Monday, March 23, 2009

Making Maple Syrup

North Park Village Nature Center, a hidden jewel in the North Park neighborhood of Chicago, held their annual Maple Syrup Festival this past weekend. Along with music and food, there are demonstrations on how to tap trees and make maple syrup.

Here, one of the Nature Center representatives is cooking the sap, reducing and concentrating it to become the sweet syrup that we put on pancakes and use in baking. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.

3 comments:

Stefan Jansson said...

I've never tried sweet syrup on pancakes (I prefer strawberry jam). But I guess I will have to give it ago!

brattcat said...

Mmmm, I can just smell that sweet steam.

B SQUARED said...

A midwest tradition.