Sweet River Studios

A lot of people are intimidated by gravy but you don't have to be. Once you do it, you'll see how easy it can be. Two things you MUST have when making a really good gravy is stock and brown bits. So in order to get ready for our gravy we need to make stock. Yes, you can buy turkey or chicken stock to make this and you can even start with turkey stock from the store or start with water. Either one is fine but the stock you make at home will be 10x more flavorful then the store bought stock. And that's what you want - flavor. So in my stock, I'm going to start with turkey stock bought at the store instead of water. I figure the more layers of flavor I can add to the stock the merrier. The purchased turkey stock (pictured below) was a nice dark color, which I was pretty happy with. You can use this as is or reduce it further to concentrate the flavor but I'm going to add more meat and vegetables. I bought 4 turkey legs and 4 thighs for my stock but I also had...

At my cooking class, we learned how to make emulsion type sauces. We learned how to make a hollandaise sauce, which we put over the classic poached egg and toast. We also made a mayonnaise and roasted potatoes. And we made a white wine sauce for our hamburgers with caramelized onions, along with a ceasar salad with dressing. All of that was in just one day! Needless to say, I'm usually stuffed at the end of class. The following week was salad week and all we did was chop a lot of veggies and make salad dressings and a pumpkin soup. It was definitely a lighter meal but I was still just as full.

It's less then two weeks before T-giving and I'm on cooking duty this year. It's been a few years since I've cooked and I've been taking a french cooking class so I'm ready to start planning and start cooking. We also have a couple of people with food allergies, so I try to be mindful of what everyone can or cannot have and make sure there's something for everyone. There will be some new items this year and of course some traditional. I like to change things up a bit but others don't want anything but the same thing year after year but since I'm cooking it's my house, my food, my rules. If you've never cooked Thanksgiving before here's a few tips: Plan Ahead. Don't wait until the last minute to go shopping. Make a list of what dishes you're serving, under that write down your shopping list and under that list keep your recipes. Then under the recipes or next to them, write down the day you're going to make them. Also, f...

When I first started learning how to sew, I decided to learn paper piecing. Paper piecing is very easy to learn. It's learning how to sew pieces of fabric together in a certain order and you sew them together by sewing on lines printed on the paper. Yes, you sew on a line so everything is straight and everything lines up fairly easily. My first paper piecing pattern, was the 4th of July quilt pattern by Judy Niemeyer from Quiltworx . The hardest part is literally getting all the fabric cut and taking off the paper. But I learned a lot about 1/4" seams, trimming, sewing and piecing all the parts together. I thought the instructions for the pattern was really well done and was easy for a non-sewer to follow. After the 4th of July quilt and my sewing skills improved, I got another pattern called Amazon Star. This was a very, very big quilt. I think it was 98x98" and I really didn't like handling something that big. That one taught me that I don't like Y seams. I go...