Cabane à Sucre
After napping the day away, tired from a brief shopping excursion to Saint Saveur, we piled in the car to drive to Vince's place. At the house, the rest of the party introduced themselves to the family, and we were shortly on our way. The drive, which included a detour as a result of a missed turn by Vince, was short. We tried to play a road trip game called "Radio", but were pretty unsuccessful. We arrived at the cabane with 15 minutes to spare, so we wandered around the outside of the building. There were rabbits and goats.
We got inside and there were long tables and people eating at them family-style. It was decorated like an old time cabin or lodge or something. We paid before eating and sat down at a long table. Our first course was split pea soup and some bread with butter and sweet onion something to spread on it. Nothing special, but tasty no less. The next food came out, ham and bacon. And it wasn't "Canadian" bacon, but similar to regular bacon (in strips) but much thicker and crispier. They were to be eaten with an excess of maple syrup, for which the season had just begun. Apparently, the early maple syrup is the best, so we were getting the best maple syrup. There was also sausage and baked beans, which were also to be drenched in syrup. Yum. At some point during the meal, Vince asked around who wanted beer, and went and got a pitcher of it to share with the table. Toward the end of each person's glass, the beer, too was consumed with a bit of maple syrup, just as an experiment. Surprisingly, the Canadian tactic of adding maple syrup to everything in a meal worked out. We're going to try to sell the idea of this Maple Beer to Labatt later this week. The meal ended with pancakes and coffee for dessert, both of which received some of the special ingredient.
The conversation during the meal revolved between the French language, American politics, the inner workings of maple syrup, travel, careers, and probably many other things that I don't remember. Vince's children even spoke some English here and there, which is probably one of the reasons he wanted us to have dinner with his family. Overall, it was a very pleasant dinner.
Filled and satisfied, we proceeded to another part of the building, the name of which I can't remember, but was the defining part of the "Sugar Cabin". Here there was a strange looking pump thing in the corner, and three tubs of snow on a table. The idea was to pour hot maple syrup on the snow, wait for it to congeal a bit, and the roll it up onto a popsicle stick and eat it. I did this, and it was delicious. The pump thing in the corner was actually a cow-milking device that had been converted to do another sort of work. There was a network of tubes running from maple trees in the area, and this thing, rather than pulling milk from various cows, extracted the sap through these tubes into the cabin. Very clever.
Shortly after this, it was goodbye. We thanked them and drove back to the resort.
We got inside and there were long tables and people eating at them family-style. It was decorated like an old time cabin or lodge or something. We paid before eating and sat down at a long table. Our first course was split pea soup and some bread with butter and sweet onion something to spread on it. Nothing special, but tasty no less. The next food came out, ham and bacon. And it wasn't "Canadian" bacon, but similar to regular bacon (in strips) but much thicker and crispier. They were to be eaten with an excess of maple syrup, for which the season had just begun. Apparently, the early maple syrup is the best, so we were getting the best maple syrup. There was also sausage and baked beans, which were also to be drenched in syrup. Yum. At some point during the meal, Vince asked around who wanted beer, and went and got a pitcher of it to share with the table. Toward the end of each person's glass, the beer, too was consumed with a bit of maple syrup, just as an experiment. Surprisingly, the Canadian tactic of adding maple syrup to everything in a meal worked out. We're going to try to sell the idea of this Maple Beer to Labatt later this week. The meal ended with pancakes and coffee for dessert, both of which received some of the special ingredient.
The conversation during the meal revolved between the French language, American politics, the inner workings of maple syrup, travel, careers, and probably many other things that I don't remember. Vince's children even spoke some English here and there, which is probably one of the reasons he wanted us to have dinner with his family. Overall, it was a very pleasant dinner.
Filled and satisfied, we proceeded to another part of the building, the name of which I can't remember, but was the defining part of the "Sugar Cabin". Here there was a strange looking pump thing in the corner, and three tubs of snow on a table. The idea was to pour hot maple syrup on the snow, wait for it to congeal a bit, and the roll it up onto a popsicle stick and eat it. I did this, and it was delicious. The pump thing in the corner was actually a cow-milking device that had been converted to do another sort of work. There was a network of tubes running from maple trees in the area, and this thing, rather than pulling milk from various cows, extracted the sap through these tubes into the cabin. Very clever.
Shortly after this, it was goodbye. We thanked them and drove back to the resort.
posted by twehner at
7:32 AM
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