Bowl Of Stuff

This weekend is the start of tapping season here in the great mid north (ie. Minnesota). It will be yet another year that I will not actually be going out and getting sap from any trees. We use to do this when I was a child on my grandparents cabin land. It was some of the best cold days spent traipsing around in the middle of no-where-upper-Michigan of my young life.

The meat and poultry farmers who supply my work with various dead animals were talking today about tapping their 1000 plus trees starting Friday. While I've never done that many before the olfaction memory began to draw up the burning wood smell combined with sweet liquid that comes as you start cooking the sap. The smell of beer on my uncles' breaths also is one of those strong memories but there's not much else to do while sitting around the large pots while the syrup cooks and you talk about how good that's going to taste over just about everything you can think to pour it on.

I found a listing of recipes for more ideas outside of the standard breakfast sauce. Although, if you love maple syrup like me its much more like breakfast soup.

Also, you've got to try it as a sweetener in coffee, if you haven't already.

Here's the links:


http://www.mi-maplesyrup.com/Activities/activities_recipes.htm
http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blmisc43.htm
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/2010/03/02/the-abcs-of-maple-syrup/

And, if you're desperate, here's a link for making “maple syrup” at home the cheating way: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/simple-maple-syrup/detail.aspx