The last time I was this excited over something it was covered in gravy.
Here’s your first glimpse of me in my new kitchen.
The October issue of Canadian Living magazine is on stands now! And if it’s not where you are in Canada it will be in the next day or two. I know. It’s September. Early September at that. But that’s the way magazine work and since it gives us all a chance to see my kitchen in print a month earlier than I thought I’m O.K. with it.
And yes. That is my dear little Cuddles sharing the spotlight with me. When Cuddles came close to dying a few weeks ago I thought … I won’t even be able to open the magazine. It would be too much to bear. But that little Cuddles made it through her mystery illness and lived to see her magazine debut.
To recap:
In March of 2013 I decided to rip up my horrific kitchen floor and install VCT tiles. Black and white check. While the floor was up, I decided it would be stupid not to install heated floors while I was at it. With such a good lookin’ floor I was suddenly embarrassed about my sink. Why had I never noticed the horror that was my sink? I should get a new sink. That one from Ikea with the apron front.
Only the sink didn’t fit because my counters weren’t deep enough. I could maybe get new counters to accommodate the new sink so as not to embarrass my floors. Floors are very sensitive that way. Everyone knows that.
Cut to a year later, my entire kitchen is ripped out, a new ceiling is going in, cupboards are being hoisted over fences, the fella has left and I’m pooping in a bucket.
WTF?
How did THIS happen?
I’ll tell you how it happened. I’m like you, you’re like me, we’re all nuts. And that’s O.K. That’s how it goes in this world and the people who aren’t nuts are boring.
I lived through a kitchen renovation and even though people told me I was going to forget all about how gross it was once I had my new kitchen I didn’t believe them. In fact I pretty much silently cursed those people until I started cursing them out loud. With big, new curse words that only a kitchen renovation can pull out of you. But they were right. I don’t remember any of the pain and every time I walk into my kitchen I still gasp and sigh and smile. Then I cook something and leave the dishes to clean up in a week or so.
When I realized this tiny little kitchen update was actually going to turn into a full blown renovation I emailed someone I knew at Canadian Living. Brett Walther was someone who I worked with when a different magazine shot my house a few years ago. I told him what I was doing and asked if he’d be interested in featuring it in the magazine.
He said yes. I said good. He told me I couldn’t show my kitchen until it was released in the magazine, I said bad. But agreed, because I could understand his point. Canadian Living wanted the big reveal to be in their magazine. Who could blame them. The only problem was I couldn’t take any pictures, or do any posts or videos that revealed my kitchen for a year. A YEAR.
That year is up. I still can’t show you my kitchen but I CAN let you know that the October issue of Canadian Living is available to buy now.
Since the majority of my readers are outside of Canada, I asked Canadian Living if they’d be nice enough to give away a few copies to my American readers who otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to buy the magazine.
They said, of course Karen, you’re our favourite feature ever and we love you and would do anything for you and in fact would you like a bag of money and shoes made out of Rolls Royce?
So the deal was done.
Canadian Living and I are giving away 10 copies of the October issue, featuring my new kitchen to anyone in North America. (sorry … it’s the whole postage thing to mail stuff to Sweden and such)
To enter just leave a comment below telling me whether or not you like gravy. If you have an actual gravy story … all the better.
Yup.
That’s it.
Winners will be announced in next Thursday’s post. No more entries will be taken after Tuesday, September 9th. at 11:59 p.m.
Brownie points for actually commenting on the kitchen. (or how cute Cuddles and I look)
This post is no longer taking contest entries.
Yes, I love gravy — my preference is Pepper Gravy!
Yes… White gravy over scrambled eggs and biscuits.
My boyfriend loves gravy so I bought him gravy candy canes for Christmas. They really tasted exactly like gravy. It was beyond gross.
Mmmmmm, gravy!
I love gravy! I especially love gravy when I lick it out of my moustache later in the evening.
P.s. I am not an old man, I am a gay, 31 year old man with a beard. For the record.
gay man is fine with me.
I was just grateful that you did not “PS” that you are a woman!!!
Licking gravy out of your moustache later is better than pooping in a bucket. WTF indeed. Did she explain that? I missed why she slipped that in there. Canadian Living pissed me off a couple of years ago when then screwed up my subscription, so I have been ignoring the mountain of mail from them with subscription deals. BUT FOR KAREN I’ll make the trek to Shopper’s DM and buy a copy. ‘Cause we love her.
I like gravy. Not country gravy though…it looks gross to me and I can’t do it.
My dad always tells a story of his younger sister (my Aunt Patty) asking for gravy in the following manner: “Gots any gravy, please?” when she was little. That’s my only gravy story except that I’m pretty good at making gravy.
Love some good ‘ole Southern gravy!! And would love a copy of Canadian Living!
Um I’m currently stuffing my face with fries dipped in gravy… How serendipitous!
Certain kinds of gravy, yes.
Growing up the only time we had gravy was at Thanksgiving. But when I grew up, I married a man from the Midwest. I had to learn how to make gravy, from scratch. I’ll admit it took some time to master. But it is awesome!
Yup, I love gravy! When I was a newlywed I made roast beef for dinner and I used a jar of gravy with some of the pan drippings mixed in. My husband was really impressed because he said it was better than his mom’s. It was too funny.
I love gravy, especially the vegan gravy from the Naam restaurant in Vancouver. Damn, now I want poutine!
I don’t really care for gravy. It’s not something I grew up with, coming from a family that was more stir-fry than pot roast…
My mother was the gravy queen. Chicken gravy on mashed potatoes, pepper gravy on steak, tomato gravy on Salisbury steak, and country style on anything. She was known for her gravy and she always put whatever gravy we were eating on the dogs’ food. They had the glossiest coats you ever saw. And they always had a smile on their faces. Just like us!
Yes, I like gravy. With all due respect to Cuddles and company, here’s a gravy story…in the good old 60s and 70s, my mother in law used to make chicken giblets in gravy and serve them to her bro in law who swore he would never in his life eat chicken giblets. He loved that gravy which she told him contained mushrooms and NOT chicken gilblets. My husband, then a kid, says they used to laugh everytime this uncle came to visit and gobbled up the “mushroom” gravy which he raved about. Never told him he was eating chicken giblets.
You look lovely on that mag. cover.
mmmm…graaaavy…*drool* (a la Homer Simpson). I can’t think of any particular gravy stories. The kind I like best though is country gravy or chicken gravy or whatever you call it. White gravy. I put it on all the things. That stuff could make a flip flop taste good (though I haven’t yet tested that theory).
I certainly hope that if I don’t win a copy of the mag that you will be able to show us pics on the blog eventually? Please don’t make me drive all the way to Canada to buy a magazine but I totally will because I’m dyyyyying to see the whole kitchen!
You and Cuddles look super cute in the pic you posted! Love your dress! And really, really glad to hear that Cuddles is doing better. I never thought I’d cry reading about a sick chicken on a blog, but there’s a first time for everything.
Gravy is a lot like bacon……everything is better with it!
So one Christmas, I was slaving away in my 1950’s era kitchen, cranking out turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy – the whole nine yards. Thought I’d make the gravy EXTRA SMOOTH by pouring it into my handy dandy blender… which I did. Trouble is, I didn’t hold my hand down on the lid to make sure it stayed there. Ten seconds later – yes, it can happen that fast 😉 – gravy was in EVERY CREVICE OF MY KITCHEN, including all over my Pug, Oliver. And then, it was Oliver – I mean all over – ME. Yowsa.
I re-named my kitchen “Gravy-ty” after the Sandra Bullock movie.
Yes. .. Love gravy, but mostly I love roasted chicken or turkey gravy… only the homemade kind. I am actually quote good at making gravy, which has amazed many friends over the years.
Oh course I love gravy that’s why I’m fat…now give me the magazine!!!!!
oh yeah..you and cuddles look quite lovely my dear..you should have put pearls on her..
Gotta love ya. That sounds exactly like me!
I lurv gravy! Lurv, lurv, lurv it!!!! My gravy story goes like this….my family and I were visiting with my grandparents for a holiday dinner of turkey, GRAVY, and all the yumminess that goes along with it. My sister, who was five at the time, insisted she required no assistance to pass the very full, very hot gravy boat along to our uncle. Well, the gravy didn’t make the transfer as smoothly as she had intended landing on my grandma’s brand new, celery green dining room carpet. The family (and I mean ALL the family) still talk about the great gravy incident of 1977! Gravy is some serious business with my people. BTW my sister is now 42 and finally finds the story funny; however, that took a long, long time.
I would love a copy! My mother was raised in a household where cooks did the cooking, so she never got hold of the skills herself. So my first encounter with gravy was in a school cafeteria. Which is why I never can eat it now, despite the tearful pleading of my family. The rumor is that my husband’s is the best gravy in the south, but I will never know….
Yes, I like gravy ! It’s essential for a great turkey dinner .
I adore gravy, especially my mother-in-law’s HAM GRAVY! I had never conceived of such a thing. In fact, that gravy may have played a part in marrying the guy. If you have never tried it, you should. It is a perception altering experience.
Of course I love gravy. I have a sister-in-law who loves it, too, but cannot learn how to make it. At least she claims not to be able to.
So, when she has Thanksgiving at her house she does most things perfectly and presents them in a beautiful way, but she just stands there a few minutes before dinner is served and looks at the turkey roasting pan and says some profoundly stupid thing so that I and another sister-in-law leap into action, grabbing spoons and looking for the flour and double-teaming that roaster and it’s drippings until there is a collective cheer that “Gravy’s ready!” gets everyone seated and smiling and slopping gravy on everything on their plate. I think a couple of people just spoon gravy on the plate and pretend there’s other food under it.
This is a long-standing family tradition. At least I know someone will miss me when I’m gone.
Oh yes. Gravy.
And the magazine. And the kitchen.
But the gravy.
And Cuddles.
First of all I LOVE GRAVY!!!
Many years ago when my girls were teenagers they decided they wanted to make gravy so they asked me how to make it. After explaining to them about making a rue and then adding liquid, etc. they convinced me that they could do it and to go off and leave them alone. Then when they realized that there wasn’t enough flour in the house they went next door and borrowed some cornstarch and added that to the mix, leaving the wooden spoon in the pot and stirring it now and then. They then proceeded to cook the rest of their meal and when everything was ready and they reached for the spoon to put some gravy on their meat the spoon was stuck and the whole pot of gravy, with the spoon stuck in the middle, came out of the pot like a popsickle on a stick. Obviously way to much cornstarch was added and their laughter shook the house – we still joke about their gravy to this day. p.s. – I live in the San Francisco bay area, love your blog and can’t wait to read it every day. Thanks…
I love CHOCOLATE gravy on homemade biscuits!!!
You and Cuddles look totally amazing in you brand spanking new kitchen!!!!
I just love it!!!!!
Chocolate gravy?
sounds interesting – please do share.
I make killer vegetarian mushroom gravy. It’s great on egg noodles. Maybe throw in some peas, carrots and tuna. Yum!
Karen, you look like a real grown-up in the photo; a glamorous, sophisticated babe! Very nice. And Cuddles in your arms is the frosting on the sophistication cake! Genius!
The counters and lamp are making me jealous! Sigh.
I’d like that recipe!
I can make a pretty good gravy myself… but, I’m not all that crazy about eating it…. but I good white sauce will make me secretly lick the plate. Does that count?
That’s a fantastic dress. But why did they cut off your feet? I can’t oooh and aaah over your shoes when they cut off your feet!!!
I can’t wait to see the whole kitchen…. when I win, will you autograph the magazine? How about a cuddles footprint? Dip her foot on an ink pad and stamp a page.
I freaking love gravy. Whenever I do a roast of any sort, I always make sure I have some stock to make a gravy. I don’t care if it adds eleventy billion calories, I need some gravy on me meats. Oh and by the way, you completely renovating your entire kitchen, especially during a turbulent time in your life, is absolutely inspiring and kick ass.
Gravy makes everything good, especially white gravy!
Gravy……… brown gravy, white gravy, sausage gravy, thin gravy, thick gravy – love any and all kinds of gravy! Congrats on your kitchen’s magazine debut! 🙂
I really can take it or leave it, gravy that is. The fella I married 63 yrs. ago LOVES GRAVY. I hated to see anyone just whip of gravy when mine was never more than yuck. Well, the old story of practice makes perfect, does prove true. I do NOW make DELICIOUS GRAVY and my fella never strays for lack of gravy. ……..
I want to see your kitchen! you did a huge amount of good ole hard work!!!!Hurray for YOU!!!!!!!!
Of course I like gravy! And of course you and Cuddles look adorable in that fabulous kitchen! I would like to see the rest of the kitchen in that glossy magazine spread, please.
You and Cuddles are adorable. I love your dress. You look so classy!!!
I HATE gravy. My mom made the lumpiest, bland gravy, growing up. I like my potatoes with garlic and butter. Yum!
Please send me a magazine. It will be the only thing I have ever won in my very long life. Thanks!
Yes, I like gravy. I don’t love it. I love coffee and local beer and bacon and truffle mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs with chives and good cheese…
My mom and dad (80 and 79 years 0ld) still cook Sunday dinner for our extended family every Sunday. My dad has made me the official gravy stirrer. He has a special flat whisk for non-stick pans that works great. I usually get there after it’s already cooking, so I still don’t know how to cook it from scratch.
You and Cuddles do look great! I love the counter-sitting pose. Counter-sitting is highly underrated.
I love Gravy but my 40 year old body doesn’t. I also love how you look in all your posts esp this dress. I am happy to here Cuddles is ok. Yes I have been stalking you for about a year… LOL I have wanted to comment many times but I am shy even in print, maybe thats why all my animals love me so. Thank you for all your hard work!
I LOVE gravy, and unfortunately for way too many years(translated into pounds), gravy loved me…mostly my hips and thighs. When our girls were younger and visiting their great-grandmother one summer, I got a panicked call from said grandmother asking me what was wrong with my daughters…they wouldn’t eat gravy on the rice she’d prepared for dinner!!! After I calmed granny down with a few compliments on her wonderful cooking, I tried explaining to her that we only have gravy at Thanksgiving(a must have as far as I’m concerned), I don’t cook it the rest of the year because we don’t need the fat/calories, and the girls don’t care for gravy on their rice or potatoes…after grandma calmed down and declared me insane for not insisting they eat gravy on everything, I pointed out that they eat almost any vegetable, salads, and most everything else put on the table…unlike their cousins who lived right across the street from grandma! Point well made…no more worries on that subject. Do you want to hear her reaction when at age 4 one of the girls came out of the bathtub saying something about her “bagina” and we almost had to chase granny’s dentures skittering down the hallway?
Crap, once again I am last in a long list of comments, so why bother? Anyhow, my gravy story is how I learned to appreciate the art of making gravy while I was fool enough to be volunteer chairperson of a huge church festival dinner. We fed 1,800 people in 6 hours & started prepping for it 3 moths in advance. There was one lovely senior lady who came in to make all of the gravy for the dinner. She made a big deal about how ‘Leslie, really now, this all I do for the festival, period’. But her gravy was amazing. And in fact days before other church ladies made homemade chicken broth for the gravy by pressure cooking “old hens” with water, salt, pepper, and celery tops. Ah yes, those were the days. The 1990s, when we still made stuff from scratch and didn’t think it was unusual.
Hah! The good ‘ole 90’s. And don’t worry about being later in the comments. EVERYONE reads all the comments! ~ karen
Yep, I’m reading it now.
I loved church dinners and the good cooking from all those church ladies, all from scratch!
Hate gravy, but am fully prepared to love your new kitchen. And am delighted to hear Cuddles is doing so, so well. You’re a wonderful chicken mama!
I became a vegetarian a few years back, and I love it. But I have and always will stand by my one exception – gravy. I could not imagine my life without the sinfully wonderful delicacy of delightfully crispy fries smothered in melty cheese curds and gravy!
Also, I’ve been waiting for your kitchen for so long! Emailed you this week asking about it. I can’t wait to get my hands on the magazine!
A free magazine is totally worth my first post here!
I love your dress and Cuddles is absolutely adorable. Really, that’s the truth. Not sucking up.
Now about gravy, I don’t think I’ve ever had a real gravy. I’ve had something that my former in-laws insisted was gravy but was actually closer to turkey-scented school paste. I had an aunt that would make gravy that I loved, though I don’t think most people would agree that it was gravy. It was usually meat drippings with a little corn starch to “thicken” it…though it never got thick. When warm it was always sort of runny, yet salty, peppery and delicious. When refrigerated it formed a gelatinous mass that may very well have been motile (I’m thinking pseudopods were involved). I swear nothing is more delicious than brisket gravy on mashed potatoes. Which could be something you could do with your 100 lbs of potatoes. 🙂
I LOVE gravy! It’s good on chicken, turkey, brisket, biscuits, Triscuits OH MY! I have no thriller diller to share. However, I DO suggest you master making gravy on your own. Before I took the Kosher route, I loved chicken fried steak with white gravy which had bits of sausage in it with a distinct high note of pepper. I couldn’t afford to eat this every weekend at the restaurant so I found a packet of this exact gravy in the grocery store. How happylicious was I!!! That Sunday I rustled up some chicken fried steak and made the gravy. BALEEEECH!
it tasted like Milk O Magnesia with vomit stirred in. Accchhhhh ach ach. wipe the tongue, wipe the tongue, dry heave! Go online, watch food channels, scour Pinterest, learn the rue and you will rue-le! No powdered vonit allowed. 🙂
Who doesn’t like gravy??? I *love* it so much. All kinds on all things. As for the kitchen, I can’t wait to see it! Preferably a picture of you eating/cooking gravy in it!
Yay for gravy! One of the best parts of Thanksgiving, we think.
I’m actually the one in charge of making the gravy for our family meal. These days I make two kinds – regular turkey, and a pretty darn good vegetarian gravy. Last year I pulled off a real coup – one of the guests was vegan and I adapted my vegetarian gravy to match her diet.
*vomit I hope I get mag! I want to steal your kitchen ideas! Muahahahaha
I’ve been telling my neighbor’s chickens about Cuddles. Betty White and Dixie aren’t the least bit interested, but Whoopi was devastated to hear of her troubles. Whoopi has troubles of her own. She’s low man (or chicken) on the totem pole and suffers greatly under the pecks of the rest of the clan. So what does this have to do with gravy? Well, I could have sworn that Whoopi squawked the word “gravy” the other day. It wasn’t clear to others, but I am a retired speech therapist and I know “gravy” when I hear it.
And then of course, reality struck…maybe I was just fantasizing gravy…a not so seldom occurrence I might add. It began shortly after my kitchen renovation just two years ago. But unlike other sufferers, I left my home in Northern California and spent the whole time in Calgary with friends. Smart, eh?
I love gravy.
My parent’s first fight was over whether to add water or milk to the gravy.
How fabulous you are in that dress! So coordinated with your gorgeous kitchen, and of course Cuddles steals the show. Tsk. The worst “gravy” I’ve ever had was once upon a time, ten years ago. The Jones Soda people made a limited edition package of “Thanksgiving dinner” flavored sodas. My college friend Max got his hands on a set of them, and rounded up me & several other friends to share the experience. We each had about a half-shot glass full per flavor. Cranberry was tolerable; turkey & gravy soda was just as gawd-awful as you can imagine. I adore your blog, am so thrilled for Cuddles, and live in California and would thus love to be a prize-winning recipient of the magazine!
I don’t like gravy, but that leaves more for you! Right, ol’ buddy? You and Cuddles look gorgeous as always in your kitchen. I’m a bit curious about everything BUT the sink in the title, since you did change it. Perhaps I’ll receive my own copy and find out how they tie it all together.
Will you autograph the magazine for the winners?
Hmm. I hadn’t really thought about that Linda G., but your the second or third person who has asked that. I might be able to work it out, but the problem is the magazines will be shipped from Canadian Living as they’re the ones providing the magazines and footing the shipping bill! So it might be hard to do. :/ ~ karen!
Love gravy but since it’s just me, I don’t get to eat it too often. Probably all for the best, however, since aging seems to have added pounds every year. I’m so glad Cuddles has recovered in time for her print debut and would love a copy of the magazine. It’s been a long year of waiting to see your new kitchen.
I love gravy! Can’t wait to see your kitchen 🙂
Yes, I love all kinds of gravy….homemade kind preferably….and I have to say I make delicious gravy, but I don’t do it much anymore. Too lazy I guess. I would love a copy of the magazine to see your kitchen. But for those of us who aren’t lucky, hope you can share pics soon! You and Cuddles look so cute! Happy she is doing well. I really like white chicken gravy best, but I wouldn’t want Cuddles to know that:)
I like gravy, your kitchen, your dress,, cuddles and I want a free magazine, please.
