Chef Ken Watt

Unlike most of us who dread something about Thanksgiving — the cooking, the clean-up, maybe even the family — chef Ken Watt loves it all.

The executive chef at Audrey’s Restaurant at the Johnson & Wales Inn in Seekonk will probably cook there on Thanksgiving Day before heading north to his childhood home in Lyndeborough, N.H., where he and his brother John will cook Friday night for his parents Lucille and John, sister Jenni and her family, and a host of other friends and relatives. Then they’ll head back down to the chef’s home in Smithfield where he and John will cook for another crowd of people on Saturday.

Except for Thanksgiving, what Watt will cook is undetermined. He and his brother, a real estate appraiser, will decide what kind of meal they want, shop for the best ingredients, make stocks, execute a menu and cook for upward of 20 people.

“When we get together, it all revolves around food,” Watt said.

He’s been out of his parents’ house for 22 years but the farming life he grew up with isn’t out of him in the least.

“We grew most of what we ate as kids,” he said.

It instilled a love of food in the J&W trained chef who was recently promoted to the newly created position of executive chef, Practicum Properties, overseeing the food services at the University’s properties including the J&W Inn, the Radisson, the Marketplace CafÉ, and the soon-to-open City Burger and Starbucks.

The Watt family had a huge garden in which they grew everything, corn, potatoes, peppers, peas and more. At the end of harvest season, there were still tons of tomatoes so they made jar after jar of sauce to freeze and enjoy all winter.

“Then we’d have the rotten tomato fight using the trash can lids as shields,” he said.

They had a big chest for freezing and a huge pantry for storing.

His mother made jam with berries from bushes and lots of pickles and relish. She got strawberries from the farmer down the road.

They had a milking cow and raised pigs. They made their living raising sheep and selling wool and so they ate a lot of lamb. There are years he remembers the day before Thanksgiving as the day when they killed the turkey for dinner.

“Animals were raised to be eaten,” Watt said. “We never named the animals,” he added. “We knew what they were there for.”

And then with a nostalgic smirk he added, “Except for Ham and Bacon.”

They always had two pigs named for their destiny, he said.

gciampa@projo.com