MANCHESTER, Tenn. (WTVF) — A lot of us are feeling overwhelmed by how much cooking we need to do between now and Thanksgiving. One woman and her small team prepare a staggering amount of food in to-go orders ahead of the big day.
There is an aroma wafting through downtown Manchester. It's coming from The Mercantile Cafe. It's not the pastries or pies right now. There's a whole lot of something else cooking in the kitchen.
"Paul here's working the chicken," said The Mercantile Cafe owner Renee Holt, introducing her workers. "Logan's working the cornbread. Tammy is the mixologist. She's making it all happen."
"We're focusing today and tomorrow on making our cornbread dressing," she continued. "We've got cornbread and dressing in this oven cooking."
Renee prepares Thanksgiving dinners in the hundreds for families and whole businesses with her little team in The Mercantile Cafe's little kitchen.
You can smell dressing all over downtown Manchester and with good reason. Renee says her team's making 4,000 pounds of it this week.
"We have pan after pan after pan after pan," she smiled. "I'm very focused on making people happy through food. If I can do that, then I'm happy. It all comes from a rich family history. My mother and I always wanted to have a restaurant, growing up as a kid. We talked about it a lot. Unfortunately, she passed away from breast cancer almost 20 years ago, so we never got to see that, fulfill that."
Renee can live out that dream now.
"We've got our chicken cooked," she said, walking through the kitchen "We've got our cornbread going. We might give ya a sample!"
Thanksgiving is go-time around here. Oh, it's long hours, but you've got to understand; this dressing recipe's been in the family for at least a hundred years, taught to Renee by her grandfather. That she gets to share that with her community, there could be nothing better for her.
"I get to feed em, and hopefully make their day a little better," Renee said.
Again, these are to-go orders Renee's team is making. She explains the cut-off for those orders has passed now, but she's accommodating as many people as she can.
