Ripon College Days

Media Credit: Photo by Andrew Krajewski Sweet potato pie. No Thanksgiving meal is complete without pie. Attendees of Chefs Anonymous' cooking workshop look on as junior Casey McGowan skillfully peels sweet potatoes. [Click to enlarge]

Family, friends and food are the key ingredients for any Thanksgiving story.

What began then as a gesture of gratitude extended from the Pilgrims to their American Indian neighbors has now become a yearly celebration of good company and delicious food. While traditions, dishes and festive atmospheres vary from table to table, most students share a common love of this low-key and delicious day.

Junior Mara Evans and family celebrate the holiday in the spirit of the first Thanksgiving.

"We take turns and go around the table saying what we're thankful for," says Evans. "It could be the family's health, the company, the food, someone home from war, education-whatever."

Thanksgiving tops the holiday rating scale for senior Tom Considine.

"It's the least stressful holiday of the year for my family," he says.

After eating mass quantities of his beloved mashed potatoes, Considine looks forward to a more active part of the day, when Considine, his ten uncles and more than 50 cousins head outside for a game of football.

"We all stand in line by age and every other person is on a team," he says. "It's gotten less competitive over the years mainly because my uncles are getting old and they get hurt. Two years ago one broke his collar bone and the year before one broke his leg-they don't play anymore."

Not all celebrate the day with traditions as active as Considine. Some are simply content for a chance to share a tasty meal with family members.

Mexican and American dishes grace the table of senior Vic Herrera's household. In addition to the more traditional menu item of turkey, Herrera dines on rice, tamales and ponche, a fruit punch drink.

"It's a peaceful holiday," he says. "Everybody just enjoys each other's company."

For Herrera, the highlight of the meal is the molŽ sauce that tops the turkey each year.

Still other students put a non-turkey-centered spin on the holiday. Junior Aly Williams and family eat a combination of carnivorous and meatless dishes to accommodate her sister's vegetarian lifestyle.

"We prepare the usual turkey dinner and stuffing except we make two kinds of stuffing: one with meat and one without," she says. "The turkey is always free-range or one caught in the wild. My sister has been educating our family for years on the mistreatment of animals on slaughter farms, so we've swayed our habits to discourage corporate cruelty to animals."

Though Canadian by birth, Williams has grown to appreciate the value of Thanksgiving.

"For years I disliked it because it has no religious value and created a lot of messy dishes I had to clean up," she says. "Now I realize it's more about family and I take more pleasure from the meaningfulness of being together...family is all Thanksgiving means to me."

For senior Mandy Winterle, Thanksgiving is about more than just family.

"You always think about holidays as being family time, but your friends are just as important, just in different ways," Winterle says.

Winterle and friends meet in New York the week before the holiday for what they affectionately refer to as Mini-Thanksgiving. The event has grown to six couples who come from as far as Wisconsin and North Carolina. Every couple brings a dish or beverage and it's a "two-day drinking and eating festival" that adds a new couple each year.

"It's nice to be able to share Thanksgiving with friends without taking away from the family element of the holiday," she says. "Plus, you can be a little rowdy."

Others share Winterle's whimsical approach to the celebration.

First year Dan Sterba kicked off the festivities with a fierce game of turkey bowling. Sterba competed in Scott Hall's annual competition, chucking a duct-taped frozen turkey down the hallway to a second-place finish.

"It was sweet," he raves. "I got six free pizzas."

Sterba will forego the fowl play on the actual holiday, choosing rather to spend the day in the company of family.

Here on campus, Chefs Anonymous got into the holiday groove as well with a cooking workshop last Saturday. The session was open to 30 interested students and faculty and provided participants with three hours of cooking instruction. The group prepared a turkey, two kinds of stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet-potato pie. A feast on the fruits of their labor followed the culinary lesson.

The event is a brainchild of Chefs Anonymous President junior Adam Clark, who wanted students to learn to prepare traditional holiday dishes as a way of giving back to their families.

"We thought the whole event is centered around eating and the preparation of a big meal, so why not teach kids a way to actually contribute and prepare a dish for their family," Clark says. "Then you can say, 'Here mom, have a sweet potato pie in return for the thousands of dollars you spend on my tuition.' I call it even."

Sophomore Ken Leiviska attended the event because he wanted to learn to make "some really good food."

He cites an annual after dinner walk for the males in his family as a tradition of sorts. "We all say it's tradition, but I think we use it as an excuse to make all the women do the cleaning up."

Leiviska ranks Thanksgiving as his number one holiday-his reasoning? "All you have to do is show up hungry," he says.

As we head our different ways to celebrate this time-honored holiday, let us not forget its roots as a day of thanks and gratitude.

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