Maple Open House Weekend

This weekend was the Maple Open House Weekend in Vermont, where sugarmakers open their operations to the public to gawk at the boiling and taste some sweet maple treats. Andy's brother Dan was up for the weekend to join the festivities, along with some of our old neighbors from Mass. We all visited three sugarhouses in Huntington and one in Ferrisburg, and got completely sweet-ed out with samples of newly made syrup, maple cream donuts, maple coffee, maple cotton-candy, and sugar-on-snow.

For those who don't know, sugar-on-snow is a tooth-extracting concoction of maple syrup heated up to candy heat and then poured on snow so that it sets into a sweeter than you can stand taffy. You eat it with a dill pickle because otherwise you might go into a diabetic coma. We learned something very interesting with the sugar-on-snow this year. Our little fussa-man, who clamps his mouth shut at sweet mushed peaches, pears, apples, and basically any "solid" baby food, was eyeing and reaching for my dill pickle. After a few minutes I relented, waiting for the shocked look on his face as he realized that a) it was food and b) completely sour. He LOVED it! Of course. Should I try pureed olives or kim-chee instead of peaches?!

Of course, we also had our own sugaring work to do back at Timber Hill, so we had to head in from the sugar tour and get to work emptying sap buckets and boiling our own syrup. The new evaporator works great, much to Dad's relief. After our work was done we had a wonderful fajita dinner (thanks mom) with more SWEET pound cake for dessert (thanks Cheryl). I think I'm with Aiden- where are the dill pickles?