Sweet River Studios

What feels like a hundred years ago, which in reality was 2016, I took a 30 week French cooking class at The Seasoned Farmhouse in Columbus. I met a lot of people all different ages and backgrounds but what we all had in common was we liked to cook, wanted to learn different things in the kitchen and of course eat. During those weeks, our Chef Tricia, threw in a day of cooking cajun recipes, which I certainly didn't have a lot of exposure to living in Ohio.  We cooked a Chicken & Andouille Smoked Sausage Gumbo from the book of Paul Preudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen. We also made a cajun meatloaf and a shrimp etouffe but I enjoyed the gumbo the most and I decided to dust off the recipe we made and make it again in 2023. I admit I didn't stick closely to the recipe, which most southerners who know how to make gumbo would know doubt have something to say about that and I know. I'm not trying to be them. I'm just trying to make a tasty soup.  To make this tasty gumbo y...

Last fall, I decided to try my hand at refurbishing something over the winter. Something I had never done before and I didn't really have anything in mind. So, after some internet surfing and going down the YouTube rabbit hole, I found myself watching video's on how to restore vintage singer sewing machines. And the more I watched, the more interested I became in these old machines. After all, I sew and quilt so it peaked my interest. I started digging into the history of the sewing machine, which I will not get into here, and realized that the actual technique for machine sewing really hasn't changed all that much in the last 100 years or so, which I thought was pretty interesting.  And I thought, maybe I could find an old treadle sewing machine and restore that over the winter. I've never done anything like that and some of those old machines are pretty cool. I also knew that they are fairly common and not that expensive and I thought it would be a nice affordable pro...