If there's one thing I get antsy for around this time of year, it's fresh, dark, sticky, delicious maple syrup. Having grown up in a small town where one could see tapped trees on one's bus ride to school, and where annual visits to the sugar bush were a given, I can't help but have an instinct for sugaring-off time. Warm days, slightly frozen nights, and the blood in my veins starts flowing in a decidedly spring-like fashion right along with the sap.
I have a friend in BC who may actually rival me in the maple mania department. In a recent email, he confessed to loving all things maple: maple ice cream, maple cookies, maple candies, maple perogies. Okay, I'm making up the perogies, but I KNOW he'd eat them if they existed. If he lived closer, I'd have invited him along on our Sunday drive a few weekends ago to the "Maple Madness" festival (disappointingly renamed this year as "Old Thyme Maple Syrup Festival") that takes place near Paisley.
Taking Jade there was something I'd been looking forward to all winter. There are all sorts of displays, lots of folks dressed up in costumes from pioneer days, live music, and several opportunities to watch sap being collected, boiled and turned into precious, precious syrup. And hey - there's a petting zoo! At the very least, Jade enjoyed her encounters with live chickens, sheep, llamas and goats. It was probably a welcome change from Mummy acting them out at home.
It's a good opportunity to get some fresh air, take in the forest surroundings, and eat copious amounts of locally made sausage and hotcakes smothered in that year's first syrup crop. Oh, how I love eating outdoors...
Anyway, that was our latest Sunday drive. I came home pleasantly weary from all the walking and with a very satisfied tummy from all the pancakes. What more can you ask from a Sunday drive?
4 comments:
Chocolate peanut butter.
I should probably clarify... that was in response to your question of what more can you ask for from a sunday drive: chocolate peanut butter.
I lurve maple syrup too... I'm looking forward to my breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup tomorrow morning. Off to bed so that I can wake up and eat sooner.
Did Dwain go, too? Did Jade try the syrup? I bought some in the summer to "give", remember? Well, I kept one bottle for myself!
Okay, Jaime. You really ARE obsessed, girl.
I love the burnt flavour of maple syrup, but for me it has to be Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup. As long as it's sweetly sick and fattening any syrup will do of course. I recently had French Toast, with a slices banana on top, drizzled with golden syrup - then just as I was about to put it in my mouth ... ... ... the phone rang. Grrrrrhhhhhh. xx
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