I do not like gravy. I have never liked gravy. When I was a kid, it was always served with mashed potatoes. I HATED mashed potatoes, so I never ate them, and due to the mashed potato association, I somehow decided that gravy was also made of potatoes which would make it grainy and gross. Of course I never ate it.
Now I am older and wiser, and know this is not true… but part of my tiny child brain still believes it. So I have not tried gravy to this day, and I continue to loathe mashed potatoes.
Holy crap – 49 comments and it’s only 12:52 AM !!! I’m not a huge gravy person (sorry) but I did love my mother-in-laws gravy and yes it’s always better when someone else makes it for you. Love the photo and am really glad Cuddles made the pic. Go Cuddles !!
Love your cabinets. Love your handles. Not your love handles. Do you even have love handles? The black on the windows is really slick looking. Whats that curtain made from? Rough linen or burlap? You look gorgeous and so does Cuddles. My sister had her house photographed for Country Home years ago and she told me what a mess it was. They moved things around and generally made a mess of her house.
The roman shade is made with the one and only Rough Linen! There really was no mess with Country Living coming. One of Brett’s (the editor) philosophies is to leave things as they really are. 🙂 ~ karen!
Oh Yeah! How could I not compliment you and your birdie! You DO look fabulous! I think it was very sweet that they had her in the photo. She really is a gorgeous chicken and wow she IS a cuddle loaf. Mozel Tov on your published success on kitchen reno. I just moved into an OLD house and I feel your pain! I do NOT see the light at the end of the tunnel I hate cooking here and dammit when I am done I better get into a magazine too. LOL!
Thanks Chana! ~ karen! p.s. Kosher! That’s reason for celebration. TWO sets of dishes!! I have a thing for dishes.
I love gray. Especially the Tabasco white gravy from Serious Biscuits in Seattle. They were kind enough to give me the recipe and now I make biscuits and gravy every weekend.
I’m from the south. I love gravy.
The first time I ever made venison sausage and gravy, I ruined the whole pot using Kitchen Bouquet. A little tiny bit goes a very long way. Wish someone would’ve told me that before I poured it! It was vile!
Hmm. You may have ruined the venison sausage by adding venison. Hah! (I never grew to love venison) ~ karen!
no-one has mentioned my idea of heaven – roast beef with gravy! Yorkshire pudding with roast beef gravy!
my gravy story – did you know that in Yorkshire, the puddings are served *before* the meat course, with the gravy? An old “peasant” trick used in many countries to fill you up, thus using less of the much more costly meat portion of the meal.
And should my name surface in your draw, please give my magazine to #11, because I live in Canada and get a copy no problem, and get it most months. Their recipes are wonderful, and if you are ever looking for a gingerbread house story, I’ve got one!
I used to hate gravy growing up, something about the way it ran across my plate and touched my other food.. I know, I had issues. But these days I love it, the more gravy the better ( obviously cured those issues). And to mention cuddles, all I can picture is her holding a little sign that says “eat more beef!” Can’t wait to see the full kitchen remodel, feel free to come down to the states and help me with mine!!
Okay, what gravy are we talking about here?
Red Gravy is a thick tomato sauce that my in-laws use on some pasta dishes but not all. I am still new enough to the family to be forgiven for the transgression of mixing up the two. I think the gravy is what one cooks home-made meatballs in.
I grew up stirring the brown gravy that magically appeared from the powder growing up. Dad would add drippings into it to add additional flavor. (Oh my, I hope that was not a family secret that was suppose to be passed down. However I refuse to reveal the specific brand of said magical pack of goodness!) For some reason, even my Nana made gravy this well. Mind you she was a trained cook. (Her terms not mine, but she was from Norway and may be they had another level of between cook and chef in Norwegian.) I would stir and stir to ensure that the lumps were gone. Anyway, if the dripping where not added to, we would toss the gravy in the slow cooker with a roast to cook till tender. (Great, it’s 1AM and I wanna make a pot roast!)
Then there is White gravy that when I am in the South, I eat on chicken-friend steak. Not to be confused with the white sausage gravy I eat on my biscuits. I found a packet of powder once in my Northeastern Supermarket. But something was off about this. I think because I associate that gravy so close with travel that making it in my kitchen (which oddly enough, was my Nana’s kitchen) felt wrong.
Those are the gravies of my life.
I love your dress, and your chickens, and prayed very hard for a chicken I have never met this pass week. How are the chicks doing? Have we found out the genders yet?
Thanks Jen! You’re very well versed in your gravies. I like that. I’m pretty sure I have 3 roosters and one hen on my hands. 🙁 ~ karen!
At the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival Wavy Gravy was lying onstage, exhausted, when it was announced that B.B. King was going to play. He began to get up; a hand appeared on his shoulder. It was B.B. King, who asked, “Are you Wavy Gravy?” to which he replied “Yes.” “It’s OK; I can work around you,” said B.B. King, and he and Johnny Winter proceeded to jam for hours after that. He said he considered this a mystical event, and assumed Wavy Gravy as his legal name.
And there’s my Gravy story… 😉
OH ! And I want a magazine ! 🙂
Awesome~love him. I once served a lady named Wavy April at a restaurant I worked at. Called her Ms Wavy – but no, that was her first name.
Karen, you have turned into the Canadian-Jenna-from-30-Rock. And they had a Canadian!! In season 4!!! Gravy??? I’m going to send you pictures of brussel spouts. In gravy.
Mwahaha…
(I just want pics of the new kitchen)
(love to Cuddles)
I am?! How did I become her? I don’t remember becoming her at ALL! I’m probably drunk. And I remember the Canadian from 30 Rock! 🙂 ~ karen
You look fab, Cuddles looks cuddly, & your kitchen looks great!
Growing up, my mother, a horrible cook, used to make terrible gravy. She would sometimes make something she called “Cream, Peas & Tuna Fish”, which was peas & tuna mixed in to a delicious white gravy. So I grew up hating gravy & never learning to make it! But I love white gravy & I still get cravings for that gross sounding Cream, Peas & Tuna. On toast.
Gravy is groovy, but butter is better. And you & Cuddles look absolutely smashing sitting there all proper-like in your new kitchen! Can’t wait to see it all (the kitchen, that is…). Send one of your magazines to me in California and I will be your biggest fan forever! Seriously, you are amazing and I love your blog. Seriously. 🙂
Thanks Kalani! ~ karen
Ooo! Ooo! I hope I win!
I do like gravy. I knew a friend who when he was a child, crawled to the kitchen, reached out and sighed, “graaavy!” As an adult he was grossly obese. I hope it wasn’t the gravy that did him in.
Love gravy. Gravy is the new bacon.
That’s a cute idea in the comment above about having you and Cuddles autograph the winning magazine copies. Of course only if you can find a non-toxic paint or ink for Cuddles to stamp with. Lord knows the poor girl has had enough trauma lately. And that magazine, Oh.My.Goodness.Gracious. What a knock-out you two are!! I knew about the upcoming magazine feature, but did not know you scored a cover as well! Kudo’s to you, Karen. So Cute! And gravy? Meh. Sometimes yes please, and sometimes no thank you. I guess I really like the taste of the mashed potatoes and roast beef on their own.
Your long slender swan-like neck rocks the large high collared style of your dress. Love the simple classic print of it as well. I can’t see your shoes.
Did you shave your legs ‘n all?
I agree Cuddles would rock a set of pearls.
I want your sink. I have where you got it from bookmarked. I have always wanted a butler sink and this is the closest I have seen.
Is there any link to photos of your bathroom? Or is that next year’s project?
I do like gravy, but Thanksgiving is really the only time I have it. Mostly because I’m trying to drastically reduce the stuff I put the gravy on, from my diet. I can’t wait to see the rest of your kitchen, and I’m so happy to hear that Cuddles is better, I’ve been cheering from afar! And love your dress btw!
Love gravy–especially with mushrooms, but never that chemical mystery junk from a can. Ever. Very cute dress, which nicely complements Cuddles’ caramel colored coat. I would love to see the kitchen–the entire kitchen. Nice press!
My husband’s sister invented the term “alcogravyhol” after we had the best gravy ever one Thanksgiving. The gravy had alcohol in it, of course. It’s been served every Thanksgiving since. 🙂
I love gravy and your new kitchen, it must be a great feeling to know that YOU did it all!! So glad to know that Cuddles is doing well and your dress is awesome!! Congratulations on the magazine cover!! 🙂 I enjoy your blog and writing style….. just plain fun, thanks.
Love the kitchen (from what I can see), and your hair, dress, Cuddles and gra-vy!
See what I did there? I’m hanging in Phoenix. The heat has melted my brain.
Hi Karen,
I’m so darn happy for you! It’s been a challenging year and a half for you but you all got through it…healthy and “in style”. Your kitchen looks beautiful and so do you two chicks on the cover!
Roast without gravy is like Karen without Cuddles.
Thanks Edith! 🙂 And that actually made me guffah! ~ karen
I love gravy, love it. I make pretty great gravy, too. I have a friend who makes ham gravy, and I have to admit, I never thought of making gravy out of ham before. It’s pretty tasty. Anyway. What a great cover! You and Cuddles are looking quite glamorous… Astonishing how many changes have come your way in this past year….Some of it couldn’t have been easy, but I want to thank you for carrying on with your posts. For continuing to inspire us, so maybe we start to believe we can do stuff too. 🙂
LOL! I love gravy. Grew up eating it on sliced bread as a kid. Yum.
Congratulations on the spread. I would love to see this magazine.
Your first sentence had me going for a minute there. lol As to gravy, yes I do like it. My mom’s gravy was great, but she was one of those cooks who never measures anything. It took me years to figure out how to make decent gravy. Guess how?
I read it in a cookbook! Who woulda thought?
CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE DRESS??!! You and Cuddles look fabulous! Oh ya gravy, yum yum, blah blah, but That. Dress. I have kitchen envy too – cant wait to see more pictures. Wish I had a moment to sit and read a magazine, in peace, without kids, in a clean kitchen. 🙂 definite kitchen porn.
Fabulous photo ~ you’re going to get calls about Cuddles for modeling gigs.
I truly love gravy, but don’t enter me in the draw – I am going out to buy the magazine tomorrow!
My almost 4 year old daughter loves poutine & perogies & hopefully purple potatoes. (if they are actually under the soil in our back yard. Almost ready to dig I think)
omg – purple potato poutine.
Not a gravy lover. However, you and Cuddles are gorgeous and your kitchen looks amazing!
I love gravy…especially when it’s accompanied by french fries and cheese curds (cause I’m Canadian like that). Oh – and the slightest bit of ketchup. Yum…The other day hubs and I were at South St. Burger and as I was polishing off the last french fry and peering longingly into my half empty gravy cup, I may or may not have asked him if he’d look down on me if I drank the rest of the gravy. I’m a little ashamed…but not really. LOL!
You look absolutely FAB in the magazine feature by the way. Can’t wait to finally get to see the kitchen in print. 🙂
I love gravy!
Hey Karen, my favorite is KFC gravy. Gotta get the gravy when you go to KFC – no offense to Cuddles and her rellies. So glad she is feeling better and therefore so are you!!! August sure is a really tough month for you these past few years, kiddo, feel for you! Would love a copy of the mag so I can show all my friends since I rave about you and your blog all the time!
I don’t eat a whole lot of gravy but I do have a bargaining (potato) chip: if I win, I’ll do an in-kitchen performance for you and your friends.
Boom shacka lacka.
(It looks lovely, you and Cuddles look perfect, and I’m happy for you!)
My mother wasn’t much of a cook. She did, however, excel at making hamburger gravy and frozen lime dacquiris when she wasn’t on the golf course or pounding out “Malaguena” on the baby grand.
But I digress. In high school, my best friend Roxanne and I were fed up with our respective lots in life and, with our parents’ permission, decided to trade houses for two weeks. Roxanne’s main reason for wanting to trade was so she could eat herself sick on Mom’s hamburger gravy, served over elegant piles of ripped up white bread. As for me? Her mom made potatoes every night. Mine never did. Truly, the grass is always greener…
You and Cuddles look great– I’d love to get a copy of the magazine. (I really don’t want to ride to your house on my bike again like I did in that crazy dream so I can read it.)
Gravystory: I spent my first two years as a flight attendant flying down south just to find the best biscuits…that my pilots started introducing me as …your flight attendant today is “Biscuits” I make a killer gravy. True story..
Best gravy ever made by best brother-in-law ever, Danny Higgins. Thank goodness he learned how from his momma.(and TG my sister kept him!) Love your kitchen peeks!
Gravy, it’s the best wrinkle reducer ever. I think it’s because it fills my cubby face with fat. Ummm… gravey.
Oh right. You and Cuddles are cute. Do I win now?
PLEASE PICK ME!!! Also, I do not like gravy, but I DO have a gravy story. My husband was deployed for our first Thanksgiving together, but on our second Thanksgiving, we had a few people from his office over, plus my parents, sisters, and my sister’s then-boyfriend, now-husband. I wanted everything to be just perfect, but didn’t own a gravy boat. Because I don’t like gravy. So I went to a store in town and found a glass bowl made for salad dressing, it came with a cute little spoon and everything! So we figured out how to make the gravy, using the packet of mix and the fat from the turkey (p.s. I make my husband take care of the turkey because my family has chicken for Thanksgiving and I’ve never actually cooked a turkey myself). Then we poured the gravy into the bowl… and realized that the glass wasn’t tempered when it cracked.
We ended up serving the gravy from a regular old bowl, and I learned (not for the first time and not for the last) to not be so damn uppity. My best is more than good enough, without adding a new glass bowl in the mix!
Cuddles totally makes the picture! Unbelievable that you did all that with the kitchen, you are such a bad-buttocks lady AND you look lovely in a dress! That’s what I love about you! You’re a perfect example that a lady can look pretty, be funny and fix stuff!
I like veggie gravy; like mushroom or something like that, since I don’t eat meat. It’s good on potatoes though! I also really like your counters and can’t wait to see more!!
I LOVE gravy!
Oh, and I really dig that super hot chick holding the chicken in the midst of a GORGEOUS kitchen 😉
I like gravy.
And I am a child of the ’70s. I had four older brothers who refused to play with me, but for whom I, nevertheless, created make-believe names. There was Keith (named after the cute boy on the Partridge Family), Crush (named after my favorite drink, Orange Crush), Teeth (possibly named after a Muppets character, but I honestly don’t recall) and Gravy (of course – named after my favorite food).
Please send me a copy of Canadian Living. I live in Minnesota, but I was dropping my son off at university in Winnipeg last weekend, and had I known, I would have picked up a copy. BTW, I like making gravy from roasted turkey drippings. And lastly, that’s a darling dress you’re wearing in the photo, impeccably accessorized with Cuddles.
Love Thanksgiving gravy—pretty much the only time I make it. Don’t have a witty/folksy/warm huuggy story about it, but my birthday is in October, and the magazine wouldn’t look out of place at all in my Midwestern living room. (You thought I was going to say bathroom now, didn’t you..)
Congrats on the feature. Nice to see your hard work rewarded.
In fact I do like gravy. Fried chicken and gravy on mashed potatoes. Sorry Cuddles. You do like spectacular in that dress. You Karen, not you Cuddles. Although Cuddles does look cute in her feathers.
Congratulations, Karen!!! So proud of you & all of your hard work! I am thrilled to hear Cuddles is all better.
You girls look fantastic on the cover! I can’t wait to see the rest of your kitchen. Four corners and a cover just aren’t cutting it! I guess I’ll have to wait until you post pictures, unless you want to send me a magazine because I LOVE me some gravy! Poutine? Oh, orgasm!!! Ah, feel like I need a cigarette, now…
Yes I like gravy. But I can’t even remember the last time I had gravy.
Well I’m really bummed that I still won’t be able to see your new kitchen (I’m in the US), but the teaser picture you posted here is very nice.
I love good gravy.The best gravy story I can come up with is this. When I was a youngun’ at home my mom worked and part of my responsibilities at home was to help with the housework and start supper or if not to complicated cook dinner. I had never made gravy before I was around 11 or 12.So I decided to try to make gravy(now I had watched my mom do it plenty times before). I started in a medium size skillet with my oil and I added flour to it(never mind that it was a LOT of flour) and then proceded to add my liquid and it got thicker and thicker.By the time I was through I musta had gravy in every skillet in the kitchen and my momma had alotta of them. Needless to say everybody else in the family thought it was awfully funny.Well now that I wrote my novella I’ll close.
You and Cuddles both look gorgeous. Congrats on the feature!!
Darn, Karen, you and Cuddles and your new kitchen just look really great on that cover! I would so love to read the entire article… Problem is, about my only chance will be to win a copy because it isn’t easy to find Canadian Living up here in the wilds of Alaska. Kinda like getting gravy from grilling hot dogs.
And I DO love my gravy! I need at least a weekly dose or I become surly and withdrawn.
I”m dang good at making it too. Enough so that most times when I’m invited somewhere for a holiday all I’m asked to bring is my ‘gravy makin’ talent’. Turkey, beef roast, pork, chicken (sorry Cuddles)… I do it all. I am the Queen of Gravy if I do say so myself. Which I (immodestly) do.
Here’s my toast to you, Cuddles and your new kitchen: Salud! May you always enjoy your roost!
So… Sometimes I make gravy and eat it like soup. Seriously. It’s my way of coping with the first snowstorm or just because. I am known as the ‘gravy’ queen amongst my friends…none of them can make decent gravy. Now I want gravy….
It is 3:37 in the morning and I am UP! Why have I been up since 1:30 having gone to bed shockingly early at 11:00-because as usual I got 3 hours of sleep the night before. AnyHoo I’m thrilled to be joined @ my laptop by a whining mosquito which has had numerous yummy snacks on me-my blood-no gravy. Gawd I an now itchy all over. I love-love-love your whole take on Life and the living of it. You’re not trying to sell a “life is just peachy dandy in my neck of the woods kind of clap-trap. More, life is tough, lots of hard work,sad,glad and totally mad but ain’t it the gravy on the mashed just living it. How bout that for sneaking in a Gravy reference?
Oh- And please pweaze please could I have a copy of Canadian Living with your darling self on the cover?
Yum…gravy on mashed potatoes is the bomb.
Mmmmmm! Gravy!
No!! I don’t like gravy, think it’s a texture thing.. bad memories of it congealing (?) *blah, blech*
You look … like.. a famous person! Someone in a magazine… 😉
Very ladylike
Don’t make me drive to Canada. It’s like 2 days away! ( or an hour and 1/2 if my husband drives)
I suffered thru your 4 corners peep show! ! I need to see the full monty.
Gravy = culinary napalm.
And I do love the smell of gravy in the morning
I make my boys whatever they want to eat on their birthdays. When Stephen turned four, he wanted “shwimp, cwab and gwavy”.
My parents owned a restaurant in Northern Ontario – those customers loved her gravy so much they used to dip their pizza and chicken fingers in it.
Sausage gravy on buttermilk pancakes!!! Nothing more to be said…..
I love gravy, my family loves gravy. Gravy is a very important part of every holiday. My daughters took over the gravy making tradition from my mother so the year that I insisted that I find the cornstarch for them (gluten issues), because i knew right where it was, is the most I ever contributed to the gravy makin’, until it wouldn’t thicken. I had grabbed the powdered sugar instead of the cornstarch. This ends up being mentioned at every holiday. I am thrilled to see Cuddles perking up! I grew up with such a menagerie of pets: chickens, ducks, pheasants, peacocks, opossum, raccoon, turtles, tadpoles, kittens and dogs.
I understand the bit about the postage, but I am beyond heartbroken that this giveaway is not open for international readers – I so love living/interior magazines, especially from far away exotic lands … like Canada.
HOWEVER, in the shards and splinters of my broken heart there’s still enough love for you lo tell you how cute you look, with Cuddles and in that gorgeous dress! From what I can see, the kitchen looks great, too. I can’t wait for the big reveal on your blog! 🙂
I bow down & give my first born to whoever invented gravy! I LOOVE gravy and gravy loves me! Would it be to much to ask to make/eat/savour gravy with you & Cuddles in your gorgeous kitchen ??
I love gravy, especially with mashed potatoes.
I have a brother who loves gravy so much that at Thanksgiving he gets his own gravy boat.
Who doesn’t like gravy!?
Love it. My all time favorite comfort food is a big blob of mashed potatoes with beef gravy. Yum.
Cute dress too.
