This March morning, the sun is taking its time climbing over the horizon. The flowage is glistening, covered in a new sheet of ice formed by recently melted snow that has frozen to form a huge ice rink. It is a spectacular sunrise, breathtakingly beautiful. I reluctantly pull myself away from the window, saying a prayer of thanksgiving to the creator for my bountiful blessings.
Opening my laptop, I run through the list of things I have to do today. I better get going if I want to accomplish my goals: writing this column, signing a contract to install a solar system here at Otter Run and doing errands before attending the Townsend Town Board meeting to deliver my report on Lakewood Library. I smile with sweet satisfaction at the thought of being able to continue giving back to make the world a better place.
One other sweet thought keeps popping up this morning. Sugar Camp Season is upon us, and Otter Run will be an especially sweet spot for the next few weeks. Though I can’t see or hear them, I know Bill Cox and Dennis Sachs are in our woods harvesting sap. Using a method employed by humans for untold centuries, the guys will transform a watery amber liquid provided by sugar maple trees into delicious maple syrup, one of Mother Nature’s most prized fruits of the forest.
The guys are busy carrying on a Sachs family tradition of making maple syrup the old-fashioned way. I am not exaggerating when I say this is a lot of hard work. The trees must be tapped in the right weather conditions. Once the sap starts flowing through tubes into five-gallon plastic containers, it must be collected by hand and transferred to their stainless-steel cooking pan. The sap is then slow-boiled over a carefully tended wood fire.
Just gathering that much wood is a yeoman’s task in itself.
It takes hours of watching, stirring and testing to reduce forty gallons of sap into one gallon of syrup. When the sap reaches the right viscosity, it’s meticulously filtered and poured into sterilized bottles that will keep unrefrigerated for years if stored in a cool dark place. The finished product has just one ingredient: maple sap.
The time and effort are more than worth it. Here in Kathie’s Kitchen, this amber gold liquid will be drizzled over my famous no-carb cottage cheese pancakes or mixed into a sumptuous low-gluten banana bread or sauteed with butter to make a side dish I call guilt-free glazed apples. Some will become gifts to grateful city folks and some bartered for fresh-caught fish, organic eggs or even an occasional bottle of my favorite Reisling.
Pure maple syrup may cost more than commercial pancake syrup, but it’s a far better choice if you’re looking for something sweet to pour on pancakes or French toast. Unlike cane and corn sugars, maple syrup is a naturally sweet product that contains many antioxidants, plus minerals such as magnesium, zinc, manganese, calcium, potassium and iron. One tablespoon contains 12 grams of sugar, 52 calories and 13 grams of carbohydrates so you do need to exercise moderation if you are counting calories or diabetic.
Let’s compare maple syrup to commercial pancake syrup, a concoction of corn syrup and artificial flavoring that may be less expensive but is a deep fake. Consider the ingredients printed on the bottle of a well-known brand. Listed in the order of quantity contained: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, cellulose gum, caramel color, salt, natural flavor, artificial flavor, sorbic acid, sodium benzoate, sodium hexametaphosphate.
Take a look at the last ingredient listed: sodium hexametaphosphate. According to Wikipedia, sodium hexametaphosphate is a salt with a chemical formula of Na6[(PO3)6], a white solid that dissolves in water. It is typically part of a mixture of metaphosphates (NaPO3), more correctly called sodium polymetaphosphate. While the average person can probably not correctly pronounce its name, it doesn’t take an English teacher to wonder if sodium hexametaphosphate might not be good for human consumption.
It isn’t. This chemical additive can cause short-term side effects: headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and gastrointestinal irritation. It can also cause an allergic reaction, most commonly resulting in mild chest pain and general respiratory irritation. In animal studies, it caused serious side effects, including growth inhibition, kidney weights increasing, bone decalcification, parathyroid hypertrophy and hyperplasia, and inorganic phosphaturia. I’m not sure what those last three conditions are, but the ones I do recognize are significant.
Maybe eating that fake stuff loaded with chemicals won’t hurt you or your family, but why take a chance when Mother Nature supplies the real thing? As my own earth mother used to say, you can’t put a price tag on your health, now can you?
Kathleen Marsh is a lifelong educator, writer, and community advocate. She has published eight books, four on the history of Townsend, where she and husband Jon are happily retired on the beautiful Townsend Flowage.
Syrup from maple trees better for health
