What is maple syrup and what do the grades mean?
What is Maple Syrup?
Maple syrup is made by reducing the sap from maple trees into a highly concentrated sugar suspended in water. At harvest, maple sap is a watery liquid–not thick and sticky like other saps. The sap is then boiled until most of the water evaporates. Impurities rise to the top during the boiling and are skimmed off. When the sugar content exceeds 67%, it is considered maple syrup.
The color and strength of flavor is dependent upon when the maple syrup was harvested and the growing conditions of the maple trees for that year. Lighter syrups are harvested earlier in the season.
Maple Syrup Grade
The USDA assigns grades to the maple syrup sold in the the U.S. These grades are Grade A Light Amber, Grade A Medium Amber, Grade A Dark Amber, and Grade B.
Storage
Maple syrup must be refrigerated for freshness (even unopened bottles). Freeze maple syrup to extend its life indefinitely. Refrigerated syrup in glass containers will maintain quality for a year. Syrup in plastic bottles can be refrigerated for three to four months.
The kids and I just got back from strawberry picking at the organic farm on the edge of town. Nevermind that it’s almost 90 degrees with similar humidity level and I’m 8 months pregnant…those berries were beautiful! While the kids hopped around from row to row, stuffing their faces (we have permission to nibble while we pick…), I was busily filling our buckets to get the task done with.
Who needs natural weight loss supplements when good, natural, whole foods like strawberries exist, ripe for the eating? Suffice to say, we’ll be having a big fruit salad tonight for dinner, crepes stuffed with strawberry filling tomorrow morning, and probably a strawberry pie this weekend some time!
Yum!
Why does cutting onions make us cry?
It’s the flavor and smell of onions that creates tears…but there are ways to reduce these tears when you chop onions.
- Refrigerate onions for 30 minutes before chopping them
- Use the sharpest knife you have for chopping onions
- Cut the root end of the onion off last (it has the highest levels of those tear-inducing ingredients)
- Wear glasses or sunglasses when you chop onions
- Breathe through your mouth instead of your nose
- Cut onions near a fan – the moving air will keep it away from your eyes
Have you started buying asparagus yet this spring? We’ve been nibbling on these tasty spears for approximately a month already and we are enjoying every tender mouthful. My kids affectionately call asparagus spears “Juniors.” Think Veggie Tales…get it?
Anyway…in honor of spring arriving soon, I wanted to share my best Cream of Asparagus Soup recipe with you.
Cream of Asparagus Soup
- 1 pound fresh asparagus
- 3.5 cups chicken broth, divided
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1/2 cup light cream
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Trim off the touch ends of the asparagus. Cut the asparagus into 1-inch pieces. Mix the asparagus and 1 cup broth in medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes or until tender.
Remove 1 cup of the cooked asparagus pieces and set them aside. Purée the remaining asparagus pieces with the broth in blender or food processor.
Melt the butter in large saucepan. Stir in flour. Gradually add the remaining broth and cook (stirring occasionally) until the mixture thickens slightly. Add the cream, the seasonings, the puréed asparagus mixture and asparagus pieces. Heat through and serve immediately.
I need a new kitchen faucet. It’s been a long time and after suffering with less than ideal sink situations, I am finally ready to spring for something like these beautiful Delta faucets I keep seeing in magazines. I would love something sleek and simple to adorn my sink and give me hot and cold water. I don’t think that’s too much to ask…now is it?
Sick of winter yet? Is the cold getting to you? Tired of snow and bitter cold…scraping windshields and finding mittens? Yeah…me too.
Except…I love soup! I love throwing a pot of soup on the stove around lunch time and tending it absent-mindedly during the afternoon as the flavors blend and meld.
Add a pan of cornbread or a crusty loaf of french bread and you have a meal!
Here are two of my favorites:
CHEESY TORTILLA SOUP
- 8 corn tortillas
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 large egg
- 1 can chopped green chilies
- 1 package taco seasoning mix
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup oil
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 3 cans chicken broth
- 4 cups tomato juice
- 1 can chopped tomatoes, drained
- 1 cup dairy sour cream
- 1/4 cup flour
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 12 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, cubed
Tear tortillas into pieces and soak them for ten minutes in the milk. Add egg, half the green chilies and half the taco seasoning mix. Process the mixture in the blender until smooth. Add shredded cheese to mixture and stir.
Heat the oil in a 10-inch skillet. Drop the blended mixture into hot oil by small teaspoons and fry until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.
Melt butter in large Dutch oven; add garlic and onion and fry until tender. Add broth, tomato juice, chopped tomatoes, remaining green chilies and seasoning mix. Boil and cook 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Blend together sour cream, flour and sugar. Stir some of the soup into the sour cream and add the mixture slowly to soup. Drop the cheese and tortillas into soup. Heat through.
BROCCOLI CHOWDER
- 10 oz chopped broccoli
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 1/4 cup peanuts, chopped
In a 2-quart saucepan, boil 1/2-cup water and add broccoli and onion. Cover and simmer 5 minutes. Do not drain. Add the soup, milk and cheese. Cook and stir until heated through. Top each serving with peanuts. Serves six.