You and cuddles look amazing! I can’t wait to see the renovation pictures! My father in law makes the worlds best gravy. But he won’t share his secret and when he comes to thanksgiving, he brings a “jar of deliciousness” that he adds to the crap left over after the turkey cooks. I have no idea what’s in that damn jar …
Gravy, yes, please. Beef gravy, pork gravy, ham gravy, chicken gravy (sorry, Cuddles), turkey gravy. The only gravy I won’t eat is veal gravy ’cause I DO have a conscious.
You and Cuddles look lovely in the feature photo. I love the dress.
gravy is gross
Yep, I like gravy, but it must be fresh and hot. No leftover gravy for me. And, gravy. What a weird word!
Goopy, Rich And Very Yummy. See what I did there? 😉
Yes I like gravy. And here’s a great gravy story. My stepmother made gravy for s family dinner and my sister and I sitting side by side is a recipe for giggling. So mashed potatoes meet gravy but the gravy had these lumps in it. Mystery lumps I don’t remember grandma’s every having lumps. And these were huge lumps like marble to small meatball lumps. So I leaned towards my sister and said I’m going to cut into this lump to see what it was. I break it in half and there is a small flour explosion on my plate. Let the giggling commence.
My ma’s gravy was the best I’ve ever tasted. I wish I would have learned how she did it…….miss you Mom……love you!
Love, love, love gravy. When I was little I would not get up from the table until I finished all the gravy in the bowl. I would rather have good old gravy and biscuits than just about anything.
Thank you for the opportunity to win the Canadian Living magazine. I have always wanted to visit Canada.
Congratulations! So glad to hear Cuddles is doing well.
I have no gravy story but one time I forgot to serve the Yorkshire puddings remembering around 2 am that they were still in the oven (oven was off) – hubby had a good middle of the night snack!
I love gravy! And I love your blog, Karen! I want to see all those beautiful pictures of your kitchen!!
Love gravy, but until last Thanksgiving have never managed to make my own that was fit to eat (in my opinion). Why is it so freaking hard?! Now all I have to do this year is duplicate it … yeah right.
Um duh I LOVE gravy! White gravy. Chicken Fried Steak and white pepper gravy with mashed potatoes and green beans. I don’t eat green beans unless they are covered in gravy.
There was/is a restaurant in Austin, TX called Dirty’s that served Chicken Fried Steak and Green Gravy. Don’t judge…it was coma inducing! Nothing better than a gravy coma.
I can’t believe it’s been a year! Congratulations on the release! I hope I win because I have been dying to see it, but if not do you think we could get it online?
I even like the famous hippy Wavy Gravy because he obviously must be awesome. Mmmm….graavy.
My husband’s family all grew up loving chocolate gravy. I however, never developed a taste for it. But I do love a good turkey gravy at Thanksgiving!
Country gravy is a thing of beauty! And probably heart disease, but definitely beauty!
I love Gravy – I live in Quebec darn it, it is legally required for residents to like gravy on their potatoes…so yes, I love a good poutine….
Well, I don’t like grave as a matter of fact, but I do love new kitchens. I just completed my own kitchen project, I painted all my cabinets. I still haven’t forgotten the pain, but I do love the results.
Dang, now I feel like my comments about how that shot is absolute perfection with stunning you, in that dress, gorgeous cuddles, the brass pulls and the greenery are going to seem disingenuous, but I swear they are not. SWOON! I am from the south, of course I love gravy! Because I am from the south, I would LOVE to win a copy of your magazine feature! Congratulations on a beautiful space!
OK, seems like I’m late in commenting but.. You and cuddles look fantastic and what doesn’t taste better with gravy except maybe icecream
Oh ! Gravy !!! I’m Such a Dunker !!!
I like my food Swimming in Gravy…
(If I was Thinner, I’d wear my Bikini !!! NOT !!!!)
So Much Gravy, it’s like Soup !!! Turkey Soup, Chicken Soup (Sorry Cuddles !), Meat Loaf Soup, Stuffed Pepper Soup, etc. ad nausium !!!
BTW…Nice choice of your dress…Black and White to match your “New” Kitchen. And Cuddles adds just the Right Amount of Pop of Color !!! PERFECT !!!
Gravy. I had to smile when you mentioned gravy. It reminded me of my Mum. She loved gravy. And she was a picky eater! When we moved from Pa to NC she found that southern cooking had gravy for all kinds of things. Like grits. Ick. I like gravy but my Mum loved it. Thanks for making me smile today. Yesterday had been her birthday she has missed 11 of them now. Hope to see your new kitchen! Love the cover! Thanks again.
My husband and I have been together since 1986. I am not in my 70’s but a very young 45. He would come to our house for dinner a lot when we were dating. My mom is an amazing cook and baker. My husband ( then boyfriend ) would always complain how stuffed he was and miserable he felt because he ate so much after he ate at our house. He really loved my moms creamed corn. (I know you asked about gravy, I promise I am getting there.) I wanted to make the corn for him one summer night so I called her up and she told me how to do it! He could smell what he thought was bacon and walked into the kitchen and asked what I was doing- I simply replied “frying fatback.” Then I had to tell him what fat back is … he was soooo grossed out. Which lead to another conversation regarding gravy. Milk gravy at that. “Its just the southern way” I told him……..he has never eaten gravy or creamed corn again. that was about 20 some years ago…… I cannot say the same- you ever tried a fried fatback biscuit with yellow mustard ? yummmmmmm
My grandma always sliced, then boiled just a little, the true salted pork fatback that used to be sold. Then she would bread it and fry it – fried fat! It was SOOOOOO good eaten in her biscuits with homemade fig or strawberry jam. Tried to make it but can’t find the salted fatback of olden days. So sad for your husband!
Sadly, I’ve never been a huge fan of gravy. But don’t vilify me–pity me! My mom was a biochemist, not a cook. So, my earliest experiences with gravy weren’t the stuff of dreams. Unless you dream of gelatinous goo oozing over your boxed potato flakes. *sigh*. I can make good gravy, now that I’ve learned to cook well, but I don’t tend to even think about because of those early experiences.
Love the kitchen! And cuddles. And of course gravy. Can’t wait to see the full spread in my new magazine :-). Why are you Canadians so mean as to not sell them here (US)?? (I fully expect you to say ‘sorry’ lol!)
Hahaha! Sorry, Shannon.
As an adult, I don’t eat much gravy (all those calories… I need to use those for wine drinking). But like another commenter, my Mom was the gravy queen, with both chicken and Salisbury steak gravy plate licking good. In fact, I wouldn’t put them on potatoes, I’d just eat them straight up. Ah, those were the days. Love your dress and can’t wait for the big reveal.
Karen, you look ab fab in that cover picture. When do we get to see the whole shebang?
Sausage gravy with biscuits gets my vote.
Congrats on this well deserved honor/publicity,
Rosie, Sugar Hill, GA
I love gravy! Especially on garlic mashed potatoes and French fries!
Can’t wait to see your kitchen!!
I love gravy! Brown gravy, turkey gravy, country gravy with lots of black pepper, red eye gravy, that gravy that comes with egg foo young….
I like gravy! My mom used to make the gravy and then say to me ‘stir and stir and stir and don’t stop until you’re dead!’ that is a lot of stirring…she passed and nobody knew how to actually make it…but we did know it took lots of stirring!
LOVE you and Cuddles’ cover shot! so glad she lived to see her fame.
Kitchen is awesome…can’t decide what I love best. maybe the floor maybe the sink. I can imagine the joy when you walk in and know it is yours!
I would love a magazine!!
have a great day! j
It was just YESTERDAY I was sitting here with my coffee, just clicking on your blog, in Pennsylvania, wondering WHEN are we going to be able to see this kitchen! Besides your yearly updates on your veg garden the kitchen has been the thing I’ve anticipated the most. My kitchen was designed for Hobbits so I have huge kitchen envy. Someday a new one will happen…..
Anyway, GRAVY! I love gravy (particularly with mashed potatoes) so much that we had a mashed potato bar at our wedding. THREE kinds of gravy! Just the other night my husband picked up some dinner from Wegmans (do you have Weggies in Canada?) and knows me so well he got me mashed potatoes and gravy. I love gravy. Gravy is the best thing about Thanksgiving!
So I beg you, lovely Karen, please don’t make this poor Pennsylvanian wait another month to see your fab new kitchen. Did I mention how pretty you are?
Turkey and gravy, yum. Or a hot turkey sandwich with gravy
The kitchen looks great, by the way!
I like gravy and I have a gravy confession. Every year at Thanksgiving I get compliments on my turkey gravy. Lots of compliments. But…I use the packets, the ones you add water to. I use the drippings in the pan instead of water. Now that I’ve come clean about the gravy, I feel better.
You look happy in your new kitchen and Cuddles is now a star!
Gravy, gravy, in a pan
Oh, heck YES (!) I am a fan.
Slop it on some bread or meat
Howly cow….now, there’s a treat!
Kitchen looks so mighty fine,
You and Cuddles …… quite sublime!
Can’t wait to see the “big reveal”….
Karen, you’re the bomb…..for real!!!!!
oops…type-o. should be HOLY cow, now howly cow. Bother!
Love gravy! Once went to a restaurant that had Fanny Gravy on the menu. Did not order it. Thus preserving my fondness for gravy.
First, I am so glad that Cuddles is OK! Second, I LOVE GRAVY! I’m from Georgia. I don’t think you can be from the South and not like gravy because it pretty much on everything. Biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast, fried chicken with gravy for lunch, pot roast and mashed potatoes with gravy for dinner, and for dessert a big bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce (which might as well be gravy). Now I live in Virginia. They don’t do gravy. I MISS GRAVY!
Any chicken named Cuddles HAS to be adorable!
I love your dress!!
Gravy…I only recently learned there are more ways to make gravy than the way I only ever made it (because it is how my Gram made it: pan drippings, broth if I need more liquid, flour mixed with water {shaken in a jar to avoid lumps} and a slosh of potato water). But now, if I don’t have a lot of pan drippings I know can add a pat of butter and use milk to make an amazingingly silky gravy. Gravy that had me asking everyone I know how they make their gravy in the event there is yet another miraculous way to make gravy.
So, yes. I like gravy!
I also like magazines. A LOT. I currently subscribe to 11 of them and pick up a few others from time to time. I have never seen Canadian Living on our newsstands or I probably would have picked it up once in a while.
I look forward to the kitchen reveal.
Hate gravy. I’d rather taste what I am eating than a mouthful of extra calories.
Pass the cake, please.
As a true Southerner, I love gravy. Especially for breakfast – sausage gravy on biscuits. Mmmmm.
Gravy is the only thing I do well in the kitchen. I have a Tupperware “gravy shaker” that I’ve had for a hundred years. You put water and flour in it, shake the crap out of it and add it to your pan of drippings. It removes all lumps to make the smoothest gravy ever.
My dad taught me how to make gravy…..canned gravy will NEVER touch my lips.
You really do look fab!
Gravy? Why yes. Haven’t eaten it in a long time though. It’s not on the low-carb diet. My favorite way to eat gravy? Butter a slice of white bread, slap it on a plate, and cover it with gravy. It’s a heart attack on a plate, but the ultimate in comfort food.
You, Karen, are the icing on the gravy!
And since I have no plans to visit TO in the next little while to pick up some BISTO to help out my gravy, a little Cdn Living would suffice for my Canadian content for a while. Back to the kitchen…what is the feminine counterpart to Gentleman Farmer? That would be you! Love the picture…would it be weird to print it and pin on my faux bulletin board? You and your kitchen are in my colors! Can’t wait to see the rest. I would like to be you when I grow up…there are a few problems with that, though, so that’s for another comment someday! (my problems…not yours!)
Wow- reply no. 101!! I guess I’ll have to wait till I go to Canada in December – I’ll have to order a back copy to see your issue! Lovely cover with you and Cuddles! Sorry, hate gravy and basically any meat sauces! I’m the only one in my family – every else loves gravy, but don’t want to eat it, sooooo don’t want to make it!
I like gravy. And I like Cuddles. And, I like the picture of you in your pretty, New kitchen with Cuddles.
Hate gravy (I know admitting this pretty much guarantees I won’t win but I cannot … Gravy…nope) I can say that the kitchen looks so fresh and so do you. Congrats on you making the cover and not just your kitchen. Love you and your Canadians chickens – from Alabama!
Love the pic of you and Cuddles and can’t wait to see the entire kitchen. I do like gravy….think I like making it better than eating it. Learned to make chocolate gravy in early marriage. Hope I win a magazine!
If I saw this cover on a magazine stand I WOULD BUY IT even if not planning a kitchen renovation. Not only do you look adorable in that cute black and white dress, but cuddles looks adorable sitting in your lap which is what would draw me in, instantly! Then of course the kitchen looks sparkly clean, historically modern, and just waiting for a great meal to be prepared and eaten. I love gravy and it loves me – which is why I look the way I do. I eat and then watch you do all the work to get rid of back fat which doesn’t work as I still have it. True congrats to a true hard working woman.
I forgot to mention that leftover turkey gravy over buttermilk pancakes is absolutely weird but delicious. Can’t even remember how we figured this out but I save some Thanksgiving gravy every year for that special next morning treat.
I love gravy and I’m loving the teaser photo! Your dress is so pretty, and I wish Cuddles was wearing a mini matching one.
Want! We too survived a full-assault kitchen remodel. It’s been 2 years and I hardly remember that time we had to spend 3 nights at the La Quinta Inn with our cat while they sprayed our cabinets.
Nope, not if it is made out of people like Cuddles.
I do like a vegetarian version made with sauteed onions and mushrooms, with a little nutritional yeast and tamari sauce – that is super yummy! I like that type of gravy drizzled over brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes and a nice nut lentil roast with some cranberry sauce…..drool!
Gravy is disgusting. I NEED to see more. Gimme!
I love seeing your smiling face (I really do) but what I really love is seeing Cuddles. Now that she is feeling better I can see how it would have been awful for you to see your kitchen debut in the Canadian Living magazine if she wasn’t up to snuff.
Yes, I like gravy (at Christmas), but now I have to make it gluten-free.
And my gravy story takes you back to my childhood when my dad served us kids up some chocolate ice cream. We refused to eat it, and my mom discovered why – it was frozen gravy!
who DOESN’T live gravy?? When I was young and newly married I tried to make gravy. Easy right? My mom a great cook made gravy with her eyes closed, my MIL a fabulous cook made gravy smoking a cigarette and holding a baby… but me? every time, EVERY time I made it you could stand a fork up in it…. NOT.GOOD. Finally I got my trusty red covered Betty Crocker cookbook out and followed the directions for pan gravy. So Simple. So good. Now I can make gravy and hold a baby (without the cigarette).
BTW You look Fabulous.
Like porn in a kitchen.
Love the dress and love Cuddles.
Yes, I love gravy. I volunteer at the local American Legion, and we get the powdered stuff in a big pouch. Typically for meatloaf ( which I do make by hand) . Everyone loves it and it only takes a minute!
PAge 85 baby! I’m just sitting down to read it. Got my copy in the mail yesterday. First impression – gorgeous!! That also includes you and is that Cuddles?
Well, when I enlisted little did I expect to be hangin’ on by my toenails to hold on to my cookies way down in some stinkin’ galley with a bunch of 20 somethin’ acne-plagued losers…OH, wait did you say “gravy”? I thought you said “navy”…Oy, am I red faced….oh well, I’ll savor my “Wavy Navy Gravy”recipe for another time and venue. I’m just real jealous Ikea didn’t have such way cool kitchen sinks and more when I did my kitchen redo 15 years ago.
Yum, gravy. You look terrific and I love your dress.
My mom made decent, but lumpy, gravy. I make good smooth gravy, (hellooooo sieve! Really mom?)
I too tore out my kitchen last winter and rebuilt 99% back myself, went through the hell of walls down, plaster dust, counters ripped out etc etc etc…. I too walk in every morning and smile and it seems like my cooking is a notch better just because I love my kitchen so.
If I can’t have the mag, (which I really want!) could you maybe just do up some of those photos, glossies with signatures of you and Cuddles? I would proudly display on my refrigerator!
No to the whole gravy thing. But, you and cuddles look great. My renovation stopped at adding an island. All my extra dishes are in the basement, and the old country kitchen, circa 1929, will be staying. Unless I ruin the floor. Then, I see your timeline of events going into th same downward spiral.
I like brown gravy–the kind that you make from a Sunday roast and is served in a dollop of mashed potatos with a well in the middle! I grew up in Midwest Ohio, moved to Kentucky to attend college…my gravy memory is going on a day trip with my boyfriend, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast and the girlfriend ordered sausage gravy over biscuits and a Pepsi! I’m not sure what words can convey my astonishment 😉 yuck.
Love love love gravy. Except with chicken (don’t tell cuddles i eat chicken, she’ll be upset and she just got over her chicken fever so we want her happy because she’s so adorable and i’m sure she’s one of the smartest chickens ever. Have you had her checked? No dont do that because then they will want to do testing and probing on her to figure out why she’s so smart and how they can make other chickens smart too, then we will have chickens running our country’s and really who wants that.
Did i tell you I love gravy?
I’m not entering your contest.. cause I live in NS and can buy my own. I just wanted to let you know how awesome your little peek of the kitchen looks and that gorgeous dress that you have on. I was also thrilled to see Cuddles in your arms. What a star. You look stunning Karen and happy. It’s nice to see you looking so good after a rough year or so…. it’s hard to believe any four letter words could come out of that sweet mouth.. lol Congratulations. 🙂
My husband (of 41 years) is very partial to the “family” biscuits and gravy! I’d never made it before so decided that getting his mom to share her skills and special recipe with me would be a really nice extra surprise for my guy. It certainly has been well worth learning, especially now that “mom” is no longer with us…but her love goes into every one of those meals.
AND you certainly clean up nicely! Love that crisp black and white dress…and Cuddles is the perfect accessory. Can’t wait to see the magazine pictures once you can show them.
Life gives us gifts. Some people have great legs or awesome hair or intelligence that is Mensa-esque. My gift is making gravy. Family members are in awe, love my gift and have given me the mantra of Gravy Queen. It is a crown I wear proudly while enjoying gravy on mashed potatoes made by my Dad, the Spud King!
First of all, you and Cuddles are adorable in your new, fabulous kitchen! Secondly, I love gravy but only on certain things. Not on my turkey, thank you. I want to taste the turkey, not the gravy. However, biscuits and gravy? Pile it on!
Gravy! Gravy! Gravy! I love most things that are full of fat and comfort. I also adore your dress and Cuddles!
Yes, gravy is delish especially on mashed potatos. I have a confession to make. After seeing your new refrigerator (a true refrigerator), I’m absolutely obsessed with it. Whenever iy comes time for me to Reno my kitchen, it will be the first item I’ll buy. Probably the only item, but I’m okay with that!
Gravy only belongs on poutine, and then it is wondrous.
You kitchen is nothing short of magnificent! I and my doldrum kitchen are jealous.
I am so happy that Cuddles is okay, I think most people here feel attached to your working pets and I think we can all day how relieved we are for both you and Cuddles.
I would really like to win a magazine! Winner winner the new kitchen is in-er!
I was always the official gravy whisk-er at our house. My sister is skilled in the art of disappearing during food prep and reappearing when it’s time to eat, haha.
Now I make gravy (for just me and my husband, so not super often) and do it pretty well, I think.
Love love love gravy…with a biscuit, of course. Karen, the new kitchen is beautiful….and so are you and Cuddles. The cover is outstanding!
I love gravy! Biscuits and gravy for me. And you look as beautiful as your kitchen does on the cover.
I also partake in gravy enthusiasm.
I love gravy. Way more than whatever it’s supposed to be poured upon. Sometimes I eat it on bread, like an open-faced gravy sandwich.
I love your dress, too.
Love gravy more.
Gravy = eh
Kitchen = awesome! Love the shades and black framed window!
I, too, had to give up my dream of an apron front sink when we did our cottage kitchen reno last year. The kitchen results were still spectacular compared to the old 80’s cream cabinets with the oak “rail” at the bottom that were the handles. (You know what I mean: same style everyone had in the 80’s/90’s)
Your kitchen looks fabulous! You have a great sense of style. I can’t wait until I can download my digital copy of this (next) month’s issue.
