The sugaring off party

Part of the annual maple sugar ritual for Jean-Marc and Linda Fiset is the pot luck they hold so friends and neighbours can see the sugar shack and eat maple taffy -- or sugar-on-snow as my Quebec-born mother used to call it.  Saturday was a good day for it; bright, sunny, but cool enough to keep the snow from melting and to help people appreciate the warmth of the fire under the bubbling sap.  The pot luck was sumptuous.  Linda went all out, with some traditional foods: pea soup, ham cooked in maple syrup, tourtières, and baked beans.  Guests similarly rose to the occasion... and it was tempting to pig out, everything looked so good, but I was saving myself for the pièce de resistance.

Most of the credit for the photos that follow goes to Bill Hall and Kate Montgomery. Personally, I was  too eager for the main event to think about taking many pictures, so Kate took over my camera and did the honours.

While Jean-Marc boiled down the syrup, everyone milled about, waiting, watching and chatting.  Linda packed snow into the trough (which we'd collected in the woods the day before on our latest run for sap) and handed out popsicle sticks.  

Some testing was required to ensure the syrup was boiled down enough... but then the golden moment came: 

Here's what the snow looked like after a few rounds: 

And here's what my face looked like after a few rounds.  Ecstasy!

Jean-Marc explained how to make maple butter and some of us -- me included, naturally -- tried it.  You take the boiled down syrup and stir it vigorously.  That incorporates air into the syrup and slowly but surely it begins to crystallize, first into a creamy butter, and if you stir long enough, into maple sugar.  Linda made a batch in her mixer, but the rest of us did it by hand.  Took a while, but the results were worth the effort.  

Nothing quite like fresh maple butter on toast in the morning!