Mint, Sheep Sorrel, and Jewelweed

Tonight's menu:

Appetizer--sheep sorrel salad

Main course--Bean and cheese wraps filled with boiled jewel weed greens

Dessert--Strawberries with mint infused birch syrup

The lowdown:

Sheep sorrel is a lemony flavored green which can be eaten throughout its growing season. It is sour and delicious. Our salad was half garden salad greens and half sheep sorrel greens. We have eaten wood sorrel on many occasions and the two plants contain the same chemical (oxalic acid) that gives them their characteristic sour lemony flavor.

Jewelweed greens are as slippery to eat as they feel when you gather them. I (Thag) like the texture. Ooga was not as fond, though we both agreed that they are a solid 3 on our rating scale. The field guides direct us to pick shoots that are shorter than six inches and boil in two changes of water (for 15 minutes total). Ooga efficiently has the next bath boiling in the kettle when the first one is drained away. I remember eating this green in high school as one of my first wild edible experiments. Some hard earned wisdom: Cut the stems in the field rather than uprooting and cutting off the roots later. It makes the plants much easier to process and to clean.

The wild mint was gathered with Arena last weekend, we used it to flavor our birch syrup from this spring. The flavors were delightful over strawberries, and the mint was the perfect compliment to the sweet and slightly astringent birch. All we did to infuse was to boil the mint in the syrup with just enough water to keep the syrup from turning to sugar.

Birch Syrup--Finally Done

Ooga grew up on Aunt Jemima. For most of her childhood, she didn't put any syrup on her pancakes at all. Eating and cooking with syrup is something that she has grown into. So, today, when we finally tasted our birch syrup on a breakfast of French toast, Ooga wasn't sure if she liked the flavor or not. Maybe it was something she would have to grow into as well.

Earlier this week we finally took all the jars of 'mostly syrup' out of the fridge, combined them, and boiled them down. We used the spatula test to tell if the syrup was done since we didn't have a float to measure the specific gravity. We've never used this test before, and it seems we missed the mark a little. Our syrup, although sweet, is not as thick as a syrup should be.

Reviews: The syrup is very mild in flavor, much milder than maple syrup. It is also very mildly astringent--I know that sounds unappetizing, but it's not unpleasant at all. Ooga describes the flavor as woodsy. It reminds me of a flavor that I wouldn't expect to be sweet. But it's not as sweet-tasting as maple syrup is anyway. I enjoyed it smothering my breakfast, and we'll have no problem finishing it, but I feel we haven't quite perfected our birch sugaring yet. (No wintergreen flavor at all. Several friends had asked. I suspect that the molecules that give this flavor to the twigs and tea are too fragile to survive all that boiling intact.)

Both Laura and I give this one a 3--palatable.

Some advice for next time:

1. Boil one pot at a time.--At first we had just kept adding sap to one pot, constantly diluting the concentrated sap. This method seems to darken the syrup and impact the flavor somewhat.
   
2. Wait for real syrup.--We stopped too early, thinking that the sheets that we're supposed to see falling off the end of our spatula had come. This is going to be tricky to get just right. Boil too long and you've scalded the fruits of all your hard work.

How to Make the Syrup—What We’ve Learned

There’s been so much written about maple sugaring, and we are such novices, that I am loathe to share what we’ve learned. I fear that whatever we write will be redundant. Still, there may be something to learn from our little operation. With that hope, I offer the following:

1. Gathering: (For our experiences with tapping, please see our entry for Sunday, February 28, 2010, Maple Tapping for Syrup—Wild Edible #4.) The hardest work in our sugaring operation is getting the sap from the trees to the evaporator where we’ll boil it. The buckets that hang on the trees can be lifted off of the tap and their contents can be poured into plastic 5-gallon bucket to carry. These buckets have been carefully labeled ‘SAP ONLY’ so that they are not used to carry yucky stuff (like Carl’s biodeisel) that may taint our sweet stuff. We throw out any frozen sap. Carl and Abe say that a negligible amount of sugar is frozen, so leaving the ice means less boiling.