As for gravy – well if you are Canadian how can you not like poutine? But I must confess I have an awesome CHEATER gravy recipe. Yes, yes, everyone else here is talking about making it from scratch and yes, if it’s turkey dinner or roast beef it must be made from scratch BUT when I have leftover beef or pork I like to make a dish with “gravy” and serve it with noodles or mashed potatoes. I saute the meat briefly (maybe some onions, peppers, mushrooms…oh and definitely GARLIC) and then add a package of onion soup mix & maybe a cup or 2 of water and let that simmer (don’t make soup) when it has rendered a bit I add a can of mushroom soup concentrate (low sodium one if I can find it). I have to tell you: onion soup mix & mushroom soup mix – match made in heaven.
And to make a long comment even longer…..so glad that Cuddles is around to see her magazine debut. That picture is perfect! You both look stunning.
Who doesn’t love gravy? Love the photo!
Well, really who doesn’t like gravy! I’d eat gravy on ice cream, along with onions I stole from your garden, well I would steal a lot of other things from your garden while I was there, and then I would go to your chicken coop and steal chicken poop for my garden, with your permission of course…and then I would feel bad but you would say, “it’s all good Betty, would you like a pizza?” And I would say how much I would like that..and we would eat pizza and drink wine then we would go down the road and find an old chair somebody was throwing away and bring it back to your house and have some more wine and then we would figure a way to reupholster that old chair and make it look new and have some more wine and just sit there and marvel over what a great job we did, And Chuckles of course would be sitting on your lap wondering when the hell I was leaving. What was the question?
Chuckles is your new chicken I bought as a gift. Forgot to mention that!
Anyone who doesn’t like gravy is nuts, but not in a good way. I once bit into a pearl inside a big plate of oyster dressing, which was covered, coincidentally, in gravy. I think my broken tooth qualifies me for a chance at one of the magazines, don’t you?
Love the look of the kitchen in the magazine photo. I will let some poor southern neighbour have a chance to win by not competing in the bid for the 10 magazines and instead just go buy the copy myself. Finally a bonus on the internet to be Canadian. Great job Karen!
The picture of you and Cuddles made me smile. So glad Cuddles is feeling better and you could enjoy this moment. As far as gravy goes….I could wallow in it!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE gravy! However, since finding out that gluten and my digestive system are mortal enemies, I have not had gravy for a long time. And that makes me really really sad.
What would cheer me up is a copy of Canadian Living!!!
Actually, I’m going to retract my entry… I am able to buy the magazine since I am in Canada so I think the people that can’t should have more of a chance!
I don’t have a gravy story, but I like gravy. A lot. So excited to finally see your kitchen. I loved your video on the magic that is your new faucet.
I loved the four corners of your kitchen blog posts. I love gravy too. I always wanted to try red-eye gravy, but was a bit afraid. Even though my family calls it sauce, sunday gravy is the best. It would be great fun to make it in your kitchen. I, too, as many of your readers enjoy all kinds of gravy. I am the worst gravy maker of all times, just ask my husband. My mother is the best, but she doesn’t want to cook anymore (she’s in her 70s).
Gravy, cheese, onions and/or garlic make most anything better. Well, maybe not Strawberry Shortcake.
How kind of Cuddles to allow you to share her cover.
I would love a copy of Canadian Living!
Yep–a lake of gravy in a hollowed out mound of mashed potatoes!!! BTW ~~ that IKEA sink~~the 36″, double apron front one~~set to arrive at our place next week. We are building a studio/classroom for our businesses. (My floral design & my husband’s shooting sports school) what a combo, huh?? And while that’s going on, our son will be getting married in a few weeks. So while not “living” in a build, we live through one. Don’t have to tell you about that!! Hope to see the magizine heading to NC!!!
No gravy. Dislike the entire concept of gravy.
DO, however love new kitchens & kitchen remodels ~
Cannot wait to see yours!
This is so exciting! Great cover photo! Can’t wait to see the whole article and how it all turned out. Since I’m in Nashville I’d love to win a copy!
I’m not a big gravy fan, but after seeing all these comments I think I’m missing out and need to try some different kinds…
Gravy makes most things infinitely better. We have a restaurant here in Omaha, Nebraska that serves some of the best gravy fries. Though I think they are now topped by a restaurant in Davenport, IA that serves Chorizo Gravy Fries! Yum!!!!
Gravy is good. Heck, gravy is great, but that dress you are wearing is sensational! You and the bird look amazing!
You and Cuddles and the kitchen are gorgeous! I really want to gut and redo my bathroom, the only full bath in my little townhouse, but the thought of doing without a shower during construction is holding me back. I hope your re-do can inspire me to get moving on this.
I like gravy on Thanksgiving turkey, and left-over Thanksgiving turkey, and hot turkey sandwiches, yum!
I wish I could make good cream gravy!
I’m not a huge fan of gravy, actually. My thanksgiving turkey topper of choice is cranberry sauce. Cant wait to see the kitchen!
I worked with a friend who was the best cook I ever knew, and she made amazing sausage gravy. Once in a blue moon a group of us would go out for breakfast. Though I tried to talk her out of it, my friend would always order sausage gravy and biscuits, then make a comment or two about hers vs theirs. Drove me crazy! She is gone now and I miss her so much. We all loved her sausage gravy. And her.
I don’t need the magazine, since I’m in Calgary. Finally, somebody mentioned hamburger gravy! I love hamburger and gravy over potatoes (?bread?)! Easy enough to do with a can of mushroom soup! My mom used to make it with flour and water, but the soup is much easier!
I think Canadian Living is where I found you first (last year, or maybe the year before, when they did a spread on your Xmas decorations). It was some CDN mag.
Looking forward to seeing the reno!
Yes. I love gravy. when my youngest son was 6 (9 years ago) he asked me what my favorite word was. He said his was “gravy” because it means a little bit extra added to something already wonderful. And not just food. Ever since, we have a chalkboard in our kitchen where we post our favorite words. “Gravy” remains #1. On a list of 15.
Biscuits & gravy? Mashed potatoes & gravy? Gravy on everything at Thanksgiving? Yes, yes, & yes. But I don’t eat gravy on a regular basis. Since it hasn’t been declared a healthy, low calorie food yet. 🙁 And I’ve never made it enough to get really good at it. But anyway, I have a serious case of kitchen envy! Mine is in desperate need of a remodel! I think my cabinets are the original 1930’s version. Which is kinda cool, kinda not. My counter top, sink & faucet? Definitely not cool. Also, I LOVE your dress. Love.
I love gravy! Even suffer through Amerca’s Test Kitchen’s crazy Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy recipe, in which I cut my hand so bad I needed stitches. But it was Thanksgiving morning and I had lots to do, so I bandaged my hand up and covered it with a rubber glove so I wouldn’t bleed on the food. The gravy is worth it.
Best part of entry is that Cuddles is recovering.
I would love to see the Canadian Living since I am in the US Southwest (New Mexico – slogan: It’s not new and it’s not Mexico)
I love gravy, particularly my Mom’s Thanksgiving gravy. I’ve tried making it like she does – taking the turkey out of the roasting pan, putting the entire pan on the stove top, adding water, flour, etc. Somehow, it always comes out lumpy. Anyway, you and Cuddles look beautiful!! But you always look great. I’m so glad Cuddles came through and, hopefully, you can be a little less stressed. I can’t wait to see the entire kitchen and hope I can read the article too.
Gravy good, but making gravy sucks.
Hey, forgot to congratulate you on the article, and your sparkly new kitchen! I live in Ohio and have had no success in trying to find a way to buy a Canadian Living mag w/o subscribing! (I never win anything!) Will keep trying to get the Oct. issue. Happy kitchen!
Yes, I love my momma’s gravy. Know what else I love? Your dress in the picture. Know what I love the most?
This – “I’ll tell you how it happened. I’m like you, you’re like me, we’re all nuts. And that’s O.K. That’s how it goes in this world and the people who aren’t nuts are boring.”
Thanks for showing us ‘nuts’ we’re not alone, and encouraging us to live awesome, brave lives!
You look gorgeous on the cover with Cuddles. I have never prayed for a chicken before Cuddles. I would love to win the magazine and study all you did in your kitchen. I like gravy, but love reading your blog.
Awesome kitchen for an awesome person!
On the gravy front…I HATE gravy! Then, while researching curry recipes, I discovered that Indians refer to curry sauces as gravies. I LOVE gravy?!?!
I love gravy so much! For a short while in college I decided to become a vegetarian. I didn’t really know much about cooking, but I decided I could make a vegetarian Thanksgiving since I usually just ate copious amounts of side dishes anyway. I had everything figured out except the gravy, so I decided I would just get some vegetable stock screaming hot and thicken it with some flour…. that should do it. Well, as you can imagine it clumped horribly, so my brilliant plan to fix it was to just put it all in the blender, only I didn’t quite have the lid on and it blasted molten hot veggie gravy all over myself and my kitchen. I was blistered, my kitchen was a mess, but the Green Bean Casserole sure was tasty.
Gravy….um NO! I have consistency issues so liquid fat is definitely on my “not in my mouth” list. I would however love to see your kitchen. Please have Cuddles autograph my copy, thanks.
MMMMM graaaaaavy…gravy allows for poutines, which are maybe one of the most delicious foods ever!
I like gravy.
Gravy Love. When a Minnesota girl meets her Canadian hubby and is introduced to Poutine. Oh.. the gravy goodness!
Oh yeah, I’m a card carrying American gravy lover! I grew up on a farm and learn to cook meals at the age of 8 because my parents worked in town. Many a night we had ‘sh!t on shingles’ (gravy on biscuits) as my step-father called it.
I love your kitchen and since I can’t buy the magazine, I would love to have one… I also have to say, you do clean up nicely!
My sister the chef sez “You can call it gravy, but I like to charge ten dollars more and call it sauce.”
I live in a beautiful state (New Mexico), I have 4 great, healthy kids, a great guy I somehow had the sense to marry thirty years ago (in spite of my previous, terrible boyfriend-picking patterns), a cool house, etc. Honestly, I am grateful that I have everything I absolutely need. The rest is, well…
GRAVY!!!
You and Cuddles are 2 fine women!
You’re too sexy for your kitchen, too sexy for your kitchen, too sexy. Cuddles too. So happy to get a peek of the magazine. Love me some gravy. Sausage gravy, roast gravy, ham gravy, green pea gravy, and our family’s version–green bean gravy. No tuna though; that’s just gross. You have made my day yet again with your humor and wit. You and your readers are the best!
1) Gravy, oh gravy… how I love it. I love it so much that when I was a vegetarian for 14 years, I figured out how to make a very respectable gravy (to serve over mashed potatoes, etc.) that most people cannot distinguish from gravy made with meat drippings/meat-based stock. *I* can tell, so I was a bit surprised other people couldn’t, but that was before I was tested and found out that I’m one o’ them supertasters.
2) But enough about me and gravy. Your website is wonderful, informative, beautiful, and sometimes makes me laugh until I cry. Of *course* I’m dying to see your kitchen. Of *course* I hope to win one of the copies of Canadian Living. I would try to find it to buy it, but I’m not working these days, so it’s not something I can do right now.
3) One more thing about gravy: country gravy (the peppery kind that’s made with cream and bacon grease) is the best thing to serve with fried pickles. A deep-fried dill pickle dipped in properly-made country gravy is a thing of beauty.
That’s a very glamorous picture of you, Karen. Um, excuse me, of you AND Cuddles.
I know exactly what you mean by cursing – my own kitchen reno is in full swing right night. I was ripping out the old floor till midnight last night. Fortunately, I still have access to my bathroom so the bucket is not necessary. I am sweating buckets and I shower at least 2x a day.
My favorite gravy has got to be white gravy made from the fried chicken pan leavings. A dollop of mashed potatoes topped with corn, then covered in that delicious gravy. Add more black pepper and dig in! The only thing prettier is my 3-months-old granddaughter and, of course, that photo of you and Cuddles perched atop your counters. You both clean up real good!
I am not good at waiting for stuff! So I went to the App Store, and yes, there is an Canadian Living App. That is free, but it is $2.99 for the October issue. Well worth it for your non- Canadian readers!! Excuse me while I drool over your kitchen pictures 🙂 ( And, yes, there is a turkey on the cover—but Cuddles and Karen are inside!)
Gravy is groovy.
I love gravy! Especially on some biscuits or grits. And I loved that post on your kitchen sink faucet, so I can’t wait to see more pictures of the rest of it!
Cuddles! We love you and are so glad you are better. And since I’m in Texas and unlikely to encounter Canadian Living at my local grocery store, I’d love to win a copy. Congrats on completing the remodel!
Love some good gravy!
Great photo!
I love homemade gravy.
My gravy story: The first time I hosted Thanksgiving I put the turkey in one of those bags and set it on a jelly roll sheet pan and put it in my wall oven. The house we were renting as newlyweds was built in the late 1800’s and the wall oven that was probably installed in the early 1960’s was rather small. I left the house to do a couple errands and when I got back the turkey juice had escaped the baking bag and ran all over the bottom of the oven, down the front of the cabinet, into the lower cabinet, and then all over the kitchen floor. The really frustrating part was that I didn’t have anything left to make gravy with!
Woohoo!!! I won’t even begin to describe how embarrassingly excited I got scrolling through FB this morning (part of my daily morning routine at work…) when I saw your post!!! You look amazing in that cover, as does Cuddles, of course. Congratulations!!!
Also, about gravy, I have to say that I love pretty much all gravy. But my all-time favorite is my mom’s homemade giblet gravy she always serves with her homemade buttermilk biscuits every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas (and any other special gathering where she bakes a turkey…). And yes, that giblet gravy does in fact have chicken livers in it 😉
I utterly despise gravy… not that it matters, since I live in JA… Ha!
Love, love, love that dress though. Cuddles is a gem… oh, and you too. 😀
I like gravy and I’d like to see your kitchen. This last weekend I was in a somewhat rural area and we went out for breakfast. I know that it is risky to order eggs benedict in such a small town but the server says she serves a lot of it so I thought what the heck, I’m a gonna order the eggs benedict. I was astonished to find that they poured gravy over the eggs and not hollandaise sauce. Actually it grossed me out. I like gravy but with eggs I prefer the white pepper gravy. The server informed me that that is how they serve it in this little town. I didn’t argue that the menu specifically said hollandaise, I just ordered something else. Ick. I just shivered thinking about it again. Anyway, so that’s my gravy story. I really want to read about your kitchen story!
I love gravy almost as much as your new kitchen. I am dying for the entire reveal.
But I’m canadian so my gravy has to be brown and made with roast drippings. I don’t have a good gravy story but I still recall my mom and aunt’s gravy rivalry. My mom’s gravy, while tasty, was always too light (her roast beef gravy was nearly the colour of chicken gravy), my aunt looked rich and lovely but tasted like earwax (don’t know how she managed that feat). I would take my mom’s anemic gravy over my aunt’s anyday.
Looking forward to the whole kitchen, featuring Cuddles.
I was born & raised in Canada, have lived in California for 16 years – do you have any idea how hard it is to find fries with gravy here? I have to order fries with a side of gravy & dump it on the fries myself and I still get the strangest looks from waiters & other diners. Forget about my beloved vinegar, they use it for cleaning here. Fries with gravy AND vinegar, ohh how I miss that! I do have friends that replenish my Swiss chalet gravy supply for me. Why the hell isn’t Swiss chalet here?!
We share a birthday Karen, yup, I was born on December 12th too so you really should choose me 😉
Awesome kitchen!
Although I’m an American and am back in the (southern!) States now, I grew up in Oshawa and carry the accent as a badge of honor. Or honour as it were. With that said, I’ll trade you one “Canadian Living” for one slightly used copy of “Southern Living.” What a deal, eh?
I love Gravy! specifically over chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes 🙂
Love gravy…all kinds! You two ‘chicks’ look great! Someday I want to reno a kitchen…someday. Yours looks (from what we’ve seen) pretty great….congrats!
I like gravy but only on mashed potatoes. But I love remodelling. I did a kitchen remodel that turned into a kitchen, dining room bath remodel. I lived in the basement for 7 LONG months with my 2 cats. I had a bed and bath in the basement and some days heard men walking outside my bathroom door as I showered. Would I do it again? Oh yeh.
I don’t like gravy – hope that doesn’t take me out of the running. I do love the pic of you and Cuddles! Your dress is to die, you look super cute & the little bit we can see of your kitchen looks awesome. Can’t wait to see the whole thing – in the magazine hopefully – lol. On another note, I do want to tell you that I took your advice and started watching The Mindy Project and I am obsessed – OB-SESSED!!! I watched season 1 in two days and now started season 2. Thanks Karen!!
Great cover photo if you, Cuddles & the kitchen!!
I like gravy. I grew up in an Italian American family who called tomato sauce “gravy”. Imagine my confusion as a kid having dinner at my friend’s house when they are serving some meat dish and ask if I want gravy on it.
It took years of therapy and reconditioning to stop calling tomato sauce “gravy@. 😉
Good gravy – we all want a copy of that mag! You and Cuddles look adorable. And to think that under all that feminine sweetness you have muscles of iron! I think gravy – good gravy is just the best on home made mashed potatoes, and those wonderful sweet carrots in pot roast. Yumm-ee. I have no gravy stories, but I do have a question – where did the expression “good gravy” come from?
Loooooove the dress!!! Where did you get it?
PS: Love the kitchen, too. It’s gravy. 🙂
My mom was from the South and made THE best gravy ever. I know how to make it, but I’m gluten intolerant. Sad face. You and Cuddles are both adorable! Can’t wait to see the kitchen!
YES to gravy!
So happy Cuddles has recovered and, my! doesn’t she look lovely against your lovely B&W print dress.
I have been spanked over gravy. You two beautiful hens sure glam up a picture!
I only live 15 minutes away, can I just come over and see the kitchen in person (in a non-stalker’ish way of course!) and you can cook me a lovely supper??? Kidding!!! I don’t need a copy of Canadian Living, I already have a subscription so I’m all tingle’ly with excitement!
I do love gravy though. My ex sister-in-law was always in charge of the gravy making for family dinners. She thought she was some gravy gourmet but no one had the heart to tell her that pond scum was probably tastier and smoother than the sludge she prepared.
Who doesn’t love gravy. Alas, about 3 years ago, I became lactose intolerant. So sad. Milk (whey) is in everything. Don’t even get me started about the lack of cheese. So super sad. I am so glad Cuddles is a happy, healthy chicken again. You both look very striking on the cover.
Look at you two!! Looking all glamorous and stuff!!!
I can’t WAIT to see the entire kitchen reveal.
Also, I love gravy…. Brown gravy is my favorite — you know, the kind that you make from the bacon grease?
mmmmm
LOVE GRAVY, any flavor, any time. LOVE the gorgeous pic of you and sweet Cuddles. My heart jumped when I saw her. She has a fan club. And of course, admire your beautiful kitchen and astonished at all the work you put into it. Put your arms around yourself and give a big “I’m really good!” congratulatory hug. You deserve every Attagirl! you can get.
There is only one gravy I have ever liked and it was my grandmother’s giblet gravy served only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. She’s been gone almost 30 years and I’ve never found a gravy I liked nearly as much – even my own.
Hi! how about spreading your wonderful sunshine down here in the states? I live just across “the pond” here in in ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA. Read your posts everyday faithfully. I love that you are such a strong role model for the capable woman that we should ALL strive to be !
Gravy – My three young daughters help me make gravy and we love it – my secret ingredient is ….a few drops of molasses…
I like gravy – well most gravy on most things. Gravy on ice cream would be bad.
I love gravy – turkey or beef roast cravy. Coming from the north, not crazy about the gravy and biscuits stuff.
I love gravy, but my boyfriend loves it more. He always asks for an extra side of it when he gets mashed potatoes at the diner. Just recently we visited a new restaurant in town that served poutine tater tots and they were delicious! Mmmm gravy.
Oh, and since people are wanting the magazines autographed and you won’t actually have your hands on the magazines, how about signing a book plate and sending those to Canadian Living to ship to the winners with the magazines? Just an idea!
Ohmyword, yes, would LOVE my own copy. . .with gravy, as EVERYTHING is better with gravy
and NICE DRESS, Karen, you look stunning!
I love gravy! And the kitchen peaks are amazing! I can’t wait to see the whole thing!
Me me me me me! I love gravy! (That’s a gorgeous cover photo! I’m so glad Cuddles is still here to see it, too.)
Of course I love gravy. When I was younger, I may have actually once eaten 8 servings of mashed potatoes and gravy. That may or may not have happened…. The best gravy of my life though was last thanksgiving. The drippings got caramelized and mostly baked into the pan, but we used them anyway and OMG. So good.
Love the way your kitchen looks from the bits and pieces you’ve shown and would so love to see more!
Love gravy!
Lately we have been making delicious smoked gravy (the BF bought a smoker last year and now we both have high cholesteral).
