Tag Archive | Mount Mansfield maple syrup

Breakfast for Dinner

Feb22

It was a beautiful Saturday: abundant sunshine, spring warmth, not too much mud in the yarden or the woods. While sitting on the stone bench on the south side of the house I spotted one butterfly floating by, and another landed shortly after in the gravel a few feet away. From this terrible shot I used the iNaturalist app to identify it, and the Audubon butterfly app to confirm that it’s likely a Milbert’s Tortoiseshell, new to me. I’ll take it. It felt great to spend an hour outside trimming bunch grasses in the south border to clear the canvas for spring bulbs, and cutting the tall grasses around the cherry tree in the garden. What felt the best was my ability to bend and reach and move without any support other than my own two feet. At five months out from the hip replacement, I’m not quite a graceful swan yet, but hardly ever need to use the cane.

I am still using walking poles to roam the forest with my tiny crew. What’s that sticking out of that tree? And where’s Wren, in the photo below? They’re so much fun.

We stayed away from the burrow today, but these two faced off in the shadows under an ancient juniper. Seconds after I zoomed in for the image below, Topaz reached up and tapped Wren as though counting coup, whereupon Wren darted away and circled back to me. I count that as progress, that Topaz didn’t smack or scratch Wren, and that Wren didn’t retaliate but bounced away playfully.

There’s a compelling synopsis of the past week’s White House outrages in the Democracy Index from Joyce Vance on The Contrarian. This is a weekly feature giving a clear picture of trends and providing talking points. After a relatively easy and calm day light on politics and work, I finally made the dinner I’ve been dreaming about for weeks: waffles with blueberries.

I’ve never made waffles, can you imagine? Or, maybe I tried once a hundred years ago, I have a vague memory of a disaster. A year ago I bought a mini-waffle iron partly because it was advertised as also making hash browns. But I had yet to use it! The blueberries were approaching their turning point, so it had to be soon. I mixed half a batch of batter, froze six waffles, and layered three with butter, topped with Greek yogurt, blueberries and Vermont maple syrup. It was every bit as fulfilling as it looks. I’m always grateful when I get to enjoy breakfast for dinner.

Maple Syrup

Dec10

Yes, oatmeal again with a different twist. Apricot jam instead of blueberries, protein powder, flaxseed meal, and 100% pure dark amber maple syrup from Vermont. I’m grateful for everything about this bowl. The bowl itself: a simple factory-made Fiesta bowl, one of a set of five, with a long and loving story of its provenance and how the set grew from four to five, which hinges on a dear old friend in the antique business. There’s a whole story in this bowl that makes a simple vessel meaningful. And why I even wanted this kind of bowl is another story, about a bowl of granola with yogurt and strawberries, served to me in the backyard garden of a Maryland townhouse a decade ago. I’m grateful for the people who work at the factory who made the bowl, the materials they used that came from the earth; everyone involved in its transport from the factory to the antique mall in western Virginia where it came into my hands…

Bob’s Red Mill organic oats: who grew them, all the water and attention, the cultivated soil, the hands and hearts involved in growing and packaging these oats; the drivers, their vehicles, the roads or rails the oats rode on to get to my house, and my beloved personal shoppers who delivered them to me. It just goes on: the same train of events for the whey protein powder, the flaxseed meal, the splash of milk I forgot to mention til just now, hundreds of people involved and copious resources, just to make my oatmeal tasty. And your oatmeal, of course, or whatever else you eat to start your day.

And then the apricot jam. I’ve expressed enough gratitude about the jam and the tree in past posts I don’t need to go on about it. But the syrup? Have I truly expressed enough gratitude for maple syrup? I don’t think so.

I was raised on real maple syrup. The Colonel was a stickler for things like real butter v. margarine, real mashed potatoes v. instant, and real maple syrup v. flavored sugar syrup. He used to tell people I’d eat cardboard if it had maple syrup or honey on it. The biggest treat of Christmas was real maple-leaf candy in my stocking. And so I’m grateful to neighbor Mary for turning me onto Mount Mansfield in Vermont where I now buy the best real maple syrup regularly. I’m grateful for the family who’s been tending and tapping the trees for generations, for the time and care they give their trees and their products and their customers. I’m grateful for maple trees: for their sometimes towering trunks and their leaves that turn crimson in autumn, and for their nutritious sap that they cede generously to the hardy Yankees who harvest it year after year. I’m grateful for the technology it takes to get the sap to the sugar house, and the fuel it takes to boil the sap in gleaming vats, and for all the people who stir and pour and mold and package all the delicious maple goodness that comes sometimes to my home from the far corner of the country, and for all the people and vehicles and fuel that it takes to get it here, all the way to Taylor the Crawford UPS driver. I’m grateful I’ve learned through the years to use maple syrup for so much more than pancakes.