Do you serve sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving? I am about to share with you…THE.BEST recipe I have ever found for sweet potatoes. It’s all in the spices…so I am also letting you in on my little spice secret. It’s called Penzey’s Spices and I purchase quite a lot of my spices from this store.
Anyway…if you like sweet potatoes, you’re gonna love this!
* 2 lbs. sweet potatoes
* 1/2 c maple syrup
* 1 tsp. SWEET CURRY (from Penzeys)
* 1/2 tsp. GARAM MASALA (from Penzeys)
* 1/2 tsp. salt
* 1/2 C chopped pecans
Peel the sweet potatoes and boil them until tender. Drain and mash the sweet potatoes when they are cooked. Heat the maple syrup, the curry powder, the garam masala and the salt in a small saucepan. Simmer for 1-2 minutes. Add the syrup mixture to the sweet potatoes and mix well. Sprinkle with the pecans and serve.
Seriously…YUM!
We learned an important lesson this week…and it’s a vital one if you own a freezer stocked with expensive food. Allow me to share…
One of my kids left our upright freezer door ajar on Monday afternoon. I did not discover this unfortunate event until approximately 36 hours later on Wednesday. By this time, there was a puddle in front of the freezer, a mess on the bottom of the freezer (thawing meat…blood…ick!). I placed a thermometer into the freezer and found that the temperature was still about 40 degrees. Cold enough that the food was still safe…yet rapidly thawing.
I closed the freezer and said to myself…”WHEW! I’m sure glad I found that near disaster…now we’ll just let it refreeze and all will be fine.” Sound good? I thought so…
Unfortunately…every time I went downstairs to check the freezer, the food was not refreezing as I expected it to. I told myself that the freezer simply needed to catch back up and it might take up to 24 hours. The temp in the freezer by this point was about 30 degrees F.
By the next day, the situation had not changed. Temp still 30 and food still not refreezing. I googled and googled and found nothing about what to expect when a freezer is recovering from being left open. Finally, I called the manufacturer and spoke with a service tech.
What I was told was that we needed to manually switch the freezer into a defrost mode by turning a screw in the back of the freezer. Doing this would turn the freezer off for 30 minutes and during that time any ice that had accumulated would melt and the freezer would then be able to recover from being left open and would be ready to freeze again.
Well…we did that and decided to use that defrosting time to clean it out. We actually ended up switching it back into the manual defrost mode two more times (the freezer was off and melting for 1.5 hours total) and by the time we turned it back on it was completely defrosted and spic and span inside.
We refilled it, turned it back on, crossed our fingers and said a prayer.
Within about two hours the temp was down to about 15 degrees F and it was cranking again. At this writing, everything is rock hard again and we averted disaster.
Lesson? Freezers need help to recover from being left open. You cannot just close the door and expect them to resume freezing without defrosting all of the partially defrosted ice that accumulates when this happens. Nowhere was this information readily available, either online or in the instruction manual. It took calling and speaking with a service tech to learn about this.
File this away in your little mental filing cabinet if this ever happens to you! May save you hundreds of dollars in valuable freezer items!
My daughter was on a mission today. Her goal? Find a recipe for making caramel apples that did not contain processed sugar. After some extensive search, she found one and we tackled it this afternoon. I am happy to tell you that it not only is POSSIBLE to make caramel apples that do not contain sugar, but they are DELICIOUS!
6 small apples
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup honey
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Prepare the apples by washing them and inserting a popsicle stick into each apple through the core. Fill a shallow bowl approximately half-full with ice water and set this aside.
Heat the cream and salt in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly and just before the cream simmers, add the honey. Continue stirring constantly and stick an instant read thermometer into the mixture. With the burner set to medium high, stir the mixture for approximately 20 minutes until it is 255 degrees. Remove from the heat and carefully set the pan into the prepared bowl of ice water(this will thicken the caramel). Be careful not to get ice water into the caramel. When the caramel is good and thick, remove the pan from the ice water and twirl each apple in the caramel to coat. If the caramel becomes too thick, return the pan to the heat for several seconds.
Set the apples onto the prepared baking sheet. We added some chopped nuts as well. Chill for several hours and serve.
Have you ever done this? This is a great recipe to keep up your sleeve for those times when time runs short but you still want something substantial and nutritious. Yes, you can actually roast a whole fryer in just over an hour.
Ingredients:
Fryer chicken
1 lemon
2 garlic cloves
Fresh parsley, sage and thyme
Butter
Salt and Pepper
1/2 cup white wine
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Mince the garlic and combine the garlic, equal portions of the fresh herbs and approximately 1/3 cup of butter.
Slice the lemon and place the herbed butter and the sliced lemon into the cavity of the chicken. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the outside of the chicken.
Place the chicken into a covered casserole dish and cover to seal.
Place the covered casserole dish in the oven and bake for one hour. Remove the casserole dish.
Drain the roasting juices and remove the lemon from the chicken. Squeeze the lemons into the juices and add the white wine. Remove the chicken from the dish and place the juices, lemon juice and wine into the dish. Return the covered dish to the oven for 15 minutes.
Carve the chicken and serve with the lemon sauce.
