Sugar Maple Time in Vermont ~

The sun was warm, but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day.

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You're one month on in the middle of May

But if you so much as dare to speak,

A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,

A wind comes off a frozen peak,

And you're two months back in the middle of March.

I have taken this poem from King Arthur Flour's 200th Anniversary Cookbook because I found this page earlier today and like the information it gives. The introduction to making doughnuts continues by saying:

There are no better words than Robert Frost's in Two Tramps in Mud Time for conjuring up that sharp, sweet and temperamental season of early April in Vermont. One of the most exciting changes of this quickening season happens both unheard and unseen. With longer, warmer days but still freezing nights, those lifeless looking maple trees that dot the northeastern landscape turn into gigantic pumps, pulling gallons of water out of the thawing ground, mixing them with nutrients and sugars and sending them up and out to nourish buds that have been waiting patiently in a dormant state through the long New England winter. 

Along with the new life pulsing throughout the North, you'll see "sugar houses" punctuating the hills, steaming away and transforming the precious spring sap of the Sugar Maple into maple syrup.

For those of you who have ever tapped a maple tree, you know what an exciting event this is. To drill a hole, hammer in a tap and watch those first drops of sap well up and spill out into your bucket make one look in wonder at all the trees in the landscape, knowing that, even though you can't see it, something quite miraculous is going on.

                                                                                            

The taste of the first syrup is sweet and exciting. The traditional way to prolong this pleasure is to make and eat "sugar on snow." To create this once-a-year indulgence, we boil down a pan of fresh syrup until two or three drops form a ball when dropped in a cup of cold water. Then we pour it over fresh snow or crushed ice and watch it stiffen like taffy. We eat this chewy sweet with sour pickles (put up from last summer's garden) and homemade doughnuts while sitting and savouring the early spring sunshine. 

Cake, or baking powder, doughnuts were developed in New England many years ago. They were originally shaped like nuts, hence their name. (The Pennsylvania Dutch added the holes.) Combining these with pickles and "sugar on snow" is probably one of the oldest traditions in America and a sweet finale to this section.

Now I ask you...how many cookbooks do you own that are worded in such a  beautifully picturesque way? I use maple syrup all the time...for coffee sometimes, and for sweetening my yogurt, or for making my hot milk taste really good. And I'm remembering that my husband gave me a book by Noel Perrin titled Amateur Sugar Maker. Perrin eventually married Anne Spencer Lindbergh...or should I say she eventually married him, as he was her third husband. As a fan of Charles and Anne Lindbergh and Noel Perrin, this fact caught my attention. 

Tomorrow I'll give you the recipe for Doughnuts for "Sugaring." I'm going to lunch with Alice today. Her husband is in the hospital after having a heart attack and undergoing quadruple by-pass surgery on Monday. She's sneaking away for a little R & R with me...just an hour or two. God bless her and her husband Mike. 
  
Everybody have a good Thursday!

Blessings...Mimi