Maple-icious!

After Maple Sugar Days we of course had to have a dinner of pancakes to go with the REAL maple syrup which we brought home.  This is a huge treat for us which we indulge in once a year in the late winter as maple syrup is a bit on the pricey side. 

We also brought home maple sugar candy which is not common around here.  I jumped the first time I found this candy for sale at the park.  These are not very big but they have big flavor so we split four of these amongst ourselves and stayed within our budget.  The shape of these maple leaves reminds us of when and where we were married also.

Good maple syrup deserves good pancakes.  I mixed up a fresh triple batch of mix; 24 cups of flour, 6 cups dry milk, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 24 tsp. baking powder, 12 tsp. baking soda, 6 tsp. salt.  This makes the best batch of pancakes or waffles and is a terrific way to utilize and rotate food storage items.  It’s cheap too after purchasing these ingredients in bulk!  I re-use Utz’s Pretzel Rod containers.  They are the perfect size for storing my homemade mixes.  If this is too much product for you just reduce it back by 2/3rds. 

To make these fluffy golden pancakes add one egg, 2 Tbsp. vegi oil, 1 c. water, 1 1/2 c. pancake mix.  I triple or quadruple this to feed my family and sometimes I’m lucky enough to have leftovers to heat in the microwave for a quick breakfast the next day.

Just look at the beautiful sweet amber syrup dripping over the stack of cakes and puddled on the plate waiting to be sopped up. 

My boys were the first ones at the table waiting for their personal stack of hotcakes.  DELICIOUS!  I stood flipping pancakes and serving them steaming hot as they were needed as quick as I could for about an hour.  Sometimes there is nothing better than breakfast for dinner and nothing is better than real maple syrup.

Party Girl

Kaitlyn got to attend a birthday party for her best friend on Saturday.  She looked forward to this party for two weeks and had a great time with five other little girls for a couple of hours.  She is really going to miss her friend when she moves many states away in four months.

The theme was flowers so the girls all made a bouquet to take home and planted a zinnia to take home as well.  The bouquet resides in a vase on Kaitlyn’s half of the dresser top now.

When I stopped in to pick Kaitlyn up the girls had yet to sing happy birthday to the birthday girl.  I loved the fancy sugar flowers all over this delicious chocolate cake.  I got to have a slice too!

There were crepe paper flowers dangling from the ceiling as well… a fun fancy little party for a fun fancy group of four year old girls.

Maple Sugar Days

Just down the road and around the corner from home is a little county park in the middle of a very commercialized area.  It is hard to believe that the area all around the park, once upon a time, was all rustic just as this little postage stamp of wilderness that is left.  Each year at the end of February they put on Maple Sugar Days; very fun and very educational. 

Outdoors there is sap boiling down and a table full of syrup made from each of the past ten years.  It is interesting to note the different shades of amber syrup from each year.  The clear liquid in the glass jar on the far right is pure sap before it is boiled down.  It resembles water in that state.  Kaitlyn wasn’t exactly outfitted for hiking in the woods as we had just picked her up from a birthday party and I’d forgotten to pack her sneakers.  She had skipped her quiet time after spending all morning in the pool so she was a tired girl who wanted to be carried by her Dad for most of the way.

More sap boiling down while out in the woods the sap is being collected from the taps in tin buckets.  This is about as far south as you can go where conditions still exist to tap maples to make syrup.  Vermont is the top producer of maple sugar but all of New England is well known for maple production.   Around here trees are tapped in January and begin to flow in February.  If we were to tap our own maple tree in the yard at home it would be too late this year as the buds are already swelling on it.

Conditions are just right for collecting sap when the nights are still below freezing but the days are 40 and 50 degrees.  It was a rosy cheeked 38 degrees on this afternoon; the only rain free day sandwiched in the middle of many stormy ones.  It was still overcast, but I thought that was just fine as I’m not much for sunny winter days.  I didn’t grow up with too many of them and sun just emphasizes the stark deadness in winter around here.

Inside the barn we found all kinds of free samples of foods made with maple sugar & syrup.  Nathan really liked the maple coconut cookie; Kaitlyn the maple cotton candy.  Tristan found himself a recipe for the maple butter he tried that was out of this world.  The maple wieners that Lindsay got a hold of were fantastic!  We decided that “Elf” was on to something by putting maple syrup on everything.  It makes everything better… even the unexpected.

The north sides of the trees drips much more slowly than the south sides.  We stuck our fingers out to catch the drips of sap so we could taste its sweetness.  We decided we would all like to live somewhere in the woods.  The trails are beautiful as they just begin to stir with life once again. 

Toward the end of our hike we met a woodsmen who was boiling sap right outside his shelter.  He had some animal skins hanging on the side of his shelter that we could touch and he showed us his eating knife made out of teeth.  Early settlers were taught by Indians how to boil sap to make sugar.  One of the ways they found to boil sap down was to put it into hollowed out logs and place hot rocks from the fire into the liquid.  Wooden buckets would have caught fire so that wasn’t an option.  Then they would switch the cooled down rocks out to reheat and put fresh rocks into the sap.  This was a 24/7 job for about 5 weeks of the late winter.  Other people would go out and collect the sap, while others hunted and still others cooked for everyone.  It was a cooperative affair certainly and their only source of sugar for the year.  Any other sweetness to be had came in the form of berries.  Bees for sweet honey were actually brought over by the Europeans and were termed by the Indians to be “white man’s flies”.  Obviously it took a while for honey to be found in the wild of North America as a source of sugar.

Saying goodbye to the man at the shelter after asking some questions, the kids all took turns drilling into tree stumps to see what it was like to tap a tree.