Also – once had the misfortune of tasting hot dog gravy. A pack of hot dogs, boiled for hours to get the delicous chemical residues out and congealed into a pile of foul smelling grey gelatin-like water. I’m still dating the creator of that – but I don’t let him make any important decisions anymore…
Oh Catherine please tell me you are joking about hot dog gravy! That just about sent me over the edge. GAG
The ultimate comfort food….
Hamburger gravy, over mashed potatoes and a slice of buttered white bread. Midwest living at its best.
You look good too….:D
I’m vegetarian so my gravy options are rather limited. Mushroom is my fave. Before I went full on vegetarian it was pork roast followed by turkey.
I live in the south…here in the carolinas they put gravy on EVERYTHING three times a day…their breakfast, their lunch and their dinner. I am gluten free so NO GRAVY, but it doesnt mean I dont like the beautiful appearance of it floating in a crater of mashed potatoes or drowning a piece of white meat at Thanksgiving!
…BTW, Your picture is such a tease…I am crazy mad we cant see your shoes!!!
Gravy and shoes…every gals choice to make everything better.
(My apostrophe key is broken…got a fix for that?)
Kudos on the great article and feature!!
First: Lovely photo
Second: Fabulous kitchen
Third: Gravy. Love gravy. A good hearty beef gravy. Or a sage-seasoned turkey gravy. What I do not love is the starchy sausage gravy that is served over biscuits. Oh Lord that stuff is nasty-bad!
Fourth: A gravy story: Once, very long ago I was having a dinner party with a dozen or so guests. While drinking wine (for who doesn’t enjoy a nice Zin while cooking?) I inadvertantly added sugar instead of salt to my delicious beef drippings, that were soon to be gravy. Oh HELL NO! So then I thought to myself, “self, why not just boil up a few boullion cubes add some corn starch and seasoning and no one will be the wiser?” So I listened to myself and did just that. Only I forgot that the salt cellar had been moved to the table and the sugar was still sitting right there on the counter next to the stove, (and perhaps I had just about polished off an entire bottle of Zin by this time), so yes, I added sugar AGAIN! So then I’m thinking well I’ll just add a few more seasonings to round out the sugar only that’s not what happened. So then I thought to myself, “self, why not add some of this delicious red wine that you’ve just popped open and that should take care of that.” Only that is not what happened. I could go on but I think you get the picture…
I adore that you are on THE COVER with Cuddles. That’s perfect. I’d ask you if they make that dress in size Moo, but now that I think about it, on someone who needs a size Moo, it would probably just make me look like a sofa. On a reed like you however, it is lovely.
Congratulations on your kitchen and your feature and so relieved to know that Cuddles is doing well.
Now, on to the subject of gravy. Being Texan, only one thing comes to mind when I think gravy and that is Cream Gravy. Some people call it white gravy, but to me that sounds about as appetizing as eating Liquid Paper. Eating true (and I chose that word on purpose) Cream Gravy is as poetic as its name sounds. I like it on chicken fried steak (a staple of my youth) and biscuits, but really the food its on doesn’t matter all that much because it is really just a vehicle for the gravy.
Oops. Its not actually the cover. I wonder if Canadian Living realizes their mistake.
Yes! I love gravy especially with liver and onions. Karen your photo is amazing! Such a beautiful woman. I’m so happy that Cuddles is doing well. You deserve every happiness and success coming your way.
First – lovely dress and congratulations on the magazine spread. I will keep an eye out for it when I visit the Costco later tonight.
Second – mushroom gravy on mashed potatoes with roast chicken or roast beef!!!!
Fries and gravy, not so much. Speaking of french fries – I am trying to find a recipe for homemade ketchup that will remind me of my great grandmother’s country ketchup (my great grandmother was from Mildmay) which was always super sweet and more like chili sauce in terms of flavour. Everything I have tried so far is too tart and tastes too much like tomato sauce ( I use Alton Brown’s pantry friendly tomato sauce recipe ).
Lastly – thank you for heads up about Twig & Tree’s tomato days back in May. This has been my best ever year for tomatoes.
Love gravy, love the tiny snippet of your kitchen, love Cuddles and I also love how your story sounds a lot like how I began DIY’ing on my own… Can’t wait to find out more.
I’d love a copy of this issue, too. Sorry, no gravy stories to share… maybe next time!
(did I use the word love too much? hmmmm normally it’s the exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 )
My mom made the best gravy. She used Gravee browner and when we’d go to someone else’s house and see light coloured gravy it would be very weird. And bland. My sisters still make the gravy her way, and I try. I don’t meat these days so gravy isn’t on my priority list, but remembering my moms amazing ways in the kitchen certainly is.
Yes, I love gravy. I make it but, not confidently. I have no gravy stories. I LOVE the magazine cover. I’m guessing this issue of the magazine will generate record sales. Leave it to you to strike a pose with your beloved Cuddles. And, you look so good! A sting of pearls on Cuddles would have been awesome. I really, really would love a copy of this issue. I’m sure (really!) you remember me asking about the final reveal of your MS cabinets not so long ago. A signed copy for the winners…me, included would be like gravy on mashed taters at Thanksgiving. I understand the logistics at hand however, maybe the magazine peeps could insert a hand written note provided by you. I’m sure the winners would be thrilled to receive a short note with your humor and wit!
I’m from the South so of course I love gravy – particularly gravy on biscuits!!!
Who doesn’t like gravy? I love gravy, gravy with biscuits, gravy with fries, gravy with chicken fried steak, gravy with just about anything.
I love gravy! I’m from the Midwest–biscuits and gravy is a staple dish there. I also think you and Cuddles look adorable!!! Your dress makes the window frame behind you POP!
I always think I’m going to love it and it smells so great but I rarely have enjoyed it. Poutine is the exception…poutine is always the exception.
PS. How fun to have your project culminate with a splashy magazine spread!
Can’t believe I forgot to ask what color your shoes are in your cover shot!!!Duh!!!!
I love all gravy except mushroom gravy. I also like to use the expression OH GOOD GRAVY when frustrated. You know, instead of shit or something.
Okay, I say shit, too.
SEATTLE gal here. I used to LOVE sausage gravy. Then I adopted my little Hamlet, the mini pig. So now it’s mushroom gravy for me. I’d like to enter for a copy, please! I’ve been dying to see your kitchen reno, and my Chaka has a thing for Cuddles. xx
Some people consider gravy to be a beverage! 🙂
Way to go on the kitchen reno… love to see the magazine.
Do I like gravy? Do you and Cuddles look adorable?
That second question is supposed to read like the proverbial “Does a bear shit in the woods?” answer to something that is plainly obvious… 🙂
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday BECAUSE of the gravy! I always make it a couple of days in advance using turkey legs. One year, I had to make it twice because I ate so much of it ahead of time. Oops.
I never met a gravy I didn’t like…
I love gravy!! The only problem at our house is the other half does NOT eat gravy. Of course this is the same man that does not eat pizza or any type of casserole. Lucky me!!
Pam the gravy needs sieving!
Nonsense Una, just stir it! Lumpy gravy calls!
I already posted about How I have come to love gravy thru my Midwest Husband (he actually ate ravioli from a can when I met him! My family is Italian, it was really horrifying!) BUT I was sending from my kindle and it was a pain in the butt, so I neglected to mention how cute cuddles looks on the cover!! And you look pretty great too! 😉 Do you own the dress or was that brought along for the shoot? It really is a great looking cover, CONGRATULATIONS!!
That’s my dress Vanessa. 🙂 ~ karen!
G = golden, velvety flavor.
R = ridiculously, delicious brown stuff.
A = after, dinner moaning from too many potatoes smothered in it.
V = very, necessary accessory to a turkey dinner.
Y = yes, I love gravy.
Congrats on the feature! High five! You somehow have my dream window covering in your window, how the heck did you do that!? I guess I’ll have to wait to win my own copy of CLM to see what you used… I mean to see if it’s the same as what I used for my imaginary blinds.
Too many different ways to love gravy, but my top two, poutine and hot turkey sandwiches.
It’s fabric from Rough Linen that my mom made into a roman shade for me. 🙂 ~ karen!
Many years ago we were a young married couple living in Vermont, about to celebrate a Canadian Thanksgiving with American houseguests. The home-baked apple pies were cooling on the sideboard in our country kitchen; the mashed potatoes, turnip casserole, Brussels sprouts‚ dressing, cranberries, and carved turkey had been placed on the table, and the guests had been called to dinner. I gave the gravy a final stir on the stove and had just turned to proudly inspect the beautiful scene, when suddenly there was the most incredible explosion directly behind my back. We had made sangria several weeks earlier, and without thinking had placed the leftover fruit-loaded red wine in a one-gallon glass jug on the shelf at the back of the stove. A combination of fermenting fruit and heat from the turkey cooking all day caused the glass jug to explode‚ at this worst of all possible moments, embedding glass shards in the nearby refrigerator’s steel door, etching the glass doors of my hutch across the kitchen, and covering everything in the entire 20’ by 20’ room with pulverized glass dust. Very sticky, red-wine-soaked, pulverized glass dust. Everything in the room — walls, floor, furniture, the hostess — was covered with it. The turkey and mashed potatoes, the gravy, the apple pies — all were now inedible. Our newborn son’s changing table and every piece of his clothing, including 60 cloth diapers, was covered with the glass dust. My husband, our obliging guests and I spent the rest of evening washing and rinsing, vacuuming, and doing laundry. We were finally able to sit down to our Thanksgiving feast of canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches just before midnight. It wasn’t the meal I had planned, but no-one was hurt in what had the potential to be a very serious accident, and for that we did Give Thanks.
I do like gravy, but not ‘red-eye’ gravy or brown gravy, but gravy made with the fresh, sizzling fat in my great-grandmother’s iron skillet after cooking bacon or sausage (or both!). Gravy like that is even good on GRITS! And eggs! And don’t forget my nanna’s homemade biscuits. Shoot, they even made my other grandmother’s ‘whomp-em’ biscuits delightful!
Love the dress! Love the hair! Love the chicken! Martha Stewart has met her match!
Hot photo of the two of you! I love gravy and have zero patience so I just spent $2.99 and downloaded the issue. I’m so excited to go read it right now!!
Yes I loooove gravy. My husband’s gravy he makes with venison for finger steaks is the bomb diggity. I liked the cover picture but I am conflicted because I like the dirty Karen and know this is a made up Karen BUT think your kitchen is my dream kitchen just at your house. 😉
I love gravy, it makes everything taste better with one exception of ham gravy. Have you heard of such? My mother in law loves to make ham gravy from spiral ham and it just taste weird.
Sausage gravy!!! I only like brown gravy when I make it myself usually.
Gravy is a yes!
What I always say is, ” I would eat s#%t, if it had gravy on it!
In general, gravy is unpleasant in appearance, smell, and taste. I’ve come to despise the gravy at Thanksgiving but for some reason the hole in the wall diner near our house has this sausage gravy that I could seriously eat like soup. I’m not sure why it’s so different but I’m in love.
I love gravy. Brown gravy. White. Sausage. All kinds of gravy. Except the kind my husband makes because, while he is a wonderful man of many talents, he can’t make gravy.
I don’t need a copy of the magazine, I can get my own but what I do need is to know where you got that Roman blind. It’s gorgeous and I am in serious need of something like that for my kitchen window.
Actually, I need curtains for all my windows because we are doing a most-of-the-house reno, inspired by my husband’s burning desire for new windows. Which led to new paint colours. Which led to “We should utilize this roughed in plumbing and put a bathroom in the basement”. The house will be gorgeous when it’s finished but in the mean time I don’t know where my toaster is. Good thing I don’t like toast.
I love gravy almost as much as I love the picture of you and Cuddles 🙂
WOW you look fantastic! (I don’t need a magazine; that compliment was gratis.)
Yup – and tell us you didn’t plan the outfit to match the kitchen (and Cuddles’s colouring to highlight the gorgeous butcher block). Perfection! But, I am not sucking up – since I live in Mississauga (right outside Toronto for anyone saying “where?”), I will gladly buy my copy and let someone outside Canada have a shot at winning one. Think I’ll head to the newstand at lunch……..
I love biscuits and gravy!
My whole family comes together at my parents house in Baltimore every year – from as far as Turks & Caicos, and as close as Wisconsin and Tennessee. It is always a big party and close to 30 people and 5 dogs. One of my cousins decided that before dinner, we should take “Gravy shots”… We have a picture documenting our half gravy, half jameson shots… You would think it would taste pretty good considering my chef uncle lovingly babysat that gravy all afternoon, and the whole gravy is delicious, jameson is delicious… but it pretty much was the WORST THING IVE EVER TASTED. We persevered in the name of Thanksgiving Celebration! My aunt actually kept it down. I spit mine in the sink. Some might call me a wimp…I call it self preservation. I had some mashed potatoes to eat!
Love me some gravy! and I make awesome, amazing, drool worthy gravy myself. I also love your Cuddles and was holding my breath until she got well. We lost two chickens of our seven last year to a mystery illness very much like hers. I wonder which remedy of the many suggested worked! Do you know? Can you guess? There were so many!
Now why do you write so well, do so may clever things and still look fabuloso all the time? It’s not really fair. If I were a more shallow person I would not read your blog ever again. But I love you so I will keep reading.
I live in the South. Gravy…pffft, ya’ll don’t realize that you don’t even eat a desert here unless there is gravy involved!
I don’t commonly eat desert’s. I have eaten in a desert. But I typically eat “desserts”! So now I am stressed…which is desserts spelled backwards. Geeze…I need to go eat some gravy…
First, Laura should be a shoo-in to win a magazine! Who could resist the offer that she will come sing in your kitchen?!
Oh please, photograph Cuddles in pearls (or photoshop a pic!) Y’all both look so gorgeous in this cover shot! I’m thrilled that she is feeling better! I’ve never prayed for a chicken until recently. Prayers answered, and continued good health / best wishes for Cuddles! You did an outstanding job saving her life!
Where was I? Oh, gravy! Yep, I love white gravy on biscuits. Neither my Mom or my Mom-in-law could make good gravy. Thick, lumpy, kinda like paste / glue. One day I was perusing recipes in my trusty old Betty Crocker cookbook and found a white gravy recipe. Failproof if you follow the instructions to the letter. Yummy gravy made w/ pan drippings. Hmmm… my stomach is growling now!
Love gravy. One Thanksgiving we ran out of gravy and I said don’t worry it will just take me a minute to make some more. Of course some smarty pants at the table said bet you can’t. You bet I can! Winner me!
You and Cuddles also look stunning in your new kitchen!
I love gravy, especially white gravy to go on my biscuits and gravy. mmmm.
You really do look cute with Cuddles in your arms. Congrats on your fantastic feature Karen!
I live in Houston TX. Here’s my gravy story: I was 12 or 13 when Teflon came out. My mother bought a teflon coated saucepan. That next big holiday she boiled potatoes in that pan, smashed them with her masher, added milk and butter, then took the handmixer to the goop and proceeded to whip them like she always had. Small then rather large pieces of teflon began to show up in the whipped potatoes. “Mama!” I shouted. “That’s black pepper,” she said giving me a stern look. “It is NOT! I KNOW what it is, Mama!” She then spooned the potatoes into a large serving dish and proceeded to ladle a gallon of giblet gravy over them. “That’s why God invented gravy,” she pronounced.
I’m a fairweather gravy fan. If I’m going to extend the caloric intake, I’d rather splurge on something like cheese, brownies, ice cream sandwiches or French fries. Or pizza. Or potato chips. Or macaroni and cheese. Or bacon. Or homemade chocolate chip cookies. Or milkshakes. Or margaritas. Or macarons. Or fried chicken (sorry Cuddles).
Wow, you are so, so right!
Gorgeous!!! You, kitchen and cuddles… Can’t wait til my sister sends me the issue!! Woot woot!
Gravy is totally awesome. But I don’t like tasting bits of kidney, so leave out the giblets, please.
There is no way in hell that I will win with all the comments but what the heck!!!
I love tomato gravy!
I am having a hard time deciding who is cuter, you or Cuddles… 🙂
What a beautiful kitchen. I wish you were giving away a kitchen make over!
There are people who don’t like gravy? Really? I suppose they are the same folk who don’t like bacon….or pizza….or pie?? 🙂 Gravy is groovy.
Yay! I have been dying to see this !!!
I Love gravy. Especially my own, made with real pan drippings. And sour cream gravy on stroghanof.
You and Cuddles look fab….I love the dress. I am so happy she recovered. You gotta love that Dr. Robinson…and he’s cute too.
I saw your kitchen a couple of weeks ago but I was too upset about Cuddles to look around. Can’t wait to see the mag!
We only had the juice that came off the pot roast to put on our rice. We called that rice and gravy. It’s fabulous. The first and last time I had brown gravy, I thought it was nauseating. Until I had poutine. That’s Excellent Stuff.
Right now, I should be painting. I decided to paint the walls in the basement. Then my new husband said the floors are awful looking. I showed him your runny self leveling concrete and new tile story(s). He got all excited. Now he has installed new PEX pipes to the kitchen, I get tubing to the ice maker in the new refrigerator we are getting, we put up a ceiling, after we paint all this, we put down new flooring. No heated floors, however. And the new refrigerator calls for redoing the kitchen cabinets. Last night he was drawing a whole new kitchen layout. All from painting the basement walls.
how pumped am I? Pumped. Going to buy it today.
Gravy is delicious. I love the dipping sauce at Swiss Chalet once a year. Technically not gravy, but whatever.
I looove gravy! Chicken and gravy, mashed potatoes and gravy, liver and onions and gravy, biscuits and gravy! Everything taste better with gravy.
I HATE gravy. It is nothing more than paste to clog up your internal organs. My dislike of gravy stems from my childhood, when every Sunday, Mother made gravy. White gravy when she fixed fried chicken. Brown gravy with beef , of course. I can still remember sitting at my place at the table staring down at my plate with my one slice of gummy white bread torn into pieces with the gravy poured over. And hating it. I ate it. Every Sunday. And I still hate it. What a waste of calories that could be consumed in much more enjoyable form…like ice cream. With crushed up Butterfinger bars.
Love your black and white dress in the magazine cover,btw!
Roasted beef gravy with fried corn flakes sprinkled over the top, like Lois made. A bit of heaven.
Gravy…..only on chicken and waffles…..or open faced roast beef sandwiches….otherwise —> no gravy.
But since I’ve recently been diagnosed with Celiac disease, no more waffles or bread (at least GOOD tasting waffles and bread) for me, which means probably no more gravy.
Gravy story? Every major holiday that I can remember spending at my Nana’s house (she went “home” in 1997), she would dip one or both boobs in the gravy on her plate. Not on purpose (and she was always fully clothed), but she would always get a boobfull of gravy. I still get a goofy smile remembering that when I pass the gravy boat.
Yes. Gravy on anything. Including gravy. I’m a sucker for gravy on gravy with a nice side of gravy.
I’ve seen all blogs with the tiny corner reveals and now this photo from Canadian Living and I have serious, serious kitchen envy. Like, so much so, that I’m going to need therapy. Which will cost money and thusly, cut into my kitchen remodel budget. Ugh.
I think I’ll go eat a bowl of gravy.
I love gravy… most of the time. I did get stuck in a blizzard in Coeur d’Alene Idaho once, pulled off to the nearest exit to wait it out, and happened upon a diner there that advertised “best biscuits and gravy in town.” Of course I ordered it because why wouldn’t you? Because it was sausage flavored paint, I’m pretty sure. That’s why. It stuck to the sides of my throat and the roof of my mouth and was just so awful it took me a year to make biscuits and gravy again. Then I made my own with spicy elk sausage and heavy cream. I served it to my new boyfriend at the time and he apologized or not bringing a ring with him. But later he turned out to be insane, so that was probably for the best.
As for the kitchen… *sigh. I first found you when I was looking for a tutorial to install VCT in my boat. And now I’m also thinking about losing my damn mind… aka ripping out and renovating my entire galley. Mostly because I am obsessed with your faucet and lazy susans, but also because I want that apron front sink from Ikea. ironic.
Love gravy…on popovers or especially biscuits and gravy. Love the mag. cover and the fact you have
Cuddles cuddling with you! So very happy she is all better. You’re such a good Mommy!
