Jamming.

Today is the 42nd birthday of somebody I know and she was holding a backyard party.  I didn't attend due to being behind in a house project, and then a thunderstorm.  Earlier in the day, in case I was swallowed by the house project, while doing a project-related errand I swung by to drop off the items I'd made for the party plus a gift for the birthday person.

The sharing items were two batches of marshmallows, one based on honey and the other on maple syrup, both from local sources.  The honey batch came out less fluffy and a bit more like nougat, and too late I remembered that honey has less water and so I should have adjusted the ratios.  They are quite tasty!  I added a bit of imitation black walnut flavouring to the maple syrup ones but no actual nuts.  And because of the birthday, I cut each batch into 42 marshmallows.

For gifts, the birthday person asked for onions, as she usually does.  Then she posted a video of a long line of onions that she's grown.  I'm glad I decided to give her onion jam!  I created my own version based upon a couple of recipes, several of which were more bacon-heavy and I wanted to be sure there are plenty of onions involved.

First, I chopped up a pound of thick-cut bacon and put it into my cast-iron dutch oven:

Then I cooked the bacon until it was crispy and all the fat rendered out:

A couple of times I carefully poured off the bacon fat, so the bacon could crisp more easily, instead of braising in its own fat.  While this was happening I diced up four large onions.  Maybe five:

Once the bacon was crispy and on some kitchen toweling to drain, I added the onions to the pot with a bit of the saved bacon fat, covered the pot, and caramelized the onions, stirring every 5-10 minutes:

That photo is around the halfway point.  Once the onions were nicely browned, I added some maple syrup, the same amount of bourbon, a splash of vinegar, and a sprinkle of ground black pepper.  Then I stirred until the jam was dark and sticky:

After filling a jar I decided to stir some of the crumbled bacon back into the jam for the second jar:

Here is the end result, without the tags:

There was a tiny bit that didn't fit into the gift jars, so I kept it for me.    😋😁

A couple recipes talked about pulsing the jam in a food processor afterwards, but why make something else dirty?  It may be necessary if you just slice the onions; when diced the way I do it, there's no need.

I didn't remember to take any photos of the marshmallow-making, but it goes quickly so there's not a lot of opportunities.  You need to work speedily with the boiling syrup!