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Food rant 3 - Maple syrup

I absolutely adore this ‘tree juice’ and that rich warmness that it adds to a recipe causes many little dents to appear in my bank balance (it is not a cheap syrup) every time I go shopping. It amuses me to imagine that it was discovered by a stoned tree hugger going around licking trees and smiling with a big grin when they discovered the maple tree. Whether my random thought is complete drivel or just utter nonsense I do not know, but the syrup has been around, at least since the American Indians where a tribe called Algonquins called it sinzibuckwud ("drawn from the wood"). Something I have just discovered is that 30-40 litres of sap (depending on the tree) is needed to create just one litre of syrup which suggests why it is so expensive.

One of my favourite things to do with maple syrup when I worked at the Centre for Alternative Technology was to make a maple cream drink which is extremely opulent and simple to make

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