Nope sorry, I don’t usually like gravy. I think Dairy Queens Gravy ruined it for all. Barf. However you look fabulous and cuddles looks fantastic! Can’t wait to see the rest of your kitchen!!!!! And I super hate pooping in buckets, just hate it.
milk gravy on bread with fried chicken
sausage gravy on biscuits
beef broth gravy with mashed potatos and roast beef
turkey broth gravy with thanksgiving
….yes! gravy is a YES! LOL!
and YAYYYY!! about time for some pictures! 😀
I agree with Becky, white gravy, NOT country gravy with sausage, and yes please both you and cuddles must autograph the magazine. Hope I win, or I’ll have to find a copy to buy online.
GRAVY IN ALL OF ITS FORMS. Thin gravy, thick gravy, sausage gravy, veggie gravy. I don’t care, give me more of that sauce. Now I wish we were having gravy for dinner tonight.
Enchilada sauce is essentially gravy, right?
Well, yeah! You can’t have disco fries without gravy!
OMG!!! I am so in love with that picture!!! It just sums you up so perfectly; the to-die-for dress, the chicken nestled in the crook of your arm and a kick-ass kitchen (please tell me you are bare-foot too)!!!!! The only thing missing is a cape as you are a super-hero – MY super hero! Karen, sista, YOU ROCK!!!!!
How very funny! As a matter of fact I used to like gravy but not so much any more. A dab of white gravy with chicken fried steak is pretty good but it sits in my stomach like paste. Oh, wait, IT IS PASTE!!! I could sure use a magazine with a kitchen remodel in it if you know where I could get one. Even better if it contains an adorable chicken chicken and her chicken Mama!!!
“Good Gravy!”
That’s what my dad always says.
He says this as a replacement for a curse word or “Good Greif” or “Good Heavens” or “Good Golly Gosh” – you know, sayings like that. Me? I love the real curse words – no substitutes. I also love real gravy – made from drippings, etc. I also happen to love “substitute” gravy too – like the kind that comes in a packet, or a can. When it comes to gravy – substitutes allowed! I love all the GOOD f*cking GRAVY out there, especially on mashed potatoes.
As an aside, I (and when I say “I”, I mean Me, my Dad and my boyfriend) am remodeling my kitchen starting next summer and need all the help I can get! Would love to see the mag! Incidentally, I imagine my Dad will have lots of “Good Gravies” throughout the remodel.
Gravy = YES. I love brown. I love white. I don’t discriminate.
Your gravy story: This year my niece started kindergarten. She went through the lunch line and got her tray with chicken strips, etc. They put gravy on the chicken strips. She goes to sit at her table with her class, and the teacher can see her leaning over to the kids around her talking to them while staring horrified at her tray. Well, Miss M had not yet had the pleasure of experiencing gravy, because she is a ketchup girl. She didn’t know WHAT was defiling her chicken strips, and that is what she was asking the kids around her (“What is this white stuff?”) So the teacher goes over and asks, “What’s up, M?” At which point, my sweet, precious niece looks at her and says, “They put GRAVY on my chicken strips…can you FIX this?” I’m hoping to further her gravy horizons over Thanksgiving. And Christmas.
FYI – there is a Canadian Living app – and I’ve just bought the October issue in the US using it. Beautiful photo spread, and great article!
It’s a no from me on the gravy train– never been able to recover from a particularly awful rendition that ended up giving everyone food poisoning at thanksgiving. 8 people in a house with 2 toilets. The offending food item was never conclusively identified… But I know it was the gravy
I love gravy!! Though I always try to ignore the fact how the leftovers turn into gravy ‘jello’ in the fridge afterwords… its just to wiggly…
My favorite is my Grandma’s ‘giblet gravy’ with bits of hard-boiled egg in it…I probably don’t want to know what the ‘giblet’ part in it entails, but it’s good!
Anyone who doesn’t love gravy is completely un-American (and probably un-Canadian if they don’t like gravy on fries). My gravy story is that the first Christmas I met my boyfriend’s family, I arrived totally nervous to meet, like, every generation and third and fourth cousin, etc, but the boyfriend’s mom asked me in a panic “Ana, do YOU know how to make gravy??” and I was like “FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK ACTUALLY YES I DO.” And that’s the story of how I saved Christmas (gravy).
PS LOVE LOVE LOVE your kitchen and your kitchen chicken. I’d swear off gravy if I could have a stove just like that!!
Hey, I am not a big gravy fan….but love the beautiful picture of you, Cuddles, and that wonderful new kitchen!
I, in fact, do not like gravy (which I’m sure is some sort of sacrilege). I also don’t like cake, which is basically fighting words with every other person I know. You might as well tell people you hate Santa and puppies…I do like Santa and puppies, just for the record. I also LOVE your kitchen, so there’s that! 🙂
OH PLEASE PLEASE PICK ME!!!! I have WAITED patiently SO LONG to see your kitchen! It’s been the highlight of my summer to look forward to September when the big reveal would be!!!
I LOVE LOVE gravy!!! Gravy on mashed potatoes, Gravy on roast, Gravy on Chicken, Gravy on biscuits, but mostly gravy on mashed potatoes! Can’t WAIT for Thanksgiving Turkey gravy!! yummmmm!
YES! You look MAHVELOUS DAHLING! That DRESS! …..and Cuddles…..makes it the PERFECT picture indeed!
Hi Karen,
I just discovered your website while searching for tips on how to get rid of the old smell in a vintage train case that I just bought on Etsy. After reading your article about old luggage, the nice design of your website led me to click on other of your stories—and definitely the kitchen makeover. :>
And how timely! Yes I like gravy. But I rarely eat it—yet just last night I had gravy for the first time in months!
My husband was trying to make up for some sarcastic thing he’d said and—as we’re both from the south–he knows a good way to do that is serve gravy on something. So he served it on grilled turkey breast, ostensibly because the breast would’ve been too dry without gravy. My question to him was “who puts gravy on grilled meat?” I’ve never heard of that, but I happily ate it anyway.
Now the reason I don’t eat gravy often is much the same reason I bought the train case–if I eat good stuff I’ll either (at my age of 50+) pack on pounds or I’ll have to workout. The train case will be my workout bag (once I get it cleaned up), with the idea being the case will be so awesome to carry around, that I’ll just have to go to the gym since that’s the only place I can use a workout bag.
It’s simply a fact, my mother makes the best gravy in the world…
I squealed when I saw the picture. So glad I work from home and no hears me. Covet the dress ‘tho know that I would never look as fabo as you do and love how Cuddles got in on the shot.
Yes I do love gravy especially when it is very beefy like my mom makes it.
I love that you are cuddling Cuddles on the magazine cover. You, Cuddles, and your kitchen look fabulous. Wishing I could see your magazine. Is there an online version?
You and Cuddles both look fabulous!
When I was growing up, the only time we had gravy was Thanksgiving and Christmas. I always thought I loved holiday dinners, turns out I just love gravy! My husband is from Texas and what I call gravy, he cause sauce. He says the only gravy is cream gravy, the white stuff you make for chicken (sorry Cuddles) fried steak and / or biscuits. And it MUST be thick enough for the spoon to stand up. I call it pudding… So that’s my gravy story. It was much funnier before I typed it! 🙂
What Southern girl doesn’t like gravy? If you ever arrive in Coastal North Carolina I’ll drive us over to my friend’s house. She’s a chef, and last hurricane made THE BEST biscuits and sausage gravy. For dinner. Amazing. I now yearn for hurricanes.
Can’t wait to see the kitchen reveal and a big hurrah to Cuddles the wonder chicken. 🙂
Hahahahaha!
I’m originally from Houston and I love the way you say “last hurricane” the way most people say, “Last Christmas” or “Last Valentine’s Day.” I totally get it! It’s a big event and everyone remembers what they were doing while it was happening.
Thanks for the laugh.
I like gravy. This first time my mother made a meal for her in-laws she made homemade gravy. Thinking the gravy was not dark enough she tried to make it look more appetizing by adding food coloring – they ended up with purple gravy!
Yes, I love gravy! In our house, we call it “draby” because Grandpa had a little too much fun at the Detroit Lions football game one Thanksgiving and couldn’t quite pronounce what he wanted passed to him. That was probably 50 years ago, but it still makes us smile.
Congratulations!
Do I like gravy ? Gravy is a the nectar of the God’s . Gobs and Gobs of gravy ladled into my belly make me fat and happy, end of story.
I hate gravy yes I do
It looks like sick Cuddles poo
I don’t want it from a boat
I won’t eat it from a moat
I’d rather eat Brussel sprouts
And give my butt the screaming shouts
For Brownie Points:
Our tenacious blogger
Can wield a mean augur
She rips out a floor
And is never a bore
She is even pretty
When dealing with the gritty
Best of all she looks happy
With Cuddles in lappy (poetic license).
To quote Homer Simpson, ‘MMMMmmmm, gravvvyyy’ or was that donuts…either way you would have to be half nuts NOT to love gravy! (and I’m not talking about the half that redoes their entire kitchen because the floors are embarrassed, no, not those people at all)
Have you ever had pork gravy? My mom makes the BEST pork gravy, well all of her gravies(?) are delicious, but so rare is the pork gravy that it sort of sticks out, you know? My mother is the type of person that would redo her whole entire kitchen because the floors are embarrassed by the way. She’s like you, the good type of nuts, unlike those other nuts, the ones that don’t like gravy.
Love the dress by the way, I wonder if we’ll be able to see the shoes you wore with it in the magazine…guess, someone will have to win one and find out, eh? eh?
LOVE the sneak peek of your kitchen on the cover!! Please can you share where you got your drawer pulls?! They’re beautiful! Though of course not as gorgeous as you and Cuddles on the cover 😉
p.s. LOVE gravy!
I’m an au jus kinda gal. Don’t judge me. 😀 It’s my southern roots of sausage gravy, milk gravy, and triple by-passes that keeps me from enjoying gravy. The end. I shall be stalking the land far and wide for a copy of Canadian Living: The Cuddles Edition, so don’t enter me into the contest. I’m just setting you straight on my gravy phobia, I mean the gravy issue.
Ugh!! All this waiting, and we STILL can’t see the kitchen!! Grrr! But I love that cute dress, and Cuddles is beautiful. I do enjoy gravy, especially white gravy loaded with pepper. Yum!!
wow that took so long to scroll down to the bottom to post a comment. My thumb has a blister now.
Everyone likes gravy….question is did they hide your feet in the photo shoot?
Sorry Karen I have one more question. Did you keep the radio pot lights?
Love gravy, but can’t make it without lumps. Also…you are rockin that dress!!!!
Love HAM gravy! Love Cuddles and Love the dress!
You and Cuddles look fabulous! But why did you cut the pic off at the feet? Your dress looks beautiful, your hair is beautifully coiffed, and Cuddles is being wonderfully calm, cool and collected and perfectly fluffed… I’m so jealous… my furry kids should behave so well… Now, I know you are not ashamed of your cartoon feet (loved your blog on them, and was so happy to see that not everybody has beautiful feet, but real feet…)… or did Cuddles muss up your shoes? But seriously, I don’t have a foot fetish, nor a shoe fetish… though I wish I had the wherewithal to redo my kitchen, it’s a teeny little thing, with no room for more than one peep, and even then, it’s a tight squeeze… it’s more of a Chinese puzzle than a kitchen, no windows, if I run more than one appliance the fuze blows… I digress, a story about gravy is what you wanted!
Mmmm, I love gravy, but you’ve seen gazillion like comments of such. Myself, I don’t make gravy, as I was traumatized by my best friend in high school who told me how easy it was to make gravy, and she makes this luscious light brown gravy that is nicely seasoned and goes with biscuits or roasts or french fries or just about anything… that night that she was showing me how to make it (and I don’t know what happened as I watched her make it, maybe I distracted her?–you know how to high school age girls can be…), something happened, and everything looked good, tasted good, and once the table was set, and the gravy bowl passed… the gravy had congealed. From what I remember, her dad wasn’t too happy, she was mortified, and me, I scooped some out and put it on the mashed potatoes (I guess, hoping that it would melt or something). And since I was brought up to eat what was on my plate, I ate it. It was still very yummy! Kind of like gravy jam. The trauma was more from the fear of trying to make gravy and praying that it wouldn’t congeal because people think that congealed gravy is yucky and won’t even try it. I was trained as a child to eat what was put forth before me because somebody slaved to make it for me… But I let others make gravy.
I’m so glad that Cuddles made it to see her magazine debut! I love gravy so much. Every kind. For a long time it was my nemesis in cooking, I just couldn’t get it to not be lumpy. Thankfully I finally figured it out!
In my earlier comment I forgot to weigh in on gravy-gate: My vote is a resounding “Yes!”
Chocolate sauce also counts as “gravy” right??
*The offer for a slightly used copy of “Southern Living” magazine still stands!
Oh, I just thought of something else…here’s how good you and Miss Cuddles look, I just bet “the fella” is eating his lonely heart out seeing you and Cuddles looking all sweet and sexy on that new counter top!!!
While playing Apples to Apples with my grandmother (the junior version of course) a winning combination was “furry gravy”. Also, every year I force my MIL to make real flour gravy because I can’t do it but I love it. And I love you and your kitchen. And I wish I could have chickens but my entire area limits it to very large lots that no one has anyways.
Gravy??? I love gravy AND I make the BEST gravy – from scratch with a secret ingredient usually found to be part of the meal. dun, dun, dun. I have had to prove this phenomenon over and over but it is true. Cudlles and you look FAB, darling, simply FAB, and a little retro too.
I do like gravy and I would love to receive a copy of the magazine!
Love love love gravy! My mom made it every time we had meat for dinner, which, back in the 70s was almost every night. Even now, with Mom gone over 10 years, every time I eat gravy it brings me back to those dinners at home. It’s definitely my comfort food. And Karen! You and Cuddles … and the kitchen … you look smashing together!
Love good homemade gravy. For some reason I am the gravy making designate at Thanksgiving. Not sure how I ended up with that job but it’s all mine. Kitchen question…How easy or hard is it to raise the blinds at your sink?
Love your blog!
Cheryl
I love gravy. My very favorite is milk gravy. It’s best made from bacon grease & whole milk but we now use only 2% milk at home. The restaurants now call milk gravy – white gravy. They probably don’t use milk. When I first saw the magazine cover I wondered if I could buy it anywhere. So, since I can’t, I would love for you to send me a copy. Karen, both you & Cuddles look great & what a good dress you chose to wear – Fantastic! Thanks for thinking of all your friends on you blog.
“your” blog – Sorry.
Of course I like gravy. White, please. On biscuits.
You look nice on the cover, but that Cuddles steals the whole thing! Sorry. 🙂
I love beef gravy and especially turkey gravy. Everyone always asks for our family’s gravy recipe, when all we do is thicken the drippings and juices from the roast!
And yes, you and Cuddles look great in your kitchen, Karen! Hope it keeps making you smile for a long time!
I took a job as a dietary aid/part time cook several years ago at a small hospital in West Texas. They taught me how to make gravy(s) from scratch. Makes anything taste better!
Look at you in that dress. You just pull off any style. Did Cuddles love seeing herself in print?
I am from Appalachia. Therefore, I like gravy.
My grandmother makes A+ gravy. Once, she was making cheese sauce for broccoli. My mom’s dog was barking barking barking, so she looked at him and said “HERE, SMARTY!” while throwing him a piece of cheese. That isn’t about gravy, but it is an adorable and funny little scene to play in my mind.
mmmmmmmm, GRAVY!!! Yes please.
When I was in, oh, about 3rd grade, we read a story about some kid who grew up so poor that all they had for dinner was potatoes and gravy. I totally missed the point that there was no roast or chicken, or veggies, or pie, or whatever, to go with the gravy. In my house we only got gravy on special occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas; mashed potatoes and gravy on a regular night sounded like a fine dinner to me.
LOVE the kitchen with the natural touches…I have been wanting to do a marathon kitchen makeover too, and maybe your story will inspire me to get started. You look quite fetching; like a chic pixie posed right up there on the counter. And Cuddles? Well, I peek in on the Coop Cam every night before I go to bed, and a couple of weeks ago I burst into tears of joy when I saw Cuddles back in there with the other girls. The next day you mentioned that she had returned to the coop to sleep with the others. The fella said, “Why are you crying?” “Because Cuddles returned to the coop with the other chickens,” I blubbered. “Wha… we have chickens now?” the fella muttered.
I love gravy too. My ex-mother-in-law was quite the tippler. One Thanksgiving she insisted on making the dinner for my husband and me and his brother and wife. Her version of this was to get up at 4:30 am, and go the 24 hour grocery store to pick up the pre-ordered meal. It was just awful; pressed turkey loaf, instant potatoes, Stovetop Stuffing…what this meal needs, I thought, is some delicious gravy to drown it all in! But there was none in sight. As we pretended to eat, she lurched up and said, “Oh! I almost forgot!” and staggered to the fridge, yanked open the door, grabbed a quart-sized Styrofoam container and said, “Here’s the gravy!” But she grabbed it by the top of the container, the lid popped off, she slung it toward the table, and gravy went every where! Actually, it was an unbaked pumpkin pie, and instead of brown stuff dripping all down the walls and in everyone’s hair, it was orange. But I love telling the story, so I changed it to gravy in hopes of winning the magazine.
Brown gravy on mashed potatoes is ok. I’m not really a fan of gravy used any other way.
HOWEVER, the dress you are wearing on the cover of that magazine is FANTABULOUS. You really should share where you found that dress. 🙂
Love.Gravy. And, so does my daughter – a couple of weeks ago we were having a gravy craving. I started some bouillon cubes a boiling and went to the flour container. OMG, I’m out – how does that happen? I never run out of flour. Never. Hmmm, I have corn starch – right? Needless to say, my gravy looked like lemon jello – I told my daughter to close her eyes when she ate it – that way it would taste better! LOL, we couldn’t get over the way it looked. Couldn’t eat it – and had to throw out the mashed potatoes, too. I mean who can eat mashed potatoes without gravy??
Congratulations on your magazine layout – can’t wait to see your beautiful kitchen! Would love to have my very own copy, too!!!
Congrats on your spread! Wait that sounded gross. Anyway you get the idea. Gravy. IT’S DISGUSTING! Weird gelatinous grossness. ugh yuck. That being said, however, I do like my uncle’s gravy. Try saying that with a straight face. He makes the from scratch real stuff and it’s actually delicious! It’s a tricky thing to explain so when someone asks if I like gravy it’s much easier to say “no” then expounding on “my uncle’s gravy”.
We have a boat and appropriately named it Gravy!! It’s gray with some lumpy bits in the middle and the seats are black like pepper. When we sail it, I feel like vomiting, just like I do when I look at a big bowl of gravy at the breakfast table!
Tamara, you might have a coffee table book on your hands 🙂
I LOVE gravy! My family loves gravy! In fact, my youngest son says I make the best gravy he has ever eaten. Don’t tell Cuddles, but his favorite meal is what we call the Big Bird Special: fried chicken, corn on the cob and mashed potatoes and gravy. He I make it when he brought some international students home one weekend from college. They loved it!
I DO like gravy and sometimes make it. I also like free magazines. And this quote from you:
Then I cook something and leave the dishes to clean up in a week or so.
made me laugh and like you even more! Cheers on a job well done (cause, hey, they wouldn’t put it in the magazine if you hadn’t totally nailed it!)
sorry for the grammar mistake in my earlier post – meant to say: he asked me to make it when he brought some international students home from college
Every Christmas since I can remember I have had my mom’s mushroom gravy on veggie rice. And I just absolutely ADORE it, because this is not just any gravy. This is a gravy made out of 5 different wild mushrooms that she soaks for days until they are tender and all their juices mix together and then she chops them all fine and adds some flour and butter to make a roux, and finishes it all with half and half. So delicious, I even made it one year when it was just my brother and I alone for Christmas. Yum. So gravy, yes please!
You and Cuddles are adorable!
Our whole family loves gravy. It makes a meal seem like a special occasion. My gravy story involves my grandmother who was one of the world’s greatest cooks. Whenever she would become perturbed about something she would say, “Good gravy.” Those were the strongest words to come out of her sweet mouth. My sisters and I laugh whenever we think of her saying that. It fit her.
The sneak peak of your kitchen has me very intrigued!
Yes! On french fries
YES, I love Gravy! Not in the food kind of way though. My favorite Gravy was my kitty, who passed on a couple of weeks ago. She was a treasure, a grumpy, angry treasure who would only let me pet her on vet day. But she made me smile every day, partially because of the silliness of her name. It was fitting though; she was a chubber. 🙂
Yay, gravy! Biscuits and gravy was something I loved when I lived in the South briefly – can you come up with a good recipe??? YOU look grogeous in the photo – and I can’t wait to see your work on the kitchen. I redid my kitchen myself as well – right after my divorce many years ago – and it was one of the most satisfying projects I have ever done!!! So happy for you!!!
