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Maple Sugar

I like real maple syrup with my corn dodgers. Of course, it weighs a ton. Anyone used maple sugar or some other LW substitute?
Unless you're like my grandson who floods his plate with maple syrup you'll only need a drizzle per serving, well worth the "weight penalty". But if that still concerns you then perhaps sweeten the corn mixture with brown sugar at home. Thus you'll require less syrup flooding your plate. Now that I think of it my grandson is after my own hedonistic heart. Carpe Diem...Tempus Fugit...let's go to town...and all that.
Take as much maple syrup as "needed" and leave the small gram worries behind.
 
We just use maple sugar, crumbled up in a tin cup, then added a little bit of boiling water until it was back to the consistency that it was when it was in the syrup stage at the sugar shack. Maple sugar is just crystallized maple syrup, which is just forty gallons of maple sap with 39 gallons of water boiled out of it. Never made maple sugar, I believe you really have to be on your toes while further boiling down the syrup. Think controlled heat in a kitchen, not a home made, wood fired barrel stove with a giant stainless steel pot on it.
I would think those little maple leaf shaped maple sugar sweet’s that you can buy would be ideal size for tripping. Fun to practice at home to get the right ratios of candies to boiling water.
I love my sourdough hot cakes with maple syrup from my friend who taps his own trees in maple rich Vermont. He told me that he uses the boiling sap to make mugs of tea to refresh himself in the long hours of work in the sugar bush. Last Christmas he sent along with the syrup a box of maple tea bags produced in Eastern Canada that were pretty darn good.
 
I had a friend in our hometown village who tapped the aged maples towering over his family property. Simmered the sap on the kitchen stove, laboured with love in getting every measure into the Mason jars, portioning with pride every drop on the pancakes before the walk across the road to our country church on Sundays. But I never tasted it. We were boyhood friends but there are limits to every little thing I guess. Lol.
I had my own introduction to all things sugar shack in the Beauce Que. The whole culinary cultural affair was a dream. So too was the dollop of eau d'erable into a cup of gin "for refreshment". My wife loved the maple taffy session in the snow but I still prefer maple syrup on pancakes and eggs and bacon. Good memories and bad habits.
No more cabane à sucre "refreshment", seldom do we see bacon and syrup is mostly for the grandkids. But there's still some reputable local producers here in Ontario. Wish I could've enjoyed my friend's small batch 50+ yrs ago. That would be a sentimental syrup memory worth preserving.
 
Yes, I have found dehydrated maple syrup. I bought it for my Liard trip scheduled for summer of 2020. I did try it and it was excellent. That food is packed away. I will try to locate the original package so I can report on the brand.
 
Yes the dried maple flakes are good. I use it in my oatmeal mix to replace a third of the sugar. I get it at Bulk Barn (Canada).

I also bring a 125ml nalgene of real syrup for my once or twice per trip pancakes.
 
They have started tapping the trees here on the coast of Maine. I’ve done it in the past but don’t have enough trees to make it all worthwhile.
Are you sure they aren’t tapping that pole to listen in on conversations?
Jim
 
I had never seen anyone tapping trees hereabouts until a week ago when I noticed buckets and tubes at a farm on one of the back roads. The fellow there has a variety of weird stuff going on, including an extensive wire trellis for hops plants.

We don’t have Sugar Maples locally, and I stopped to have a look and ID the trees.

Shag Bark Hickory. I had no idea. He wasn’t using the bark, but tapping the sap. I gotta wonder if he is brewing a special batch of Shag Bark beer.
 
I start tapping next week in MN and there's nothing better and more worth it than taking your own syrup on a trip
 
The joke is that by the end of winter, Quebecers are so fed up with the snow that they pour maple syrup on it in an attempt to consume the remainder.

I could happily live the rest of my life without maple syrup - I'm quite sick of it. And the foodies that insist on putting it in every consumable possible - cookies, pies, cakes, ice cream, bacon, mustard, soda pop - and the worst of all offences: bourbon.
 
The joke is that by the end of winter, Quebecers are so fed up with the snow that they pour maple syrup on it in an attempt to consume the remainder.
:LOL: Now that is funny right there!

I could happily live the rest of my life without maple syrup - I'm quite sick of it. And the foodies that insist on putting it in every consumable possible - cookies, pies, cakes, ice cream, bacon, mustard, soda pop - and the worst of all offences: bourbon.
Ooooh man...I respect your opinion, but...when you pour that syrup on the pancakes and some of it "accidently" gets on your eggs and sausage, well, that's like enjoying a little piece of heaven in that roadside breakfast joint.
 
:LOL: Now that is funny right there!


Ooooh man...I respect your opinion, but...when you pour that syrup on the pancakes and some of it "accidently" gets on your eggs and sausage, well, that's like enjoying a little piece of heaven in that roadside breakfast joint.
There's a specialty up here - although you have to get well off the beaten path to find it: eggs poached in maple syrup. They serve them in a soup bowl, swimming in the maple syrup poaching liquid. Hard pass, superchief.
 
There's a specialty up here - although you have to get well off the beaten path to find it: eggs poached in maple syrup. They serve them in a soup bowl, swimming in the maple syrup poaching liquid. Hard pass, superchief.
Ok, I gotta admit you got me there. Enjoying a little spill over from the pancakes is one thing but eggs poached in maple syrup seems a little hardcore to me.
 
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