Mapling Monochrome Monday

Maple syrup is definitely one of the best things you can get as far as sweeteners and it being largely completely natural and minimally manipulated. The sugar and sweetener industry is definitely a big one but it's got a lot of shit going on with it, with quite a lot of poisons and chemicals in the various products.

Thankfully maple syrup is one of the best things to get when it comes to a traditional sweet product that is nutritious and minimally messed with in terms of GMO's and all that bullshit that negatively affects sugar like sugarcane and other types. It also is a hell of a fun thing to do when you have it nearby!

I realized a few years ago, being on Hive, that maple syrup is definitely one of the less common things in other countries that people have even heard of, never mind tried. It is a deliciously strong and potent sweetener that is made from the sap of all kinds of varieties of maple trees, with the sugar maple being the most desired one of course given the name. It is quite a versatile product! It adds an amazing amount of flavor to any dish that you put it in, and it can replace sugar in a lot of these recipes. The one thing that may be off putting is the product does have a fairly strong taste, but me personally it is a taste that I absolutely love!

What is cool is seeing the giant tools that they use to get the syrup to be condensed down to the delicious liquid, which can be seen below. They take the water and boil it, getting rid of the water content and giving it the leftover sugar content.

What I love about taking these pictures and turning them into black and white is that they definitely give quite a feeling of noir. They remind me, being in the old wooden shack with oldschool tools and things around all over the place, of the early 1900's or even 1800's where people were making this stuff in those same sugar houses. The primary way that people would reduce down the stuff was through big fires underneath it but these days they use other fuels like oil and gas to make it hot enough. Still though, seeing the machine, stacks and all that in black and white gives me the feeling of one of the early pioneers that set out to do this stuff. It's pretty damn cool!

One of my favorite aspects about it though is that it's one of the local traditions that people around here do. It wasn't something I got to do with my family but we were more city than we were farm visiting people. Still though, I did get to visit one when I was really young and my grandfather lived in Vermont. I don't remember anything about it sadly but I do remember the old tins they use to sell the stuff in!