I have been meaning to post these photos for so, so long.

I had been DYING to take one of the classes from the wonderful folks at The Pantry ever since they opened over a year ago. But spots in these classes are VERY hard to snag. They typically send out an e-mail announcing the next season’s classes and most, if not all, of them are sold out within the day. Very coveted! So, I’d been keeping my eye out for the summer schedule.

The day the e-mail came, I scanned it as quickly as I could open it. I spied their homemade sausage class and it dawned on me that this would be a perfect Fathers’ Day gift for my dad. He hunts wild game and he usually has the butcher make up some sausage but I knew it would be fun to learn how to do it ourselves. Plus, spend a wonderful evening together.

These classes at the Pantry are great for many reasons, but firstly the beautiful space and wonderful hospitality greet you. When we walked in, each setting had a beautiful ripe tomato and a glass of rose (my fave).

Our first task was to seed the tomato for a related project later in the evening. Being a lover of all things tomato, I was intrigued

Our amazing teacher Sara broke down the fundamentals of sausage making into a VERY manageable set of recipes. Honestly, it was so much easier than I thought it would be! She brought the meat pre-ground, but we mixed the ingredients and learned how to stuff the casings. There were 4 recipes, so we broke into 4 groups and each learned the complexities of one while breaking to watch the other groups. We also learned about cuts of meat, proper butchering, recipe development, and theories on cured vs. non-cured sausages.

Here’s my dad learning how to use the “stuffer” with a classmate. Sounds silly, but it was pretty easy and cool.

We took turns twisting the sausage into links – kind of tricky to keep those things from untwisting, but turns out you alternate directions each link so they stay still.

Then, after all the sausages were linked up, we got to have a group dinner! The tomatoes had been roasted and turned into spicy homemade ketchup. Paired with homemade mustard, I was in heaven!

Our creation! So fancy. Can’t wait to spend some time with my family this fall devising new fun recipes and creating all new sausage. I’m already scheming to ask our wedding caterer if we can serve some of our creations on our big day. How fun would that be?!

If you are ever in or around Seattle, I HIGHLY recommend these classes at the Pantry. They’re an investment, but for the knowledge, the comraderie, and a wonderful family style dinner, I felt like it was a great evening. Keeping my eye out for the next one.

Also – the other people in our group were a newlywed couple who had received the class as a wedding gift. I thought that was such a great idea to do something like this together (even though the girl was TERRIFIED of touching meat), we’ll probably register for a couple for a fun newlywed activity.