Maple Week in Vermont

I don’t know about you, but I have multiple signs of spring. We wait to hear the sound of geese flying back north. I love watching the different song birds at our feeder. Recently we saw an Evening Grosbeak! Mud season is of course a dead ringer for spring. And, a big one, maple week. Maple week means the trees are sensing something deep in their roots all the way to the tips of their branches. Spring is coming and the days are warmer. The nights might still be dipping down into the freezing temperatures, but at least the days are making us feel like we are on our way to spring.

This unfortunately doesn’t mean we are in the clear. We’ve recently had proof of that with a big storm that blew through New England and from what the weather folks are saying, we have another potential Nor’easter on the way. BUT, maple week is officially here in Vermont and that means we are all doing a small victory dance that we made it this far through winter!

Driving around the area, one finds sap buckets nailed to trees, bigger totes or collection tanks along the roads with blue, white and black tubing snaking it’s way through the trees, and steam billowing out from the tops of sugar houses. Sometimes, driving along the back roads, you can just about smell

The Best Maple Muffins

It’s Maple Season in New England! We use maple syrup in a lot of our baking and cooking, not to mention on top of breakfast items, and love it when we run out right when the fresh stuff is coming from all those sugaring houses in the area. We were able to pick up a FRESH quart the other day and I have been in the baking mood ever since. We have usually done our own sugaring, but this year just didn’t have the time. Want to do your own sugaring at home? Check out my past blog post on sugaring where you will find a great book on the subject.

I have been craving muffins for some reason lately and thought that a classic maple and walnut muffin would be a perfect way to start off our Sunday morning!

This is a super simple recipe that uses real maple syrup in both the muffin batter and in the topping. These muffins are fluffy, moist,