2. Hauling: It’s nice to carry two buckets at once for balance. I’ve found hauling buckets by hand to be more comfortable than using an old wooden yoke. This year we tried hauling buckets with a sled, but the sap sloshed about too much. We retired the sled for fear that we’d end up spilling our precious cargo. The big commercial operations and even some smaller operation use a flexible plastic tubing to bring the sap to a central location. It’s a lot less work, but they’re kind of ugly.

3. Storing: We only boil on weekends, so we store our sap in a big 40-50 gallon plastic barrel which we bury in a snowbank so that it stays cold and does not spoil. That was hard this year since it has been so warm. Carl diligently shoveled his dwindling snowbanks around the barrels as things melted. Carl has fitted the tops of these with a round mesh filter. We pour the sap from our 5-gallon buckets through this filter to strain out any debris.

4. The Evaporator: The fire is built in a cinder-block enclosure called the arch. Who knows how it got that name? Our arch has a swinging metal door that is wonderfully warm to stand near on cold March days. The blocks are stacked and held in place with rebar. The evaporating pan is a large metal pan that fits snuggly on top of the arch. The space between is sealed with insulating rope and some sand. There are still some smoky cracks between the stones, so I plan to help Abe rebuild the arch with some mortar this summer to improve the seal. Carl put a bigger chimney on this year for a better draft. The pan is divided into three compartments, each connected to the next by a small hole. Sap is poured into one end and as you move from compartment to compartment, the concentration increases. At the end of the line is a spigot to draw the most concentrated sap. We don’t take the sap all the way to syrup in this big pan. It could easily burn.

5. Boiling: This year, we burned scrap wood that Carl picked up from a nearby demolition project. We build a fire near the front of the arch so that the fuel gets lots of oxygen. Carl and Abe are sticklers for a neat fire and often check to make sure that the smoke coming from the chimney is nearly invisible. If it starts to get black and sooty they “tsk-tsk” and stop feeding the fire. The best way to keep the fire burning cleanly is to feed it small amounts of fuel frequently. We’ll typically boil all the sap we’ve gathered that week in one day. It’s ready when it tastes sweet (and believe me, we taste often!) and looks dark, but before it starts to get noticeably more viscous. Foam from the sap can start to fill the pan, so we lift it off with a wide scoop. We also quickly dip the tip of a stick of butter in and out of each compartment. “Fat fights foam,” so the old saying goes.

6. Finishing: The concentrated sap is not yet syrup. It has to be boiled still further. We do this in a stainless steel pot over a large outdoor propane stove. This is watched fastidiously as it approaches the right thickness so that it doesn’t go past syrup into sugar. (Though some people want it that way.) Carl has a nifty little weighted glass float that fits inside a cup that he got at Bascom’s . The float is graduated so that you can measure the specific gravity (density) of the syrup. When the float sinks to the right depth in the liquid, it has officially become syrup and is ready for canning.

7. Canning: I was surprised to find a cloudy precipitate in both the maple and the birch syrup that we’ve boiled. It’s called sugar sand by those in the know. I’m not sure if it is the result of chemical changes in the syrup or simply trace minerals that crystallize as the solution is concentrated. Carl and Abe filter it out. This is sticky and some syrup in inevitably wasted. We wondered this year if it could be decanted instead. After filtering, we pour the syrup into one of those coffee servers that you see at staff meetings everywhere with the spigot that can hang off of the end of the table. This way we can pour the hot syrup into jars for canning. This is much easier than canning vegetables or even jams. The sugar content of syrup is so high that bacteria cannot grow in it. The jars don’t even need to be sterilized. We just fill them under the spigot of the coffee server, twist the cap on, and turn them upside down so that the heated syrup will kill any lingering critters on the lids. We use a combination of mason jars and recycled glass jars that have re-sealing lids. Enjoying: Our first batch of syrup this year was the lightest I’ve seen us produce. Who knows what factors influence the color? Most folks will pay more for the lighter stuff. Me? I prefer the dark. Lightest to darkest the commercial grades are: grade A fancy, grade A medium amber, grade A dark amber, and grade B.