The kitchen teaser looks amazing, I can’t wait to see the full story! I just lived though an 8 month first floor remodel (all flooring, kitchen and half bath) so I feel your pain and somehow haven’t quite forgotten it yet.
I have a very special place in my heart for the perfect chicken fried steak and gravy from a small town in the middle of IL. Since I have no work reason to go there anymore, I drove two hours last week just for lunch!
I love gravy. When I moved to Cape Cod I moved away from the delicious biscuits and gravy of the south. Seriously, never order bicuits and gravy here; it’s heinous.
Hiya Karen!!! I like gravy—not love—and only brown gravy. My ex likes white gravy, yuck, lol. I’m so glad that Ms. Cuddles is doing better, and you both look divine. Thanks for having the giveaway, and thanks to Canadian Living. Blessed be, hugs!!!
OMG I LOVE GRAVY!!!! I really miss the french fries drowning in the gravy from Parkside. I used to love smothering them both in ketchup. Gravy should be a food group.
Gravy on my plate
Sop it up with a biscuit
Get in my belly
Do I like gravy?! You can’t grow up in the U.S. Midwest and not like gravy…the cream kind…where you make a bechamel sauce, but instead of butter you use the drippings from whatever meat you’ve “chicken fried,” floured and fried, probably in lard, but maybe vegetable oil. My sister and I even ate it on cottage cheese. Yes, we’re still alive and so is my mother who taught us to eat this stuff and she’ll be 99 in December. Yes, you and your hen are cute. I can’t see enough of your kitchen to comment. Would love to win a magazine.
I like pan gravy, but I get lazy sometimes & use mix packets…..My aunt makes the best holiday gravy, because it’s different every year. She cooks 3 meats, Lamb, Turkey, Beef, Ham, Venison or Elk, whatever 3 we choose that year & makes the gravy from juices. Gravy is her favorite food & says she’d eat tissues if they had gravy on them.
I’m glad to hear Cuddles made it through. I had rabbits that got sick and kept dying. We had to get rid of all of them and get new stock.
Gravy makes me think of my grandmother. She would have hot homemade gravy readily available at every opportunity. Gravy makes me smile. 🙂
Of course so does that pic of you and Cuddles!! 😀
I do like gravy, just don’t have it too often. With our empty nest, I don’t make Sunday dinners with the works any more, so it’s mostly the holidays or a special meal when I have it.
You and Cuddles look great in your gorgeous kitchen too!
Don’t enter me in the draw…
I stopped at two different stores on my way home from the gym to see if they had the magazine yet…then stopped the library because they have magazines…not yet either!
Love the tease….waiting to see the rest!
My grandmother-in-law insists on putting bright nuclear yellow food coloring into her gravy, because otherwise it just wouldn’t taste right.
Can’t wait to see the kitchen! This strip tease has been going on long enough.
Love what I can see of the kitchen but that may pale in my love for gravy. Now if I could just figure out why my gravy is like a bowl of jello after it gets refrigerated!
Yes, I like gravy. A side eye at anyone who doesn’t!
Story: Great Aunt Helen & Uncle Howard would always come for holiday dinners when I was a kid. My mom was trying to be “fancy” and served some salad-y dish in a compote on the dinner plate, but used one of those plastic-backed paper coasters underneath. Uncle didn’t notice and put his roast beef and gravy on the coaster, then sawed and sawed away, then complained that the meat is so tough! Much laughter when he realized it ws the coaster thing. (This same Uncle at another holiday meal passed his shoe around the table to prove his feet didn’t smell.)
Wow, who knew so many people liked gravy……or do they just want a copy of Canadian Living featuring your beautiful kitchen, chicken and YOU!!! My son grew up loving my “cement” gravy over biscuits on Sunday mornings. You can tell by his definition that my gravy was thick and white and lumpy with sausage. He’s now 41 and still asks for “cement” gravy! Congrats on the magazine cover and article.
turkey gravy or poutine for me please!
Love, love, love gravy!!! I don’t need a magazine sent to me as I plan to run out and buy it right away!! Go ahead and make some Americans happy!
Love Love Love gravy….I even buy the white gravy in packets for my chicken tender dinner, but don’t tell my family. Love the dress you are wearing and can’t wait to see your kitchen reveal. Congratulations on the spread in the magazine.
Oh, I forgot to ask, what is “poutine”?
!!! Poutine is french fries with poutine gravy and cheese on them. To be REAL poutine, it has to be white cheese curds. Not regular hunks of mozzarella (which is what 90% of fast food places serve on poutine). Sounds GROSS but is loved by all who taste it. ~ karen!
I make turkey gravy the way my mom taught me, and she learned from her grandma from Palmerston. It’s the best gravy in the world! Can’t wait to see kitchen pics. You all look pretty cute so far!
Seeing you and Cuddles looking so classy on the cover of Candaian Living , must make Betty proud. I love gravy, in fact in Austin, TX we have a food trailer called Biscuits and Groovey… It’s so good!
I love pepper gravy!! I make it with sausage and eat it with biscuits.
Moved to Texas. Discovered biscuits and gravy, along with myriad fried foods. Typically it’s the red-eye type of gravy (don’t ask me what it means, I’ve been here 30 years and still don’t know). So basically, you got your bad white carb disks smothered with salty greasy peppery gooiness. Yup. It’s pure HEAVEN.
Soooo I gained a bit of poundage. Make that MANY a poundage. For which, 30 years on, I am still paying for, and forever trying to lose.
I haven’t had biscuits & gravy in many a moons, but boy howdy…that sure does sound good right now (she says as she slurps down yet another green smoothie). Sigh.
Congrats on the magazine spread, can’t wait to see it all! 🙂
I have a gravy story. Well, it is my dad’s but he has passed so it is mine now I guess. When he was a kid, he would sing a song at church about ‘Low in the Gravy Lay’ and always wondered why Jesus would be in gravy. When he grew up he realized it was ‘Low in the Grave He Lay’. Bahahaha. I always think of him when we sing that song at church services. You and Cuddles look particularly Cuddly on the cover. So glad she is back to her self.
Having grown up in the woods 40 miles west of Syracuse there are 2 things you were certain to eat, venison and gravy. I loved them equally, until the first time I went hunting with my dad. But that’s a whole other story so back to the gravy. My granny made gravy, my mom made gravy, and at around 9 I was enlisted in to Gravy Boot camp, because naturally I too would make gravy. You ask, Gravy Boot camp, really? Yup, they really had that and I had two of the toughest Sergeants. One silently but intimately hovered over me at the stove, ensuring that I was using the correct ingredients, measurements and sauce pan. And the other barked commands at me the entire gravy making time, keep whisking, whisk faster, faster, check the heat it’s going to burn! It never burned. And of course, like any old school militant based gravy program, there were some questionable tactics used to ensure I that would never, ever be tempted to join the “other ranks, those who served canned gravy! My favorite and one that I really believed for a long time, was that it was an actual sin to serve anything but homemade gravy. I was Catholic and 9, and if Grammy, I mean my Sergeant said it, it must be true. For years I prayed for the lunch ladies at school, they served canned gravy and mashed potatoes every Thursday!
My Grammy has passed, but her gravy lives on. My daughter will be 9 next year, and my Mom and I are itching for her Boot Camp to begin. It’s been over 30 years since mine, but I’m quite sure my Mom can still bark orders, while I hover and try to convince her of the 11th commandment. Thou shall never serve canned gravy!
Karen – Congrats on the mag! You, your kitchen and your chicken look Fabulous!
I am not a fan of gravy, but I am a fan of black and white dresses. Yours is lovely.
I love gravey and I want to win!
First – wooohooo it’s finally out so congrats!! Second – you and Cuddles look super cute. Third… Do I like gravy? Good grief girl I live in Texas so of COURSE I like gravy. Especially on anything “chicken fried”. Or biscuits. Or… yeah I like gravy. Now I need to go make some….
Love some gravy, baby. Dying to see the kitchen!!!
I love gravy- especially on mashed potatoes. I like making little potato volcanoes and pretending the gravy is lava. And then the lava burns the villagers (veggies), and makes them delicious. Please tell me thats how everyone else uses gravy- to kill villagers.
Also, I really want to see your kitchen!
I love gravy and I make really good gravy and I grew up with chicken gravy on mashed potatoes and I would be in heaven when corn was served with it. I would pile the mashed potatoes on the corn and then smother it all with the chicken gravy and to heck with the rest of the meal.
Your kitchen is a hit, not even getting to see anything but 4 corners and you.
I heart gravy.any gravy any time… on any meat, on fries, and is course on mashed taters… no story though.more like weird fact . My husband only eatss chicken gravy. .. even on beef or pork or bisquits (He is nuts)
I love gravy. All kinds of gravy. Just not on biscuits. Biscuits were meant for butter. And honey. Not gravy.
Gravy is okay. I get the hubby to make it though because I can’t be bothered. Love your dress!
Gravy? Did you say gravy? That’s a side dish ALONE! Homemade only, but milk gravy, brown gravy, chicken gravy, but, alas, I must admit, I don’t like red-eye gravy. And biscuits, well, those are just the vehicles with which the gravy enters my mouth!
Now for the brownie points (BTW – I like brownies, too). The kitchen kind of goes without saying; I mean, you have gone “Rolls Royce” on that. And, you, you look marvelous my dear, as usual. Excellent dress pick – modern day June Cleaver with panache (and matching the kitchen as well). And Cuddles, well, she has a certain je ne sais quoi about her dignified self.
Thanks. Only 9 left to give away now. LOL
who doesn’t like gravy? but let’s get to the important stuff. I want a copy of that magazine!
Gravy, and kitchen sinks… A few turkey days back my parents hosted. My husband and I arrived early knowing full well no one would get started on time and it takes awhile to boil a turkey neck for that gravy! We arrived just in time to watch the kitchen faucet break. The meal was prepared using the bathroom sink, and dishes were washed with giant pots of boiling water from the hose on a tripod propane cooker. We don’t quit! You look great!
New kitchen floor? Well I may as well rip up the whole dang place…. Yes, that would be my thought process as well 🙂 Looking forward to seeing a full view of the place when you ARE allowed to show more photos!
Yes, I do love gravy. On many things.
And I’m so glad to see Cuddles is on the up & up, too!
Sometimes I eat gravy with a spoon. By itself. I’m so ashamed. But not really.
Yay for new kitchens!!!!
Eeeek, I want to see it badly – pick me, pick me!!!!
Biscuits and gravy. Nuff said.
I, too, love gravy! However, it is a relatively newly acquired taste for me. Newly acquired as in the past few years (when you’re my age, a few years ago is pretty new) Cream gravy, brown gravy, chocolate gravy (otherwise known as caramel)…… I love it all. Now-a-days 😉
Tonight I made rosemary pork roast slow cooked in Chardonnay and then poured the gravy all over some sour cream mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. So, hell yeah, this chick loves gravy. Hook a sista up with a magazine!
Gravy, not much!!! But you and Cuddles look fabulous sitting on the kitchen counter. Love the dress.
Love gravy!
Karen,
The kitchen, Cuddles, and of course yourself, look amazing! I can’t wait to see how everything turned out! I admire your strength, courage, and sense of humor and you don’t know how much you encourage me in trying to do new things for myself – thank you!
WTF, You can’t possibly be going t read all bijilion responses? So, fact is, I hat gravy. It doesn’t grow on plants. Sure, the flour does, b these of that stuff, Fay, drippings of poor dead chickens? Oh, my….that is enough to turn a one vegan.
I love design ‘zines from somewhere else than the US of A. It is my #1 request when my fella (of 35 years) travels.
So, Yep, gravy or. It, I want Your ‘zine!!!
KH
Karen, you look FABULOUS in that dress, and I’m not just saying that for the bonus points! I would love to see your kitchen in this issue of Canadian Living, so I will tell you my gravy story. Many years ago, one of my first roast turkey dinners, I made a delicious gravy. I was so excited to put it on the table, but it had a few lumps, so I strained it — right into the sink. I had a strainer full of turkey bits, and a drain full of gravy. Thank goodness it was not Thanksgiving. The sad thing is I did it again a few years later! At least that second time I caught myself and managed to save a little bit. Since then I have been much more careful with my gravy!!
I love brown gravy!!!!! Biscuits and gravy, fried chicken smothered in gravy, rice and gravy, turkey, dressing with gravy. You get the idea. I am a gravy loving woman.
HATE gravy.
Gravy? What’s not to love? What strikes me about the photo is how elegant you look, even with a hen in your arms. People who don’t read your blog probably wouldn’t believe that you are a big fan of potty humor.
I heart gravy.
I’m not a gravy person. Can’t explain it. I prefer cheese sauce over gravy.
You and cuddles look fabulous darling….
I’m in the middle of a bathroom and kitchen renovation myself, and we’re doing most of the work! I can’t wait to see your kitchen. I would love one of your magazines for inspiration and for a renovation buddy.
So thankful, your sweet cuddles won her battle. You two had a tough year: but look at you chicks now!!!
I love gravy, but I just went Paleo and I am pretty sure the no flour thing will yuk up any good gravy. Also after an unexpected root canal and strep throat that I now have, no gravy will taste good. Since I am lying in bed, unable to talk and feeling totally sorry for myself, I thought; hmmmm…what might cheer me up? I know The October edition of Canadian Living with your dream kitchen in it!
GRAVY.. LOVE it. Flour or baking powder mixed with milk then add to hot boiling stock, that’s it. Just keep stirring until you reach the thickness you want and voila ENJOY! LOVE your counter top! LOVE the picture of you and Cuddles. LOVE the idea you came up with sharing the opportunity of the Canadian Living Magazine. LOVE the caption on the front of the magazine ” everything but the kitchen sink”! (classic) lol. LOVE to see the rest of your makeover kitchen. JOB well done. PS. Give a cuddle to Cuddles, glad hes better.
I renewed my lapsed digital Canadian Living subscription just to see the article! Kitchen looks amazing!
LOL, thanks Heather! ~ karen!
I love gravy! I put gravy on lots of things….pancakes, toast, eggs, chicken, potatoes…. I love mixing potatoes, gravy, and corn together. I love when you put a spoonful in your mouth, you bite down on one of those corn kernel, and it bursts in your mouth.
Speaking of gravy… I went to the MN state fair last weekend and had one of the many new food concoctions that the fair had called Chicken in a Waffle. It was spicy chicken, topped with GRAVY, and stuck into a waffle cone for easy transportation. It was yummy until you got to the chocolate at the bottom of the waffle cone. Chocolate and sausage gravy together are not as good as them separate.
I also like the way you chose to wear a black and white dress (which looks lovely by the way)(and no I’m not just trying to get on your good side so that I can get a magazine to see your amazing kitchen :)) it really makes Cuddles stand out!
Good Gravy! I hope I don’t miss the gravy boat on this give-away! If I win a copy of this magazine I’ll be riding the gravy train all the way to next week! Interesting, the word gravy. Gray-vee. Thought to be derived from the word greaves, a Middle English word used to described the unmeltable sediment left over from rendered animal tallow. Mmmm. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But I do love gravy, and find it interesting that so many of the gravy stories here center around Thanksgiving. Must be everybody’s favorite gravy holiday! I can’t wait to see the whole kitchen, Karen. But I probably won’t be able to schedule a 1500 mile trip to Canada to pick up a copy of the magazine, although I have been to Niagara Falls. Congratulations on the write-up and that great cover picture. Love you, love Cuddles! By the way, I too have cartoon character feet. I didn’t really notice until my sister had a baby and said, “Yep, she has your Fred Flintstone feet!” Wow. No wonder I can power that engine-less stone slab car so easily. But I bet you’re wearing adorable shoes with that adorable dress. Hugs to you and cuddles to Cuddles.
Thanks BethH! Fat feeties unite! ~ karen
Love my mom’s gravy, but miss it immensely since becoming vegan.
Gravy? Did you say gravy? You do know that’s an entrée and not a side dish right (at least for my family)? Homemade only – white, brown, white, chicken, white, turkey, did I mention white because I REALLY like white gravy, white sausage gravy if I’m having sausage for breakfast. I must admit, I do not like red-eye gravy – coffee at NO time should be allowed near gravy.
Going for the brownie points now (BTW, I also love brownies). The kitchen, I think, goes without saying, you went Cadillac (or Rolls) on that! And you, you look marvelous, as always. Very modern day June Cleaver with panache. And Cuddles, well, she just has that certain je ne sais quois (I hope I spelled that right) about her dignified self.
Now you only have 9 magazines left to give away. LOL! And autographed might bring more on the open market.
Thanks for lessons learned and laughs for the soul! Magazine or no, always a faithful follower.
Oh my goodness!! I cannot believe that I “might” get to see your kitchen in actual print, not on the internet. So cool!!!! Love you. You look awesome by the way. Love Cuddles and your dress, and your hair. Did I mention I love you? yeah. I have a chicken named Speedy. She was super fast as a baby. She is our pet and lets us carry her whenever we wish. So sweet.
Congrat’s on the kitchen! Oh, love gravy , btw. My daughter is a huge fan of gravy too!
Who doesn’t like gravy?!! You and Cuddles look smashing. I wish I had a Cuddles…
I live for gravy! Did you know that in England you can buy gravy “granules” in a container that you just add water to and PRESTO! instant gravy? Me neither until 3 weeks ago. Just thought I’d share that bit of information with you.
So glad that Cuddles is okay.
And , yes, we are all nuts.
I am just starting a kitchen reno…..I needed a new dishwasher, so we bought a new gas stove too….We are using the stove but haven’t hooked up the new dishwasher. Our kitchen is literally falling apart, so we decided to (finally) replace it….but now we are taking out walls to the dining room, putting up walls in the living room, electric wires, fixtures and phone need moving, tearing up all the floors and carpet and installing new wood floors and then of course, new paint. I hope to be done by Christmas because I always host it!
PS.
I am Canadian, so I can get my own mag!
I actually can’t cook but make a great white sauce (for lasagna etc) and the best lamb and lamb gravy the world has ever known – just borders on the edge of being too strong but stops at the point of fabulousness. Neither of these talents are particularly useful on a daily basis as you can imagine.
I live in Malta so can’t ask for the magazine but felt the need to boast about my gravy. Whilst I’m here, what the hell is white gravy? Definitely not a British thing. Gravy is made from animal and is good & dark – that’s it, no alternatives 🙂 I imagine white gravy to be like the white sauce you get in a chicken pie?
Your kitchen looks fab as do you and Cuddles! While I ate lots of gravy growing up, we were poor so many nights it was leftover gravy over toast, I am not a huge fan now. Maybe that’s why? I associate it with being poor. Hasn’t bothered my one brother though – he’ll order biscuits and gravy any time he can. LOL! Confession – I don’t even know how to make gravy so when it’s time for Thanksgiving dinner I open up a can or jar of gravy and mix in some turkey bits and fat from the roasting pan, some extra seasoning, heat it up and call it homemade. Hey, it’s in a damn gravy boat FGS, what else do you want? ~ Barb 🙂
Yes, I love gravy. You and Cuddles look AMAZING as does your kitchen. I am particularly coveting that blind you have on the window behind you. Love that! Can’t wait to see the whole kitchen.
My love affair with gravy started when I was 5. I would drink it, yes…I said drink it, from the measuring cup we used as a gravy boat.. We were too poor to have a gravy boat ( It was a plastic mostly yellow tupperware one) and it would have been difficult to daintily slurp it from a boat. I’ve tried it numerous times since with my grown up beautifully hand made pottery boat. When I got caught by my parents I was required to then switch to a spoon, so other people in out family could have some gravy. I didn’t want to share so I switched back to the drink. Now we all know why I was a pudgy little kid. Yay!Cuddles! Yay!Chickens!
Here’s my gravy story. I am a pastry chef and was working in a darling little restaurant called Firefly Bistro in quaint little South Pasadena (movies often use South Pasadena as a location when they want a quiet, midwestern-looking, all-American small-town vibe, but don’t want to leave the Los Angeles area.)
We had a biscuit-and-gravy type dish on the menu, sort of an eggs benedict/biscuits and gravy hybrid consisting of a buttermilk biscuit, bacon, a poached eggs, and artichoke gravy. After my coworker made the crisp bacon, I saw all that lovely bacon fat in the pan and decided to use some of it instead of butter to make the roux for the artichoke gravy. “That’s okay, isn’t it?” I asked my coworker. “I mean, it’s not a vegetarian dish, what with the bacon.” We agreed it was fine to use the fat. But then the first customer to order the dish asked for–no bacon. We said nothing. The customer didn’t specifically ask for a vegetarian version of the dish, but the implication was kind of clear. We looked at each other and clapped our hands over our mouths. “Oops.”