All strapped in, rosey cheeked Nathan was ready to go home and try some fresh syrup on his dinner.  We had a wonderful afternoon.

My Wolf Cub

Friday Night was the Cub Scout “Blue & Gold” Banquet.  We began with a yummy meal of tacos which everyone  enjoyed.  Tristan was excited with the anticipation of finally earning and receiving his Wolf badge.  After supper came the entertainment.  Though brief, Tristan and his friend made a good comedy team for a few skits…

There was the one where Tristan came running frantically yelling “They’re on me!  They’re on me!”  When asked what was on him he answered… “My clothes”!

There was another one about there being a “rap at the door”.  When the door was answered it turned out to be a “wrap”.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!

Finally there was one about Tristan promising his friend that he would never forget him.  After all, they were “best buds”.  So his friend then started up with “Knock!  Knock!  Who’s there?”  The punch line said “See!  You already forgot me!”  The boys looked like they were having fun together.

Then came Tristan’s long awaited award…  his Wolf badge which he is so proud of.  He worked hard and did some really worthwhile things… like learning and helping to make a meal, cleaning up trash in the neighborhood, having an outdoor flag ceremony, reading the book of Matthew… just to name a few things.  He is lucky to have such a good leader whom he has fun with and looks up to.

His name was also drawn for the door prize… a certificate for a free week at Day Camp this summer!  Very exciting!  Very lucky!

The end of the evening involved the kids all taking turns hitting at the pinata.  Since the theme was about the solar system and all the boys had made posters of the planets with factual information included in their drawings at each table, the pinata was a very large sun.

Tristan took his turn swinging blindfolded at the pinata.

Kaitlyn, Lindsay and Haley got turns as well… my camera was running low on battery juice.  Each kid got two bags of candy from the pinata.

After nominating us for the cleanup crew by dumping his plate of food on the floor (we’d have stayed to help with that anyway) Nathan ran around taking his turn with swinging the baseball bat as Tristan ran around the gym participating in his favorite pastime with his Cub Scout buddies… basketball.

February

The month started out freezing cold with the groundhog giving us promise that spring was right around the corner.  Until then we are still indoors a great deal of the time.  In fact it seems that the entire month was spent indoors with colds, coughs, fevers, ear infections, sore throats                     and stuffy noses. 

February brings out the bears at our house.  Nathan enjoys playing with Pooh Bear and Friends.  He makes up little stories and helps them find and eat the honey and hide under the bed from Hefalumps when they are found.  He has a really good time doing this.

Kaitlyn adds more books to her repertoire of stories that she can read alone to Nathan and me.  Nathan loves this.  So does Kaitlyn.  Nathan particularly loved the books about bears.  Nathan looks pretty relaxed on Kaitlyn’s lap but is looking pretty big next to her these days.  They are just 6 inches apart in height and and 8 pounds apart in weight.

We enjoyed making some snowmen early in the month.  These snowmen are a cross between a snowman project my sister-in-law did and a snowman that Tristan came home with.  Kaitlyn enjoyed cutting and making a poke-out carrot nose that was her own idea and design.  Nathan enjoyed coloring and GLUING. 

Nathan learned to count to “two” all by himself this month to my surprise, and to say “circle” whenever he found that shape.  He enjoyed stacking the shapes on the rods and moving them between rods.  Kaitlyn liked sorting foods into food groups and serving up nutritious meals with one food from each food group for us.  Nathan just liked pretending to eat them or finding a specific food that was asked for.  Kaitlyn made sure we all stayed “heart” healthy during the month of Valentine’s Day by checking our hearts, temperatures and blood pressures. 

The kids loved stacking the giant Lego’s making towers of all sizes, shapes and colors and then knocking them down again.  Nathan mostly enjoyed dumping the entire contents on the floor so he could find the Lego car and people.

Bear puzzles were the order of the month.  While Kaitlyn enjoyed puzzles with more pieces we discovered that Nathan could successfully put together any puzzle labled “3+” all on his own.  Last month he needed some help still.  Since Nathan loves Winnie the Pooh he got lots of practice at puzzles by dumping the pieces continuously and putting the puzzle together over and over again.

Nathan also got the Little people house out at every opportunity and played and played with the family that lives here.  Kaitlyn greatly helped in creating some drama for storylines.  Our kitten, Spooky, assisted by becoming the “Big Black Bear” that everyone had to hide from.  So funny!

 

Meanwhile, Nathan’s spoken vocabulary expanded greatly as he played, learned and used his imagination.  He ALSO learned somehow that he could do just about anything and if we were unhappy with whatever it was all he had to do was say “Sorry” with a particular look on his face and then everything was OK again.  I’m going to have to watch this one.  Nathan saying “sorry” also came as a surprise to me but he has definitely figured out it’s usage and the fact that it comes in handy.  At least he’s trying to do the right thing so far!

Nathan loved getting a hold of colored pencils which are more readily accessible than the markers which he also enjoys but tend to turn his hands and face into a rainbow of color.  His big brother Tristan used some of his “sick” days recovering from two bouts of strep to finish reading the book of Matthew in the Bible for one of his Cub Scout goals.

Kaitlyn enjoyed interacting with stories and games featuring letters, numbers and shapes when she could get this light up electronic toy away from her brother.  She also practiced matching and stitching clothing on the wooden lace-up bear. 

February was a very good month for keeping warm like a bear and cuddling.  We are looking forward to March which will bring spring flowers and hopefully better health and outdoor time.  I already see little green leaf buds on my lilac bushes and Maple tree promising that Spring will be here in just a few more weeks.