Maple Sugaring—For the Whole Family

Last weekend (20 March 2010) my mother, father, and grandmother came to visit. Since we had sap to boil, we all drove up Putney Mountain to the sugar shack. It was fun to show off the process to my family who, despite having lived in New England nearly all their lives, has never seen the whole process up close. While one batch was in the big evaporating pan, we had last weeks sap finishing in a pot over a propane stove. We took a stroll down the softening dirt roads to a view out to Mount Monadnock and Baby Yub-Yub walked deep into every mud puddle she could find. Everyone got a jar to take home. A day of sweetness—literal and figurative.

Sugaring Birches: Part 1

This week I borrowed some buckets and an old hand drill from our friend, Ken, and set out to tap some birches. I tapped Betula lenta (Black Birch), but Peterson's says that all the birches have edible sap. Our friend, Tifin, said that she did not care for birch syrup when she tried it in Alaska where there is a dearth of maple trees. Apparently the wintergreen flavor of the twigs does not transfer to the syrup. My co-worker, Matt, and I speculated that the molecules that give the twigs that fresh flavor might be changed at high temperatures. Undeterred, I set out to experiment and learn what I could.

At first I thought that only two taps would not be enough, but Abe said that over the course of the season one can expect to get about one quart of maple syrup from each tap. That's 10 gallons of sap from each tap! Birch sap supposedly flows even more prodigiously. After thinking about it that way, two taps seemed just fine.

I found two goodly sized trees and tapped away only to find that the next day there was . . . nothing. The buckets were dry.

Sugaring—Our Story

“Make sure to bring some food,” Carl had said before we left to go sugaring up at his place. Apparently, he expected a crowd. We drove up with ziti for baking. The dirt roads were a little soft, but the real mud hadn’t started yet. It was Saturday, and it was beautiful after a freezing night, perfect for sugaring.

Abe and I started a fire in the cinder block firebox (called an arch by folks in the sugaring business—I don’t know why), and we tested the evaporating pan for leaks with a little water. Two feet of snow hung dangerously of the end of the house’s metal roof right over the drum I had dug into the snowbank the previous weekend.

It sure was a party. People came and went all day. Carl and Deb, Abe and Lisa, Matt and Hannah, Ooga, Yub-yub, and I, Matt’s mother, and another friend of Carl and Abe’s. In my busy life, sometimes so full of suffocating responsibilities, I have not enjoyed a real party in a long time. As I hauled buckets with new and old friends, I felt nourished in a way that I haven’t felt in too long a time. There may be no greater pleasure than many hands set to a common work.

Maple Tapping For Syrup--Wild Edible #4

Let us know if these ideas help you or if you have better ones for us.


1. Gather Your Materials: Here’s what we use.

• 20-40 Stainless steel buckets (these come with a little reinforced hole up by the rim to hang on the tap)
• 20-40 Bucket covers (I like the kind that slide on rather than the flaps)
• 20-40 Metal taps
• 40-60 gallon plastic storage drum
• Hammer
• cordless power drill with appropriate bit for taps (3/8” for us--I think)
  
  2. Pick the Right Time: In our area, southern Vermont, that is usually early March, but it can be later or earlier. The sap will run when there are spring days that are enough above freezing but cool nights when the temperature drops back down below freezing again.
  
  
  3. Select Your Trees: It’s important to be able to identify sugar maples by their bark. They have no leaves at the time of year that the sap runs. They can be identified by their buds, but if a tree is big enough to tap, the buds will usually be well out of sight. Learning to identify trees by bark takes practice. It helps to have a teacher and several good guides. Line drawings and descriptions do not easily convey bark textures. Photographs aren’t great, but they’re the best thing you can get in a guide. I like the Audobon Society guide for this. Even though the Peterson guide has a much better key, it doesn’t have photographs.
  
