*”When Nanabozho, the Annishinaabe Original Man, our teacher, part man, part manido, walked through the world, he took note of who was flourishing and who was not, of who was mindful of the Original Instructions, and who was not. He was dismayed when he came upon villages where the gardens were not being tended, where the fishnets were not repaired and the children were not being taught the way to live. Instead of seeing piles of firewood and caches of corn, he found the people lying beneath maple trees with their mouths wide open, catching the thick, sweet syrup of the generous trees. They had become lazy and took for granted the gifts of the Creator. They did not do their ceremonies or care for one another. He knew his responsibility, so he went to the river and dipped up many buckets of water. He poured the water straight into the maple trees to dilute the syrup. Today, maple sap flows like a stream of water with only a trace of sweetness to remind the people both of possibility and of responsibility. And so it is that it takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.”
*Adapted from oral tradition and Ritzenthaler and Rizenthaler, 1983
– excerpt from Robyn Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass
Growing up in the Colorado Rockies, perhaps it’s natural that I wouldn’t have learned about the sugaring season, or how to recognize its tell-tale signs as a little girl. After all, if my parents had chosen to land on Earth in the same geographical location, centuries before they did, I would have been born in the Pinyon Nation, instead of the Maple Nation which is literally across the North American continent. Maple Nation is not a historical myth – it’s a true territory that spreads across the Native lands, dissolving the borders of Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and into Canada, the wisdom of the maples flowing freely between.
What does it mean to be a citizen in the Maple Nation? “You may syrup. You enjoy it. You take what you’re given and you treat it right.” (Yet another simple lesson learned from reading Robyn Wall Kimmer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass.
Maples don’t grow here in the land where I live, which is why the Arapaho or Hinono’eino people whose native lands I now live on didn’t eat or harvest it. But the Anishinaabe, Onondaga, Algonquin, Haudenosaunee are just a few of the tribes and peoples who lived with reciprocity of the mighty maples.
The Annishinaabe word for maple is anenemik, man tree. Drinking maple syrup, and eating maple candy and cakes was so sustaining that the consumption of maple syrup – the production of which was a shared effort on both the part of the tree and the part of the people – is also the job of citizens in the Maple Nation.
“…having maple in your bloodstream, maple in your bones. We are what we eat, and with every golden spoonful, maple carbon becomes human carbon. Our traditional thinking had it right: maples are people, people are maples.” Says Kimmerer as she so eloquently describes the intricate relationship and awe-inspiring nature behind how this simple, and perhaps underappreciated, often misunderstood nectar arrives on our pancakes…and in these flaky, subtly-sweet biscuits, perfect for your celebratory tables.
Now, over the years I’ve come to understand more about the sugaring process. How the trees wait for the time each spring when there are a combination of warm days (35-40°F degrees!) and freezing nights, how the taps are set, the sap starts to flow through plastic tubes straight from the trees to the sugar house. But, it wasn’t until I read Kimmerer’s book that I came to understand just how miraculous maple really is.
While we need thermometers to tell when the sap is ready to flow, the trees have a far more sophisticated system. Each and every single bud on a maple branch is packed with photosensors, packed with light-absorbing pigments called phytochromes. They measure the light from the sun each day. Each of these buds contains all of the bio-information needed to become a fully-fledged branch, and they want badly to do this very important job so they closely monitor the weather for, if they unfurl their powers too soon, they’ll be killed by the freeze. Too late, and they’ll miss the spring. So, they wait patiently. And, they feast.
As the sun starts to shine consistently, the dark bark of the trees reflects the light down onto the blanket of snow that has covered the roots all winter, thawing them. Then, when the buds sense that spring is near, they send a hormonal signal down the trunk to the roots of the tree. It’s a wake-up call of sorts. The hormone signal triggers the formation of amylase, the enzyme responsible for converting large molecules of starch stored in the roots into smaller molecules of sugar. As the concentration of sugar in the roots starts to grow, an osmotic effect occurs – drawing water from the soil through the roots and into the sugar – creating a stream of sugar that can rise up the tree to the hungry little buds.
When the buds energy and start to create their own food through their leaves, the nourishment they don’t need starts to stream back down the tree, in the opposite direction from leaves to roots, where the excess sugar starts stacking up for the winter still in the distant future. The roots, which fed the buds are now fed in return by the small leaves, all summer long.
