Maple Syrup + Hockey = Quebecois
Two things are very important to any Quebecois: maple syrup and hockey. When my husband lived in Montreal for a few months he said, “you guys deserve to win the Stanley Cup, everyone is so crazy about hockey”. We are also insane about maple syrup, we put it in everything.
….there’s even a saying “As Canadian as maple syrup”.
When my mother first came to Colorado she brought tons of maple syrup so I would be able to “survive in United States!”
Obviously, maple syrup is not raw. The sap gathered from maple trees in the spring is refined by boiling, turning the liquid into a thick syrup by steaming off excess water. The reason I like to use maple syrup in raw recipes is that it has fewer calories than agave and honey (maple has 50 calories per tbsp. instead of 60 for agave and 65 calories for honey). Maple syrup, is an excellent source of manganese and zinc… and it just taste so good!
One thing that I discovered with maple syrup is that when you mix it with raw cacao powder it makes the best chocolate sauce ever. Somehow those two ingredients are just amazing together.
In recent months there has been a huge controversy regarding agave nectar. In March 2010, Dr Mercola wrote the article “Shocking! This ‘Tequila’ Sweetener is Far Worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup” (link below) which sparking the agave debate. Several of the companies that were directly affected by the article decided to publish their own article, reassure their clients about the agave they were using in their product “Let’s talk about agave” (link below)
Like any sweetener, maple syrup should have a supporting role not a leading one!
http://coconutbliss.blogspot.com/2010/03/lets-talk-about-agave.html
