Tag Maple Syrup

All Stuck Up

Michael 7 Comments

It’s time for me to come clean. I don’t have a favorite mayonnaise. Hellmann’s or Kraft is ok with me. I couldn’t tell the difference between a store brand and Duke’s. Whether regular, light, or olive oil based, I don’t care. Once I even made my own. For all the work involved, any advantage was lost on me. Sorry. Mayo is mayo and as long as it’s thick, white, and has a little tang it fills my mayo need.

On the other hand, every other condiment in the world has gone through extreme testing and I have strong preferences. These fall into two categories. Those I like and use and those I would rather do without. Rather do without. That doesn’t mean I don’t bend if I have to. If I’m at friends’ house and they are serving one of those other mustards at their cookout, I won’t turn my nose up and whip out my brand from a handy condiment belt. I’m not a snob. Except …

Except for honey and syrup. You might say that when it comes to honey and syrup, I’m pretty much stuck on what I like. I got to thinking about this because I just used the last of my honey this past Sunday when I made the glaze for the Easter ham and the last of my syrup on this morning’s breakfast pancakes.

(If you have a good memory you know in my last post I mentioned that we went out for our Easter dinner. That’s right, we did. But that didn’t stop me from baking a ham.)

(Some traditions die harder than others.)

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.)

I may have even mentioned before that I can be a honey and syrup snob. There aren’t specific brands of either that I have hitched my wagon to. Rather there are specific sources. Local sources. Local is always better. Think about last summer and the green beans you got at the farmers’ market versus those you got at your snow bound mega-mart’s produce section on your last shopping trip. I prefer the summer stock also, but that doesn’t stop me from eating green beans in January. But honey and syrup. Those are two different stories. If I can’t get local, I don’t get.

Fortunately, our local maple festival is this weekend. Those little plastic bottles of refined tree sap will soon fill my pantry! Honey isn’t a big seller at a maple festival. In fact, it’s not a seller at all at this one. Fortunately, right outside the park hosting the festival is a farm store where the natural nectar fills the shelves. So it looks like in one smooth motion I’ll be able to restore honey harmony and syrup snobbery to my kitchen.

And I, for one weekend, will be the most stuck up guy in the country.

 

A Sticky Situation

Michael Leave a comment

I finally got my syrup last weekend. Regular readers know that I’ve been without my local syrup for the past few months having missed the 2015 sugaring season. But last week I was able to get to one of the local maple festivals and replenish my supply. In fact, I might have overplenished it but I’ve always said you can’t have enough pure maple syrup. I’m sure I’ve said it sometime. At least once.

Anyway, to make a short story long, I picked up a couple of jugs of some freshly prepared syrup for all my maple needs and discovered somebody changed the grading system for my syrup. You may have heard this before and if you had feel free to skip the next couple of paragraphs and go straight to the bit about food that comes right after them. Of course you do know I’ll feel horrible about it if you do.

What once was a fairly straightforward grading system has been turned into a jumble of color and taste. Some say it more appropriately describes the product. I say the big sugarers have finally gotten their way. There are still four grades of syrup. But where there used to be Fancy, Grade A Amber/Dark Amber, Grade B, and Grade C, there are now Grade A, Grade A, Grade A, and Grade A. Really, four grades all A. I can see it now – “Major Mega Marketer Maple Syrup, Now New and Improved with only Grade A Syrup!”

Really, there are now four (4!) Grade A syrups – Grade A: Golden Color and Delicate Taste (formerly Fancy), Grade A: Amber Color and Rich Flavor (Formerly Grade A Amber and Grade A Dark Amber), Grade A: Dark Color and Robust Flavor (Formerly Grade B), and Grade A: Very Dark and Strong Flavor (Formerly Grade C or Commercial (not routinely sold as is (or was) but sold to factories and confectioners for use in other products)).

Whatever you call it, I picked up some dark colored, robustly flavored former Grade B syrup (because I use it in cooking as much as over pancakes) and celebrated with a great maple dinner. You make it too.

In a small sauce pan sweat one coarsely chopped small onion, add a small can baked beans and stir in one ounce (2 tablespoonsful) syrup, a couple of dashes of hot sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. While that’s going on, brown 1 tablespoonsful of butter in a small pan, add an one-half ounce syrup. Add a single portion ham steak to the pan and baste with the butter/syrup mixture until the ham is warm through.  Remove the ham and toss a handful or spring peas in the remaining butter/syrup glaze. Serves one.

You can be a maple nut too. Replace the sugar in almost any recipe with former Grade B maple syrup substituting ¾ cup syrup for each cup sugar and reduce the liquid in your recipe by about 75%.

Four Grade A classifications. By an official department of the United States of America. Of course that department is the Department of Agriculture, the same department that keeps reshaping the food pyramid. And they are some people who worry that the next president might be Hillary or The Donald.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Now See This

Michael Leave a comment

We’ve made it through the first full week of the new year. Already I’ve come up with some observations.

