When I was a little tad, spending weekends on my grandparents' eastern Iowa farm, breakfast was something of an event. It was always the same: Fried eggs, fried bacon or ham, hot buttered toast, and pancakes - Grandma called them "hotcakes" - smothered in sorghum molasses. It was cheaper than store-bought syrup, you see. My grandmother had raised six kids during the Depression, a fact of which she would remind us at every opportunity, and so was loath to part with a dime if she didn't have to.
Some time later, I learned about the wonders of maple syrup, thanks to an uncle who had gone fishing in Canada. It beat the heck out of molasses. And, on Wednesday, we can all express our appreciation for that wondrous pancake and waffle coating, as December 17th is National Maple Syrup Day.
National Maple Syrup Day was created to celebrate the amber substance people have all come to know and love.
Much of the maple syrup that most people experience today is almost always manufactured in Canada, but even the United States has its own maple syrup production area–mostly surrounding the northeastern states, such as Vermont, but also other northern states, like Michigan.
Maple syrup is a substance that’s usually made from the xylem sap of a few different varieties of the maple tree, including the sugar maple, red maple, or black maple tree, although it can be made from other species of maple as well.
The tradition of maple syrup goes back a long way. It could be considered a sweet-smelling gift from nature, enough that it may make you wonder who scent it.
According to aboriginal oral traditions, as well as archaeological evidence, maple tree sap was being processed into syrup long before the Europeans arrived in the region.
Perhaps the Europeans, who eventually settled there, actually learned the refinement process from the indigenous people who had been living on that land for centuries.
Looking back at the past is worthwhile, so long as one doesn't get all sappy about it. Those long ago time would probably give you the crepes if you visited them today, after all. Today, the production of maple syrup is more of an industrial process than a hand-crafted one, and even so, the stuff doesn't just grow on trees.
Everything seems to have its own day now. Various people have days, like veterans; others get a whole month, which, speaking as a veteran, doesn't seem quite fair. But if any condiment were to be honored with a day, I'm OK with it being maple syrup. Maple syrup, after all, is like a lifelong love affair; it starts sappy, but ends up sweet.
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Here in Alaska, as well as a few other places, people even make birch syrup, which is lighter and not quite as sweet. It takes much more birch sap to make syrup than it does maple sap, so birch syrup can be a bit pricey - but it's worth sampling. But people who haven't had the chance to sample genuine Alaska birch syrup may get jealous if they see you adding it to your pancakes, so you might want to do it syrup-titiously.
I'll show myself out.
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