Post-Pincushion Project #1

After my successful pincushion project, my next venture was a pillowcase for my son’s travel-sized pillow  I’d gotten some cartoon fabric remnants at a good price on eBay, so I used one that I knew Connor would like, but that wouldn’t kill me if I ruined it: Mickey Mouse.

Luckily, The Seasoned Homemaker’s tutorial on making an envelope pillow with French seams was well-worded with helpful photos, so I only messed up a couple of times (and those were minor and easily hidden).

Mickey pillowcase

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Maple Bacon Onion Jam

Mason jars of bacon jam

A while ago, I was extolling the virtues of my homemade tomato jam to one of my coworkers, and he came back with a description of his homemade bacon jam.

Of course, I had to try making my own.

I found a recipe on The Kitchn that involved bacon, onion, maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and Worcestershire (and shallots, but I left those out). I made two-thirds of the recipe, since my package of uncured bacon from ButcherBox was 10 oz and the recipe called for a pound of bacon. I got everything ready to simmer before I went upstairs to supervise my son’s bath and bedtime routine, and enjoyed the sweet scent of bacon as we did our thing. When I came back downstairs after lights out (having already checked on it a couple of times), I was worried that I’d over cooked it — the jam was a deep mahogany. As it turns out, it was damn near perfect, and yielded about a cup and a half of deliciousness after I hit it with the immersion blender.

It’s more of a reduction than a jam, per se, since it’s not really thickened… but that’s just semantics.

Whatever it is, it’s delicious, and I’m glad my coworker unwittingly put me up to it.