Keep Up the Fire! Maple Syrup Time

WOJB , FM 88.9, started playing Pete Seeger's "Maple Syrup Time" a couple of weeks back, but at Bide-A-Wee the sap really started flowing just a few days ago. We have about a dozen taps in now, and I'll put a few more in over the next couple of days. Our best tree this year is putting close to three gallons a day in the repurposed pickle bucket from our corner burger joint. Yesterday we brought home a little more than 15 gallons of clear sap, which, after many hours of boiling, has been reduced to what will fit in Big Blue:



I think I forgot to mention, in my "Ode to a Pot," that Big Blue is also an excellent sap reducing vessel. I've done this batch on my stove in our kitchen here in Saint Paul. Everything I've read warns you not to do this, for fear that the billowing clouds of steam will remove your wallpaper and cause the plaster to fall from your ceilings, but we have a really well ventilated kitchen, with a skylight and lots of windows, and it seems to work okay. I mean, I wouldn't boil down hundreds of gallons of sap here, but for smaller batches, and finishing, it works fine.

Nonetheless, I plan to set up a burner for our very big enameled stock pot, light a fire, and do the next reducing at the cabin. Gotta get a move on here, the sap is calling me.



I tweeted about the bluebirds, appropriately enough. There's the dude bluebird in the birdbath. Big Blue, it turns out, is pretty close to Bluebird Blue.

Here he is in the "Grousekill" apple tree:



"Maple Syrup Time," is not just a charming little ditty, but also quite a comprehensive primer on how to make maple syrup. Since it's by Pete Seeger, it contains a nicely unobtrusive life lesson or two, as well.


First you get the buckets ready, clean the pans and gather firewood,
Late in the winter, it's maple syrup time.
You need warm and sunny days but still a cold and freezing nighttime
For just a few weeks, maple syrup time.

We boil and boil and boil and boil it all day long,
Till ninety sev'n percent of water evaporates just like this song
And when what is left is syrupy don't leave it too long
-Watch out for burning! Maple syrup time.

I know it's not the quickest system but each year I can't resist it.
Get out the buckets, and tap the trees in time
-Making it is half the fun, and satisfaction when it's done.
Keep up the fire! Maple syrup time.

My grandpa says perhaps it's just a waste of time.
Ah! but no more than this attempt to make a happy little rhyme,
So pat your feet or swing your tail, but keep in good time.
Keep up the fire! Maple syrup time.

I'll send this song around the world with love to ev'ry boy and girl,
Hoping they don't mind a little advice in rhyme.
As in life or revolution, rarely is there a quick solution,
Anything worthwhile takes a little time.
We boil and boil and boil and boil it all day long.
When what is left is syrupy, don't leave it on the flame too long.
But seize the minute, build a new world, sing an old song.
Keep up the fire! Maple syrup time.




Text (except the song) and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw (Mary took the bluebird shots)

What Color is Your Le Creuset?

As you can just sort of barely tell from that shot, mine is blue. Cooks become attached to their tools. I have a deep respect for my sauté pans, my go-to All-Clad saucier, a ready-to-hand paring knife, my baking stones. But I find, considering the question here and now, that I have actual affection for only four items:

**My Global Asian chef's knife which, to my utter astonishment, sat my once beloved Sabatier down in the drawer, rarely to emerge, practically the day I got it, probably ten years ago.

**My exceedingly well-seasoned wok, a dumpster dive find from the alley between Harriet and Garfield Avenues just south of 28th Street in south Minneapolis, twenty...two...years...ago--it didn't come well-seasoned, that's what the twenty-two years have been about.

**A magnificent black cast iron skillet, low-sided and about sixteen inches across, a true heirloom that was given to Mary by a friend, Karen, because Karen knew she wouldn't ever use it, and knew we would--what generosity there.

**And my Le Creuset seven-quart dutch oven, a birthday or Christmas present from Mary in a year I do not precisely recall.



Of those four, only one has a name. It's the dutch oven; we call it "Big Blue." There are a lot of reasons that from among all the saucepans, cocottes, terrines, skillets, gratin dishes, knives and cleavers and spatulas of all kinds, from all the drawers and cupboards full of tools, this one vessel has so distinguished itself, become almost more of a family member than a pot. To wit: it is beautiful, it is venerable, it is French. It is versatile in performing many tasks, and it is indispensible in a few.

It is stock pot, confit pot, bean pot, soup pot, stew pot. It is braising vessel, best when tucked into a low oven for some slow hours filled with oxtails in Belgian beer or short ribs simmering in red wine, pork shoulder soaking up cider. It is chicken in vinegar and rabbit in mustard sauce.

Big borscht, white beans and sausage, fish chowder. Choucroute garni, moules marinière, pot au feu, boeuf à la bourguignonne, poule au pot (I did mention that it's French, didn't I?).

It is classic and comfort; the ideal vessel for a precisely calibrated cassoulet or a tossed-off soup of refrigerator miscellany.

Last night it was a variation on garbure, inspired by Sally Vincent's excellent webite Raining Sideways.

(Here I digress, abruptly, to note that I've recently added several great sites to the "We Read These" column at right. El is a former Minnesotan now living la vida local--and how--in southwestern Michigan and writing about it in fast grow the weeds ; Sylvie is "French by birth, Virginian by choice," gardening, cooking, and expressing the joie de vivre of it all at Rappahannock Cook & Kitchen Gardener ; Patrick mixes Duck Fat & Politics very appetizingly and literately down in beautiful Northfield, MN; and Amy Thielen, a familiar byline to Star Tribune readers (most recently reporting on Red Lake walleye), writes compellingly of life and food in northern Minnesota at Recipe-Phile. All well worth a bookmark, and the rest of that stuff over there, the old stuff, well that's all good, too. I'll bet they all have Le Creusets; I wonder what color theirs are...?)

Back to garbure, a hearty vegetable, bean, and meat soup that is either Basque, Béarnaise, "French country," or southwestern, depending on how the Google rolls. Ours was Saint Paul, Dunn County, Midtown Farmers' Market , and Seward co-op. It's frequently made with duck, or confit thereof, but we just used a ham hock from Hilltop Pastures Family Farm and a hunk of our own home-smoked bacon. The beans are de rigeur in a true garbure, it would seem; in our variation we subbed some sprouted wheat berries that Renée Bartz grows out in Connorsville, WI (Bolen Vale Cheese ), on the road to Bide-A-Wee.


Then the vegetables were carrots, leeks, and potatoes from our gardens, onion and garlic from the market, turnips, parnips, and cabbage from Seward, all local stuff. Simmer an hour or so. Grate some cheese (Roth Kase Wisconsin "gruyère here), and the soup-filled, cheese-topped oven-proof bowls go in for a melting--or a browning under the broiler, if you prefer.


Mary was kind of stressed yesterday about various life and work issues, and sat down to supper in a bit of a funk. After a few bites of cheesy veg, bacon and deeply delicious broth (and, yes, a couple sips of wine), she looked over at me and sort of sighed, and she said, "You know, it's gonna be all right."

Big Blue has that effect on people.



Little Bide-A-Wee spudlettes, "La Ratte," keeping well in the cellar.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw