Every year, my hometown has a "Bonhomme Carnaval"event at our local ski hill. This event is a celebration of French Canadian culture with traditional activities like this maple sugaring off on snow, cross country skiing, Norwegian sledding, RCMP in serge, and a bonhomme mascot. This year the event was hosted by the graduating class of 2015 - with all proceeds going towards their prom. The students were hard at work all day with the sugaring off, selling cans of maple syrup, and serving up traditional french tourtiere (meat pies), sugar pies, split pea soup, and baked beans. It was a truly French Canadian experience, and everything was authentic and delicious!
First they started by levelling off the snow:
Here they have pure Canadian maple syrup bubbling on the stove (at 113 degrees Celsius to be exact!):
A ladle of this is about to be turned into something quite delicious...
The ladle full of bubbling hot maple syrup is poured onto the snow:
You're given a wide popsicle stick, which you adhere to the maple syrup immediately. As it starts to cool, you slowly start to wrap the maple syrup around the popsicle stick until finally...
You have a stick of ooey, gooey, maple deliciousness.
Today was a good day.
Your photos are gorgeous! It's still so cold here we can't start sugaring which is a major bummer! I can't wait for warmer days.
ReplyDeleteThat looks like so much fun!
ReplyDeleteOh wow, I love this! We were supposed to do something similar in high school but the weather warmed up unexpectedly and it just never happened (funny how that happens the one time you DON'T want it to warm up in February.) I'm sure I'll get a chance to try this sometime, I've got a lifetime of living in Canada ahead of me :P
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