  4. Tap Your Trees: We load all our materials into a sled as we go from tree-to-tree. We tap to a depth of almost two inches and angle upward as we drill. Some good taps will be dripping before the drill is even out of the tree. I usually blow the waste shavings away and get a good whistling sound from the tap’s hole. We try to keep in mind that the snow we are walking on now will be melting as the season goes on. What may be chest-height now might be over our heads in a few weeks. We use a hammer to gently tap the tap (get it) into the hole and hang the bucket on the tap itself. I prefer the taps that can hang the bucket directly rather than the ones that require a hook. I also like to watch the first drops hit the bucket’s bottom. Not only is it a satisfying sound, it’s also a great way to make sure that the sap is dripping where you want it and not down the side of the tree. Slide on your cover and move on to the next tree. Check your buckets tomorrow to see what you’ve got.
  
  5. Tap Gently: Sugaring is great because you don’t have to kill any plants in the process, but it’s good to remember that you are affecting the tree’s overall health and strength. Try to use narrow taps and don’t hang more than one bucket on a tree unless it’s a giant. Natives once got sap by slashing large V-shaped notches in the tree. This made sense in an age of stone tools, but I think it’s unfair to our much diminished forests to use such a damaging practice these days. Taps are cheap. Please use them.

Maple Sugaring--Our Story

We sugar at our friend Carl’s house. Carl is a mechanic, radio guy, and all-around tinkerer who makes his own vegetable-based fuels and plows his driveway with an ancient truck that has no breaks. “Putting the plow down will stop you.” Carl has been a great friend and mentor to us. We would not have gotten through our first years in Vermont without his generosity.

Carl and his son, Abe, have built a sugar shack for the sugaring season from odds and ends. They are remarkable scroungers. This year Carl has replaced his small evaporator with a new pan which used to be a commercial operator’s old finishing pan. The fire is built in a big chamber beneath the pan made of cinder blocks. This year, we went up earlier than usual. “I don’t usually like to start in February,” Carl said, but the warm weather during the days had started the sap running. Baby Yub Yub, rode in the sled with the taps and buckets. When she got tired of that, she splashed in the muddy potholes in the driveway. Carl had already set the taps for about half of the buckets. We did the other half. We helped reset the cinder blocks around his stove and admired Carl’s new and larger chimney. Thag also dug out a deep hole in the nearby bank of snow for a big 50 gallon bucket. We will empty the buckets we gather from the trees into this drum when the evaporating pan is full.

Why Maple

Are you kidding? The answer is flavor, flavor, flavor. This has got to be one of the best-tasting wild edibles on the planet. I read once that colonial Europeans in New England looked upon maple sugar as a second-rate replacement for the crystal of cane sugar that they imported from the Caribbean. I’m not quite sure what was wrong with them. These days maple sugar and maple syrup are the gourmet stuff. Aunt Jemimah ain’t sitting on the fancy tablecloths at your local 5-star breakfast establishment. This is the reason that maple syrup is one of the only wild foods that is commercially available on a large scale.

If flavor isn’t enough of a reason to convince you to try your hand at sugaring here are

Three More Reason To Gather Maple Syrup

1. Calories—Unlike modern Americans, the forager is actually on the lookout for more calories. Foragers want to get enough energy from their food to keep their bodies going and make up for all the energy that they expend. And syrup is a high calorie food.

2. More Nutritious Sweetener—The only processing that happens to foraged maple syrup is boiling. According to whole foods zealot, Sally Fallon, maple syrup is “rich in trace minerals, brought up from below ground by the trees deep roots.” She goes on to say that,”Unfortunately, formaldehyde is used in the production of most commercial maple syrup.” Tap your own!

3. Company—Sugaring is a big job. You could always do small batches over your lonely stove and fog up all the windows in your house as the water evaporates from the sap. Or you could pitch in with friends and do the process in style, swapping stories as you all sit around and watch the sap boil.