My brother-in-law, Stan, retired last year. While he occasionally plays golf, he has plenty of other things to do. He’s clearing a spot on some property outside town for a new home. He keeps track of his father, who’s in an assisted-living facility in Rochester. He dotes on his two grandchildren. He tends a vegetable garden. In the fall he goes hunting with his cronies. And in the early spring he taps maple trees on his property and boils the sap for maple syrup. He gave us a pint of this year’s harvest when we were in town two weeks ago.
Do not confuse maple syrup with artificially-colored, artificially-maple-flavored, high-fructose corn syrup. The principal sugar in maple syrup is sucrose (table sugar). It takes up to 50 gallons of maple sap to produce a gallon of maple syrup. (Fun facts courtesy of Wikipedia.) This is why you pay significantly more for the real thing than the fake stuff. Someone has to pay for the fuel to evaporate off so much water.
So what do you do with maple syrup other than drizzling it over pancakes and waffles? I drizzle it into oatmeal along with dried cranberries. It can be used as a sweetener in breads, cakes, and other desserts. Canadians make a maple syrup pie (tarte au sirop d’érable). It’s similar to pecan pie, except walnuts are used and it’s often a two-crust pie. If you’re using maple syrup as a substitute for honey, be advised that the final product will be less sweet because fructose is the predominant sugar in honey. Fructose is sweeter than sucrose.
Most maple syrup sold in the US comes from Quebec, Vermont, and New York. Cornell University operates a field station for maple research and extension in Lake Placid. You can also find recipes for using maple products at this website. Once you use real maple syrup, you won’t go back to the imitation stuff.
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