Happy Trailers
The Oscar nominations come out later this week. Over the past several decades I have seen hundreds of movies. I think two of them have been Oscar winners. I guess my tastes don’t jive with the nominating committee. How do you decide what movie you want to see? If you’re like most of the world you let the trailers be your guide. The thing about trailers is that they are about as relevant to the movie as a cover blurb is to a book. They make everything sound exciting but they have little to do with the movie. Then you go see the movie and get disappointed. I say, stay with the fluff. If you go into it with no expectations you can’t be disappointed.

Snow Business
As I write this it is snowing. That shouldn’t be surprising considering how far north I am. But this year there hasn’t been any snow. Well, there has been very, extremely very, almost as verily very as you can get, very little snow this year.  Last month I spent a week in New Orleans, about 1,100 miles south of here and it was warmer here than there then. Some people might say that I should quit complaining and enjoy the unseasonal warmth, especially when you consider the harshness of last year’s winter. It’s just that I sort of like the snow. It makes it pretty out there.

Dance With Me
It’s time again for my state’s annual farm show and that means tractor square dancing. First you have to wrap your head around having a farm show in January where it’s usually so cold that I just questioned the lack of snow. I don’t know. I’ve lived in the city my whole life but they’ve been doing a winter farm show here for 100 years now and it seems to work for them. Anyway, it’s my one chance to get to see tractor square dancing on TV. It’s so bizarre you can’t help but watch it. (I even devoted an entire post to the phenomenon. See “Swing Your Partner” from Jan 22, 2015 for more. Go on. You know you want to.)

A Sticky Situation
I’m out of syrup. I finished it yesterday. That might not be a big deal to some people. Go to the store and get some more. Can’t do it. I have to admit, I’m a syrup snob. I have only had local syrup bought at a local maple festival for years. The first one of three nearby fests doesn’t happen until April 2. I suppose I have to do a search of farm stores and locally owned corner markets to find some. Don’t judge me. Some things are best when made closest to home. Maple syrup and wild flower honey are two.

Wise Guy
To add to my list of sayings I’d like to see hanging on my wall, as seen recently on a t-shirt (I told you it was warm here), “It’s Not Broken. It Just Needs Duct Tape.”

It’s going to be one of those years.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Get In Line

Michael Leave a comment

Regular readers know we aren’t good waiters. Lines do not thrill us. Some people find themselves very comfortable standing still behind tens of other people also standing still. We don’t. We especially don’t want to be behind many other people waiting to eat. Just a few days ago we got to combine our displeasure of waiting with our dislike for lines.

It was over the weekend that we were at one of our favorite things, a springtime maple festival. Being in the American north east we are surrounded by maples. Trees in general take up almost every square foot of land around that hasn’t already been turned into Class A office space or $300,000 McMansions. (Has anyone else noticed that nobody ever builds Class B office space? What if we don’t want private elevators, multi-zone climate control, and integrated security/entertainment software? But that’s a post for a different day.)

We were saying, trees in general are big here. And among them, oak and maple top the list. You can’t get anything out of an oak except some really cool shade in the summer and habitats for little woodland creatures all year long. And a lot of maples will never yield more than solid wood furniture. But the sugar maple has that special something running through its veins, if it had veins for anything to run through. And that something is sap and with enough sap you get syrup and with syrup you get the classic Maple Festival. If it’s indeed a classic, you have hot, homemade pancakes. With pancakes made out of freshly milled flour and fresh boiled syrup you get lines. Lines of well over a couple hundred people long waiting for hours to get to the pancakes to pour the syrup over. We don’t understand it.   We’ll buy the flour and the syrup and have our own. And while everyone else is standing in line, we’ll visit the hundred or so vendors that show up with the handmade crafts to sell while the festival folk sell their handmade syrup. We like it. We buy it. We just don’t want to stand in a line for it.

Yet many do. And as we were driving ourselves home that afternoon we started to wonder, just what would we be willing to stand in line for. We’ve never stood in line for tickets to concerts or theaters or sporting events. We’ve gone to many but we don’t pitch a tent the night before to get the best seat. With a few exceptions, the best seat is usually the one in front of the television anyway. We’ve never stood in line for a store to open on Black Friday. We would stand in line to go back to bed the day after Thanksgiving but not to buy one. We once stood in line to get three (yes, three) autographs of three (yes, three) hockey players. If we were so fond of baseball or opera or professional badminton we might have once stood in line for autographs of their great ones but we aren’t so we didn’t and even for hockey we might not again.

Some lines you have to stand in. You’ll never board a plane without first standing in line at the security checkpoint and then again at the gate boarding ramp. If you didn’t print your boarding pass at home the day before add the line at the ticket counter to get one of them before you hit the other two. And if you check baggage through there are lines to check it and then to wrestle it off the conveyor belt. With luck, you’ll never have to stand in the line to determine where they lost it. Airports are not happy places for people who don’t like lines.

And what about you? Line stander, line jumper? Line aficionado, or line abhorrer? Oh, did we mention that in order to get to that festival with the line of people waiting for their pancakes we had to wait in line for the shuttle to take us to the festival grounds? We had no choice; it was either that or walk 3 miles from the parking lot. We know where to draw the line.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?