PISCATAWAY, N.J. — There’s a policy within the Rutgers football program that no player should be alone on Thanksgiving. That gave Rutgers lineman Henry Highes Jr. an idea to use his passion for cooking to encourage some of his teammates who might be missing home and family.
It is an idea that has been running now for three years. Hughes hosts a Thanksgiving dinner at the team’s facility in the Hale Center where he does everything from menu planning to the shopping and then the cooking.
From appetizers to the main course and even dessert, Hughes pours himself into a recipe that is two parts his passion for food and an equal measure of his compassion for his teammates.
Hughes, who is from Tampa, Florida, has been cooking with his mother for much of his life. At nine years old, he remembers being in the kitchen and making fish and grits. It was the first time he cooked something.
He was hooked.
Cooking runs deep in his family, he says. It isn’t a labor of love for him, it is simply pure love. There is no labor involved in a love that extends to sharing his heart within the football program. It comes during the Thanksgiving season when teammates might feel especially lonely.
On Thanksgiving morning, he is expecting a turnout of 20 or so people affiliated with the team to show up at the Hale Center for some food and brotherly bonding. Three or four of those in attendance will be coaches and the rest his teammates.
It makes for a nice balance and Hughes’ efforts mean that no one is alone on Thanksgiving.
“Upwards of 40 pounds of turkey or something like that.- it’s a lot of turkey!” Hughes told Rutgers Wire on Wednesday afternoon following practice.
“And then we’re all going to meet here at the Hale Center and get together. The menu? The southern tradition is to make some dressing – I believe you guys call it stuffing up north. Some collard greens, mac and cheese, candy yams, the smoked turkey. And then I’m going to do a pot roast too. And…
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