy, that means we aren’t doing our job.”
“I love cornbread and collard greens and the mac and cheese, so those are my three favorite that I like,” Ms. McClean said.
What is one thing you are feeling thankful for this time of year?
“I think it is just an important time to be with family that we don’t see the rest of the year,” Mrs. Cotrell said.
“I am grateful for my family,” Mrs. Wighton-Tiofack said. “You know they’ve always been there for me, and even though I don’t get to see them as often, I know they are a plane ride, car ride, or phone call away if I need them.”
“Just my family and everyone being healthy,” Mr. Taylor said.
“Just being alive,” Chef OC said. “I’m thankful for my family, both my immediate family and my Woodward family. I’m thankful for you guys and being a part of a beautiful family here in Woodward where everybody is loving and caring and showing a sense of brother and sisterhood – that’s what I’m most thankful for.”
“Just being with family, you know,” Ms. McClean said. “My mother, she moved down here from New York, so she is about 77 so we just try to cherish as much time that we have with her because tomorrow is not promised.”
