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Food for Thought
by karen on March 22, 2006
The sun is finally shining, the birds chirping on the trees, the first buds of spring are about to break. A nice, hearty breakfast is in order! Aren't pancakes marvelous on a perfect spring morning? Easy to whip up, tasty and filling.
However pancakes only taste like proper pancakes with Maple syrup. When I was a little girl, I loved it so much I wanted to make my own. But then I was nowhere near a maple tree. That hasn't stopped me from wondering how maple syrup was made, though.
Here's a bit of history from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry:
Native Americans taught the European settlers how to make maple syrup. They would cut a gash in the tree and collect the sap in containers made of tree bark. All the sap collected was poured into a trough, where they would drop hot stones into it to boil off the excess water. The thick fluid that was left in the trough was the syrup.
Maple syrup is produced only in North America but today it can be found in well-stocked groceries almost the world over. From Treehugger, here's something worth thinking about:
Did you know that this is the time of year when maple trees are tapped to produce maple syrup? Maple trees thrive under certain temperature conditions and produce the sap for maple syrup because of specific temperature cycles. In the early spring, the trees generate sap when the nights are very cold and the days fairly mild. The temperature cycling causes the starch in the sap to turn into sugar and rise in the trunk. It's one of nature's delicate miracles - which will disappear if we don't do something to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are making New England winters milder with each passing year.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Permalink: Pancakes and Global Warming
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/18658
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Vote for Pancakes and Global Warming:
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Rating: 10.00 out of 7 vote(s) cast.
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Response from:
Cindy
(11/19/06 3:27pm)
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One of the predictions that I remember about this report was the fact that maple trees themselves need the cold to survive, not just to make sap. People won't just lose maple syrup. The maple tree itself will become extinct in or around 100 years.
The majority of trees here where I live are maple. I see the same birds come back to these same trees every year. Where will they go after the maples are gone? How will it impact the birds, and in turn, if the birds find elsewhere to go, what else starts becoming affected by the loss of the birds? What about other wildlife and plants? What impact will this have on these other things?
We humans have put the earth into a nightmare situation by putting our desire for money and power and "ease of lifestyle" above the health of the planet and all the forms of life on it. I am hoping that each of us, individually, start seriously thinking about all the things we just toss in the garbage, about every time we flip a switch to turn on a convenience, about what rubber and exhaust do to the ground, air and water with every turn of a tire, because we sure aren't going to heal the earth if we wait on any government to help us.