French toast. I didn’t have any eggs so it was really just milk toast, and I should probably call it Swedish, but that isn’t the main point I want to make here. My point is that I have no idea where to find maple syrup around here that’s as good as it is in Minnesota or New England. Words fail me when I try to explain the difference, but I can most certainly taste it. In Duluth, I’m told, regular folks put buckets outside their neighborhood maple trees when the syruping season comes around. It reminds me of when we ate blueberry pancakes at a diner once in a small town in New Hampshire, and I don’t know what was so good about their pancakes (there was probably nothing special or local about the blueberries), but I know they knew how to make them correctly. I have never attempted to bring syrup home from trips, however, because it can explode on planes. I know this because in college, when I was studying abroad, I packed some maple syrup as a gift for my host mother in Austria, because they don’t really have it in Europe (which is one strike against the idea of moving to Europe). It ended up caramelizing everything in my suitcase. These days, we use so much syrup that we started buying it in bulk at Costco, where I suppose it is quite adequate.

(Photo: Aerial Lift Bridge, Duluth, Christmas 2015.)

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