“The syrup we pour over pancakes on a winter morning is the summer sunshine flowing in golden streams to pool on our plates,” says Kimmerer.
“It is said that our people learned to make sugar from the squirrels,” says Kimmerer. “In the late winter, the hungry time, when the cache of nuts are depleted, squirrels take to the treetops and gnaw on the branches of sugar maples. Scraping the bark allows the sap to exude from the twig, and the squirrels drink it. But the real goods come the next morning when they follow the same circuit they made the day before, licking up the sugar crystals that formed on the bark overnight. Freezing temperatures cause the water in the sap to sublimate, leaving a sweet crystalline crust like rock candy behind, enough to tide them through the hungriest time of year.”
And it was in this way that peoples of the Maple Nation, that spreads across the Northeastern woods, learned to make maple sugar long before they possessed trade kettles to boil it down with.
Instead of boiling, they collected the sap in pails made of birch bark and poured it into log troughs made of hollowed-out trees. The troughs had a large surface area, but a shallow depth which allowed ice to form on the surface of the sap when the temperature would drop. Each morning, the ice was removed – water separating from the sap – leaving a more concentrated sugar solution behind. This concentrated solution was then boiled down to sugar using far less energy, conserving firewood and time. The people allowed the nature of the freezing nights – an elegant reminder that maple sap runs in a season when this natural method is possible.
Regardless of the sophistication of the sugaring process, maple syrup is just as potent a nourisher today – of Native and non-Native peoples and their traditions alike.
Maple syrup is one of the most digestible sweeteners we know, loaded with antioxidants that reduce inflammation and jam-packed with the minerals calcium, zinc, potassium, and manganese. This mineral load plays a key role in supporting bone density, immunity, maintaining blood sugar balance, enhancing nerve function, supporting brain health, regulating blood pressure, and more.
Modern-day Ayurveda recommends maple syrup as a fall and wintertime sweetener and alternative to other more refined sugars.
The citizens of Maple Nation long ago would not have made these biscuits – for they didn’t have buttermilk, cream, or wheat flour to do so. But I would like to think that they would approve of the dedicated maple infusion exhibited in the recipe.
The dough itself is infused with maple syrup, and they’re brushed with pure maple when they emerge – golden – from the oven. The recipe was inspired by a note I took on the back of a napkin back in college when I was spending time in Vermont and near the Canadian border and stumbled into a bakery with an incredible maple biscuit. The baker was unwilling to share the recipe, and just as well. The cost for trialing and erroring on the side of not enough maple or too much moisture in a biscuit (on account of the buttermilk and the maple) is eating too many biscuits and, frankly, it’s a price that I was happy to pay here.
If you’re new to making buttermilk biscuits, well you’re in for a treat. They’re very easy to make, and, to make exceptional with a few little tips + tricks up your sleeve. It’s critical to keep the butter as cold as possible through the process – from mixing to brushing – straight up until you bake them. For this reason, and for ease, I like to make my biscuit dough in a food processor fitted with a plastic blade attachment. It easily distributes the butter into the flour in a snap, without ever worrying about your hot little hands warming the dough.
It’s critical to chill the dough after shaping and cutting as well, so be sure to jam the pan in the fridge or even the freezer while the oven heats up.
Lastly, the shaped biscuits freeze beautifully, so even if you aren’t planning on eating an entire batch of biscuits, mix them up then freeze them for a rainy day (or a wintery morning or unexpected guests you want to impress!)
These biscuits are as lovely served for breakfast with jam or compote as they are served alongside savory dishes at your holiday table. They’re not too sweet, and just right in my opinion, for giving a little nod to the nectar of Mother Nature, to her generosity.
When it comes to maple syrup, “the responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness.”*
*Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass – pg 69
Read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.
Or, visit MapleNation.org to learn more about the Indigenous peoples whose native lands lie in the territories that occupy the expansive Northeastern forests, along the Eastern-most seaboard of North America.
As a little reminder, all proceeds from November subscriptions to Recipe Club will be donated to NATIFS.org – an organization dedicated to establishing a new food system that reintegrates Native Foods and Indigenous-focused Education into tribal communities across North America through their Indigenous Food Lab project. Thank you, deeply, for your support of my work and of this cause.
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