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Mmmmm, Maple Syrup
Only the real thing will do
By Caroline Barrett | Photos by Paul Barrett
M
y kids can enjoy dubiously healthy food as much as anyone. Zoe loves macaroni and cheese from a box and Elliot craves burgers from the drive-through. Lucy, our resident vegetarian and the biggest snob of all, loves crunchy and salty orange snacks just as much as the next teenager. But there are a few things they turn their little noses up at. There’s fake butter. “Eeeew!” they say in front of a tub of margarine. “Really, Mom, what is that?” I answer
them honestly: I have absolutely no idea. There’s tomatoes. Our family loves tomatoes and we eat them all summer long. My kids long for fresh pico de gallo and know that there is no substitute for the big, juicy tomatoes we eat in the summer. Period. And then there’s maple syrup. It’s another must-have-the-real-thing food in our house. Maple syrup is so central to our winter morning breakfasts that we simply do not eat pancakes or waffles if the jug is empty. Without the rich, sweet syrup to
Maple Weekends are scheduled for March 16-17 and 23-24, 10 a.m.-4.p.m. each day. Visit mapleweekend.com. douse our pancakes (and we like the dark, B-grade variety) we turn to oatmeal, eggs or even a bowl of cold cereal. Once, when we were visiting family in western New York, we stopped into a homestyle diner on our way home. It was my kind of place: busy, cheap and plenty of flowing hot coffee. A big board hung on the wall among pictures of locals and newspaper articles. We were all happy to see the pancake specials: blueberry, raspberry-oat, multigrain, pumpkin, even bacon. Elliot decided on bacon pancakes before we even sat down. In our cozy booth, with coffee poured and juice before us, we all ordered pancakes. Like a little girl, I fidgeted in my seat, excited for my stack of raspberry oat pancakes. The waitress paused as she tucked the pen back in her bun, “Just want to let y’all know… we’re out of maple syrup. But we have the other syrup instead.” We paused — and then we held our hands out, reaching for the menus. No syrup, no pancakes. It was as simple as that. We were happy that morning, with eggs and toast and bacon and sausage. Just no pancakes.
A
nother morning proved a happier pancake and maple syrup experience. A morning with plenty of coffee and hot cocoa, pancakes, bacon and lots and lots (and lots) of maple syrup. A few years back, I discovered a well-kept secret: pancake breakfasts at area maple sugar farms. Yes, really. On a few select weekends in 78 | Life@Home