BTW Cuddles looks GREAT in that picture. You don’t look half bad either–that dress! And I have all kinds of kitchen envy right now. My kitchen is fine, and fairly new, but totally not me! Black granite countertops, dark wood cabinets, putty-colored tile floors and backsplash. The designer just wanted a look that wouldn’t offend any potential buyer, so there’s nothing interesting about it. Your kitchen is bright and airy and gorgeous. Love.
I’m not sure I would even trust someone who doesn’t like gravy. Where would beloved poutine be without it??
I like Cuddles’ outfit. Yours too-you do clean up well!
Why does everybody remark on being from the South and loving gravy? I am born and raised in Louisiana with a wonderful mama and 2 perfect grandmothers and lots of aunts and friends and we only had juice from roast beef or ham on our rice. For Thanksgiving, we had cornbread dressing and nobody tried to ruin it with gravy. At school, we had this grotesque brown gelled shit that I never touched. It was a happy day when I ran into some white sausage gravy on biscuits with tons of Tabasco, but that was in a restaurant in Olympia, WA, where the women do have beards.
I forgot to say CONGRATULATIONS on your kitchen and your magazine deal! That’s so awesome! You look beautiful and so does Miss Cuddles.
Don’t like gravy – I like the taste of it but knowing it is full of fat kinda grosses me out. I can’t wait to see your kitchen reveal.
My gravy stories includes a brown ceiling….apparently you are not suppose to put hot gravy in the blender to smooth out the chunks….on Thanksgiving….that you are hosting. Lesson learned. BTW you look adorable.
Love gravy especially if poutine is involved BUT I love Bob Marley even better, so, supper of poutine a BM CD and a copy of CL is a perfect evening . Thanks Karen.
Vegan chickpea gravy!
Picked up the October issue of Canadian Living at the Shoppers this morning, Karen. Man, oh man. No spoilers, but it all looks fabulous. Fah-bu-lous!! Love the dress and the shoes, too. Cheers.
Gurl- I live in North Carolina and I could not live w/o my gravy– spicy sausage gravy over warm biscuits! To die for ( and if eat it often enough, will probably kill me!)
I’m a southern lady so I prefer sausage gravy on my biscuits, please.
My grandma and my mom both made lumpy gravy for the holidays and swore it was supposed to be that way! It wasn’t until my oldest sister started cooking that I realized what real gravy was supposed to be like. (We call her Martha, Jr. – because of her cooking and decorating skills, not because she’s likely to go to jail. Ever.)
And I love your dress and Cuddles looks quite regal sitting there posing all pretty with you. I was so distracted by the two of you, I had to go back for a second look at the kitchen.
I once ate at The Chicken Pie Shop, which is supposed to be famous for chicken pot pies and gravy. The food was cold, the veggies were frozen, the gravy was mustard yellow and our waitress thought she was earning big bucks by bringing us an extra bowl of it – which she stuck her finger in as she set it on the table. She thought I didn’t notice. I did. Never again, Pie Shop. Never again. Otherwise, gravy is pretty rad.
Take me out of the running (not that I really thought I should be in it after the piggy salt and pepper score. It’s someone else’ turn).
My eyes are too bad to settle for the online version of the mag, but I was able to purchase a single copy of the October issue to be delivered in the next 10-12 days over the phone today. Woo hoo!
Just saying the word “gravy” starts me to salivate. Like buckets o’ drool. (Wasn’t that a Bond Girl name?)
My dad was a gravy aficionado and would roast a tiny pork roast along side the beef roast so the pork juices would go with the beef juices and the gravy would be that much better. Since pork is the other white meat, I could imagine you could do that trick with chicken, but I’ll leave that thought for another day.
Congrats on the article! And continued good health to the Cuddles.
I Love Red-Eye Gravy, Country Ham and Grits.
If Cuddles lays eggs, they would be good with this to!
Even I couldn’t get through all these comments but here’s my gravy story. At the mere mention of gravy, my father-in-Al, would say “Scram gravy that ain’t wavy!” We still don’t know exactly what it means but one Christmas all the siblings received gravy bowls with the phrase lettered around the rim. Ali’s gone now, so I hope it brings a smile whenever they use them. It would certainly bring a smile to my face to receive a magazine!
You sound positively giddy! And well you should. If I looked half as spectacular as you, with or without Miss Cuddles, I would be giddy too!
Your kitchen is fabulous. A great place to make gravy. While I love gravy… my half-new kitchen still has a says to go. My project also started with a new floor and snowballed from there. The working-half of the kitchen is finally finished after leaving no surface untouched… down to the studs touched. The desk-side of the kitchen is waiting for it bank account to recover.
But I can still make gravy!!
Gravy is the best! And by the way, you look amazing in this photo!
Poutine…gotta have ketchup with it!
If Cuddles needs a holiday we have a super cute chicken hotel with an organic winery around the corner. Lots of friendly chick’s roaming around. Congrats, can’t wait to see your kitchen…we have just started pricing out ours..oh my!!
Ok Karen……… here’s my story. I have a Cuddles (named Sourdough), who I carry to bed each night….long story. I have a dress very similar to the dress you are wearing on the cover. Let me add, you look extremely attractive. I could take a picture of me, wearing my dress, holding Sourdough…. on my gravy stained counter top and we would almost be twinsies (my hair is white).
Well, not even close but I’m trying here to win a magazine. I want that magazine. And a gravy stained counter top is the closest I get to eating gravy. AND my kitchen will be in the movie now called Consumed…….. so I think I deserve a magazine. I mean, I let them film LOTS of scenes in my house out of the goodness of my heart. Thank you! That’s all I have to say.
Being a Southern (Alabama) girl, I absolutely LOVE GRAVY! But, although I’m a Southern girl, I DONT live tomato gravy, which is as Southern as grits, which I do love. Anyway, what I really, really LOVE is that photo of you and the beautiful Cuddles. And I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that dress yours wearing in the photo! Lookin’ good, you two! Oh, and the kitchen, too!
I detest gravy…BUT…pick me…pick me…pick me!
Actually you and Cuddles compliment that beautiful kitchen. You have given me some great ideas for the renovation of our motorhome!!! Thanks for the inspiration!!! And I love sausage gravy and biscuits!
Beef gravy on my French fries — and I cannot wait to see your kitchen!!!
LOVED the article in Canadian Living. My favorite is your “cuisine art” . I wont give away the surprise but thing not on the hook made me laugh.
I love, love LOVE your fridge. wow. Me want right now..
Congrats on the awesome kitchen. Seeing the before and after pictures really showed the difference. It is amazing that you did it yourself. Very nice job. 🙂
White wine gravy, over chicken, with roasted veggies and perfectly cooked rice. With mushrooms, freshly sliced, not pre-sliced, in the gravy. It is 4 am, I am still awake and now I want white wine gravy with mushrooms. I also want a copy of Canadian Living Magazine so I can see your kitchen. I also want to pin the photo of Cuddles to the wall so I can walk by it and say how cute she is. In my 4am exhausted funk, I am so happy that Cuddles made it through her mystery disease. I’m going to sleep now with visions of Canadian Living dancing in my head.
I’m definitely pro-gravy.
I’m also pro-this photo of you and Cuddles (and the kitchen, naturally). Loving it!
of course I have a gravy story: ‘good gravy’ is my favorite saying ……nowadays it could be gg.
Love gravy, although we d0n’t have it very often. My husband sprinkles sugar over his ! Yuk, what is that about ?
I like gravy! I LOVE gravy. Biscuits and sausage gravy. yuuuummmmmmm. Not always, though. When I was a kid my dad ate his eggs over easy on top of biscuits and gravy. When the yolks were broken it looked just awful and I was always admonishing him when he served up my plate on all occasions, “Don’t mix it, Daddy!” Ewwww, the sight of those eggs still makes my toes curl. You look lovely in the pic but, hate to say, Cuddles has upstaged you. Again.
ohhh my….. I luuuuvvv gravy….especially on mashed potatoes loaded with garlic! What a happy picture of you and Cuddles! Hope I win 😀
You look chic and adorable! I agree though that Cuddles should have worn pearls.
I LOOOOOVE gravy, and the first time I made it was probably some of the best gravy I’ve ever had. I’ll explain, because that sounds kinda arrogant but it’s not you’ll understand after I tell the story. It was about 7 years ago for the first Thanksgiving dinner that I ever cooked. Our kitchen was tiny, and I mean extremely tiny, so I resolved with my then and current boyfriend that I would have to do everything but clean up afterwards because there just wasn’t enough room for both of us in there. Unfortunately we didn’t have a dishwasher either, so I had to clean as I cooked and it was absolutely crazy. By the time I took the turkey out of the oven, I was feeling like you were feeling while your kitchen was under construction. The turkey was out and cooling and everything else was finishing up cooking, so I hadn’t gotten to taste much of anything after hours of cooking. I was tired and worried and stressing out because I didn’t know if any of was going to come out right, and then I tasted my gravy. I tell you, I was so hungry by that point that that gravy tasted like the best thing I had ever eaten! Luckily the next thing to be done was the mashed potatoes, so I immediately made a little snack for myself and avoided a horrible case of hangry-ness. Anyway, I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner every year since then, and it’s always pretty damn tasty, but there won’t be any gravy as good as the gravy I made that day.
A big thumbs up for the gravy! And for the recovery of Cuddles! And for your kitchen! Keep up the fabulous work 🙂
I adore gravy.
I need the magazine…just like I need good gravy! Who doesn’t after all? You look marvelous, love the dress, and Cuddles looks so well coiffed. She could use a Rolls Royce saddle too, have you ever seen those..strange. I can’t believe we still can’t see pictures…aaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhh! I swear that is why I signed up for your blogging webinar just to see your kitchen.
You’re adorable, Cuddles is adorable and YES! I love gravy! One particular Thanksgiving, my teenage son made the comment about my sister’s turkey gravy….”Why you could practically drink this stuff!” I believe his Christmas present that year was some frozen homemade gravy. We do not know if he actually drank it!
Just got my copy at the grocery store last night and tucked into it this morning while drinking coffee – all I have to say is GORGEOUS!!!
Just wow. I especially love the island made of the old shopkeepers counter – I hope you’ll go into more detail on that process soon!
Congrats!
I love gravy except when Rob Ford uses the term in one of his political speeches about reducing “the GRAVY train” of government expenses! At that point I just feel like vomiting in my mouth! Yeck!
Yep, I do love gravy! Red-eye sausage gravy to be exact. Two of the greatest things I was introduced to when I moved from California to Kentucky for college…gravy and my hubby (not necessarily in that order). 😉
I would love to win a copy of the magazine! Have been dying to see your kitchen, love your honesty and believe you are right, we are all crazy! I interestingly enough have just tried “sausage gravy”. I was visiting relatives in Ohio of all places and just had to know what all the hoopla was surrounding sausage gravy and biscuits. I liked the biscuits better with out the gravy (that gravy is very salty)…I make an awesome Turkey gravy, Roast Beef , as well as ‘ahem (chicken gravy)…maybe its just me I seem to be in the minority of people who don’t care for the biscuits and gravy combo. Any way looking fwd to seeing every inch of the kitchen…any which way!
yes, of course i like gravy! (turkey gravy especially)
Congratulations. Your kitchen is fabulous! It took a bit for me to find the October issue of Canadian Living. It wasn’t on the shelves yet in my usual places on Friday but did find it today. Came home, made a cup of tea and then savoured every photo and the article. I love that you sourced so many of your kitchen items from local Hamilton and Dundas stores. I love the Rough Linen blinds. I especially love the white brick wall.
Those sexy curves… those beautifully coiffed tresses! Wow! Cuddles looks great!!! Oh, Karen you look pretty darn good too. But never mind all of that… we want to see the kitchen!!!!! I’m thinking Canadian Living is either being discriminating for not selling to Americans, or stingy for only giving away 10 copies to your faithful followers. They’re going to make a fortune off your issue, the least they could do is cough up some more copies, right?!?
Yes, I love gravy, from sausage to chicken and beyond :o) It’s one of my comfort foods.
My story: I was tasked with making the gravy one night many years ago at home. We were using an electric skillet, setting on the hoosier cupboard. I opened a door above the skillet, and the green food coloring fell out…. into the gravy. My family insisted we eat with the lights off that night.
For the brownie points: Karen, you and cuddles are gorgeous, and your lovely new kitchen makes a marvelous backdrop for the two of you. It’s absolutely true!
ps I grew up with an outhouse and a hand-pump at the kitchen sink. (and chickens) I totally understand about pooping in a bucket. Surely makes one appreciate a modern toilet, eh?
Of course I love gravy….growing up on a farm and learning to cook with your grandmother, how could one not love gravy!!!!
My Aunt Jan makes the world’s best biscuits with sausage gravy. No matter where I am in the cycle of pretending I like to eat healthy I always eat them.
I don’t know who style your hair and Cuddle’s feathers but you both look great.
LOL. Thanks Cocoplum. Cuddles did my hair. ~ karen!
Gravy is good, but I only ever make for poutine…that amazing dish that makes me want to move to Canada.
While I’m really excited to see your kitchen, I was even more excited to see Cuddles :D. You two look gorgeous!
The cover looks great Karen! And I’m very happy Cuddles pulled through and see see what a cutie she is 🙂
I am going to go buy the magazine for sure, but I will tell you that I like gravy just in case I don’t find a copy on this island they call Newfoundland. You never know with this place. When you are dependant on boats and ferries things get tricky.
Now I want gravy and won’t be happy until I make some. Not chicken gravy though. Not after Cuddles came so close to not being. Also…pick me! Pick me!!!
There is nothing as good as fresh cooked bacon or sausage gravy for breakfast, I love me some gravy and biscuits! However, it is possible to OD on too much gravy. When I was 10 years old, my mother had to go into the hospital for about two weeks, leaving my father to tend to me. We ate gravy and light bread (he couldn’t make biscuits) for breakfast and dinner, thank goodness it was during the school year so I got to eat something else for lunch at least during the week. My aunt stopped by the house one day to check on us. She invited us up to dinner, my father was in the process of turning her down, when I jumped between them and exclaimed “please, Daddy, can’t we go to dinner at Aunt Maries House”. I was beyond excited when he accepted her offer. That’s my gravy story. Oh, BTW, you and Cuddles look exceptionally adorable! I love the black and white dress! And from what I can see of your kitchen in the photo, it is absolutely stunning!
that dress is gravy! (right? is that the right lingo?)
I <3 gravy!
I would LOVE you be able to see your magazine! I immigrated to Michigan from Georgetown, ON and I wish I could even buy the Magazine! I hope I can win one, or if not I’ll try to get my mom to buy me the copy!
Your Kitchen has been a HUGE inspiration to all ideas I’ve had and loved for my kitchen for ages, and have been so happy to be able to follow you for so long!! Congratulations on getting such a glamorous cover shot!
Delayed response because of daughter’s 10th birthday and family in town from out of state… 🙂
Sausage gravy on biscuits – mmm hmmm… For other gravies – i like just a little bit…
I just finished my kitchen renovation as well – not as arduous as yours, but still a hassle with 2 kids… let me know if you’d like to see pictures… 😉 Next big thing is finishing my basement…
Also, you had very kindly given me some advice a little while ago about BBQs – gas vs charcoal… 🙂 Just wanted to let you know that my mom and her partner gave me a cool new BBQ that has BOTH! yep – convenience of gas along with the charcoal when i want it… They were in town this past weekend and helped me put it together… Made my first batch o’ hot dogs last night, and my daughters loved it… 🙂 yep – only the best… 🙂
Thanks for always making me smile – you have a gift, and i hope you know how many people’s lives you brighten with it! 🙂 So glad to about Cuddles’ miraculous recovery!
mmmm gravy!
Love that Cuddles made the photo shoot. Bet she doesn’t want to talk about gravy though…
I love gravy! The photo of you and Cuddles is very nice BUT it would have been better with a little Nigerian Dwarf kid. 🙂
Once a month we have breakfast for dinner and it involves gravy. Gravy is my comfort food. Thank you for the giveaway.
Ps. I like how your dress matches cuddles outfit
Of course I love gravy! What’s the point of Thanksgiving if not for gravy?
Your dress is awesome. I’m jealous that you have a cuddly chicken – mine only love me for the treats.
Of course I want a copy of the magazine – duh! We’ve waited a year to see this kitchen.
Sausage gravy with biscuits…mmmmmmmmmm…
I love gravy. I make gravy from soysage patties (i’ve been veggie for 25 years). I know it’s blasphemy. I’m a sinner like that.
….and my favorite part of the chicken is the cloaca….and this is the second time today i’ve mentioned a chicken’s cloaca. I’m dirty like that.
I have a VCT floor too….so cheap….so simple….so chic.
Give me a magazine. 🙂
I used to love gravy. But, one day I decided to leave it off; and, guess what? There were some really delicious potatoes under there. I haven’t used it since.
I don’t eat meat and gravy is just meat juice and flour…I no like!
I love gravy! Whats not to love about gravy? My favorite is one I make every Thanksgiving, done up with a scratch made giblet stock that I do a few days ahead of time, and use exclusively for the gravy. Thats love, and dedication.
Gravy? What’s that? It is probably an item invented by fat people to get skinny people fat! And I bet it even drips down your chin while ferousiosly slurping it. Wonder if one could bathe in it. Now, if it goes with potatoes, I would definitely consume much of it and say ” to hell with skinny”! Lol
What I see I love! Hope to see the whole shooting match when I win. Cuddles is pulling for me because she knows I pulled for her.
I saw you and you son’s picture in Cdn. Living (and your beautiful kitchen too). You did a fantastic job – congratulations.
I question your sanity if you DON’T like gravy!
I love gravy.
And Cuddles…I now want to raise my own chickens. 🙂
Just in under the wire! I will send you a picture of me eating gravy while reading Canadian Living Mag in my not-so-stylish kitchen looking at your beautiful kitchen dreaming of the day I could have a kitchen like yours if I win!! (Sorry, husband won’t allow live chickens in the house even for a photo shoot…killjoy)
Good Morning from beautiful sunny Oregon! I’m the “go-to” gravy queen in our family… I’m not sure how that happened, since about 50 years ago as a new teenage bride they only thing I knew how to cook was Campbell’s soup. My family loves all kinds of gravy, ie, ham, roast beef, peppered white sausage breakfast gravy, chicken or turkey gravy, etc. If I am in attendance at a family get together meal, I am assigned to making the gravy. It’s okay… I get out of a lot of other less attractive jobs that way. 🙂 Can’t wait to see your new kitchen Karen…. and sitting on the countertop with Cuddles in your lap is adorable!
I used to like gravy, but had to go gluten free in 2001 (straight up celiac over here, no trendy nonsense) and GF gravy just doesn’t cut it. Still looking for a good substitute there.
I do love that you brought the chicken in the house for the photo. I’m going to assume that’s less of a regular thing you do, though, since I know why you fenced the chickens into one particular part of the yard after the face.
try arrowroot as a thickener, it’s fantastic. Only issue is it won’t retain it’s thickness upon reheating, so you have to eat it all in one sitting. The horror.
I love gravy.
Everyone’s got a gravy story and mine’s too long for here….
I like gravy, but it has to be vegan gravy or I won’t eat it. I like vegan biscuits and gravy from my local vegetarian restaurant. Your chickens could even eat the vegan biscuits and gravy…
Also, please send me a copy of Canadian Living! I have been showing my parents the little snippets of your kitchen in an attempt to get them to remodel theirs to be like yours. So it would really help me to be able to see the whole shebang in your magazine spread!
Love gravy? Who doesn’t? My HUSBAND. Sauces neither. I suffer because i only cook for the two of us and we Minnesotans love gravy, sauces made with soup, cheese, etc. Peeps from Wisconsin love cheese. Not my HUSBAND from WI. I live for the evenings he’s not home for dinner so i can make my favs. Sorry to vent but thanks for asking.
I love gravy, I made some for dinner tonight. I would love to win the magazine, but better yet I would love to walk in your kitchen and admire it up close.
Love love love gravy! The good old, white country gravy, with flecks of black pepper through out and topping a she’d potatoes, next to (do I dare say) a lovely piece of fried chicken.
Also, I have read your blog off and on for a long time now, this is the first time I have commented.
Oops. Auto correct alert. She’d in my above entry should have been mound. Sorry.
Mmm gravy! However, I would never touch the stuff as a kid, much to my midwestern mama’s dismay. I can’t wait to see your kitchen. So pretty.