[chocomouse]

cwc, my husband showed me the photos you sent him. wow! Football, indeed. Looks like a heavyweight defensive player fell on it. I've never seen anything like that. And I'm glad you did not lose much syrup and can repackage it for long-term storage. Thanks for posting the Food and Wine link. I'm going to make the maple-apple upside down cake for sure, and maybe try the squash/pumpkin soup.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by chocomouse.

[chocomouse]

I pulled a container of leftover pasta and meat sauce out of the freezer, along with some olive-cheese rolls, and quickly threw together a green salad. Dinner!

[chocomouse]

I made bagels, but they didn't come out so good. I knew the dough seemed wetter than usual, and added a couple teaspoons of flour, but that didn't help much. They ended up being very light, and almost soft, not dense and chewy. I didn't think the humidity was that high today to make such a difference, I guess I must have measured wrong. They are still better than no bagels at all!

[chocomouse]

I had planned leftovers for dinner, but my husband ate them for lunch! So we had grilled salmon basted with maple syrup, cole slaw, steamed broccoli from the freezer, and roasted potatoes with Penzey's Pasta Sprinkles.

[chocomouse]

That's good to hear, Joan. Just don't over-do it and have a relapse.

[chocomouse]

PLEASE NOTE: I have edited the previous entry about repackaging syrup into glass jars. When you repackage, heat the syrup up to 190*, not the 219.5* I stated. The 219.5* is needed only when you initially boil sap into syrup, or when you have removed mold. Whenever you are just repackaging into glass container, you only need to heat the syrup to 190*. Sorry - I've never repackaged syrup -- that's my husband's job!

[chocomouse]

Skeptic, maple walnut scones would be good, too! Although, I can never resist anything chocolate.

[chocomouse]

Skeptic, that's the way we seal jars when we initially make the syrup. We boil the sap that comes out of the tree(s), to 219.5*, which is now syrup, not sap. To re-package the syrup, heat the syrup up to 190*; you do not need to completely re-boil it, just get it up to around 190. Then pour it into clean glass jars, cap them, and they self-seal. You can hear the lid "pop" and then feel that the lid has lost it's flexibility if you poke it. It's the same process of canning, with a water bath or pressure cooker -- the lid is sealed. These sealed jars do not need to be refrigerated; once opened, however, they do have to be kept in the refrigerator. Sometimes we need to transfer syrup from gallon jugs into different containers (usually small, fancy bottles for wedding favors) so we use the same process - heat the syrup to 190*, pour into clean (sterilized in boiling water) jars, and cap.

Also, if you ever find mold growing on an opened container of syrup, you can scrape the mold off, toss it, and reheat the syrup to 219.5 (yes, 219.5 is correct if you have removed mold) and put it in a clean glass container and cap it. We've seen this happen a couple of times. Supposedly, the syrup container did not seal completely or was not refrigerated. Experts say the mold is actually growing in the water/moisture that was in the original container, not growing in the syrup which has a high sugar content.

I'm not sure how much heat a plastic funnel can manage, so to be safe, I guess you probably should use metal not plastic. We use metal at the sugarhouse. It is an easy process -- the hardest part is waiting for the syrup to come up to temperature -- it takes a while.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by chocomouse. Reason: Edited to change erroneous temperature
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by chocomouse.

[chocomouse]

Our dinner was chicken patties, and the leftovers of squash, mashed potatoes, and cole slaw.

[chocomouse]

I made pan-fried pork chops with onion, squash, and mashed potatoes.

[chocomouse]

I didn't know that about vaseline either!

[chocomouse]

Our food shelf says the same thing: they are not allowed to give out foods that are more than one year past the expiration date.

[chocomouse]

Pizza tonight!

[chocomouse]

So sorry about this, Joan. But of course you can handle it, you're a tough lady and you have a great supporter!

[chocomouse]

The new grading system was actually initiated by maple sugarers, with the intention of standardizing the grades. I'm not so sure it worked, it's very vague wording, like what is "robust" or "delicate"? Reputable syrup producers use grading kits to compare their syrups. These are tiny glass bottles of syrup in wood frames, and when held up to the light next to a sample bottle of newly made syrup, the color differences show up nicely and the new syrup can be more accurately labeled. Taste, of course, is still up to the taste-tester! I think as producers and users get used to the new wording, we will stop using the "B" word; but centuries old habits die slowly.

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