Cheap Beer In New York City?!

In honor of the fact that another Friday is upon us and that there no doubt plenty of people taking a detour on the way home to get absolutely sloshed, I proudly present McSorley's, where you can still get two beers for 5 American dollars (cash only).

15 East Seventh Street
(Third Avenue)
New York, N.Y. 10003

Like any good old ale house, McSorley's and its patrons do not have a record of when the place actually opened; the sign says 1854, however, and I'm sticking with that.  When rioting Irish-Americans pretty much burnt many parts of lower Manhattan to the ground during the draft riots of July 1863, they were careful to keep their watering hole and veritable community center largely intact.  The place has stood and gathered dust ever since, one of the few physical things in New York that has passively resisted change by simply not changing.  Its a lovely experience, and for just five dollars, you can get a light and a dark (or two of each), the only beer they serve.  Perhaps it was the awareness of being in what is pretty much the closest thing to the heart of Irish (North) American history, but that beer tasted pretty damn good the first and every time since that I have had it.

The walls are covered in various pictures and paintings, many of them with as much dust on them as the rest of the place.

And of course, the floor is covered in sawdust.

Those pictures though, some of them give hints that there have been visitors here beyond what the management claims.  One particular New Yorker who first showed me the place insists that the Kennedy brothers came here for a victory drink after Jack won the presidency.  I have a pretty good feeling that Mr. Roosevelt the first came here now and then during his policeman days; there's no proof, but it just seems to fit his character.  While his sort was much more from the other side of town, and though he personally loathed populist politics, well, he was also no stuck-up rich snob.  In many ways, McSorley's was the beating heart of old New York.  Take what I say with a grain of salt, of course, because I've only been a frequent visitor and temporary resident in the city.  The best way to experience the place, as usual, is to come see it.   They have food.  I've never had it.  It's probably good stuff, though I usually wander around the neighborhood later and find rare odd-ball things like Khyber Pass, an Afghan restaurant just around the corner.  There is nothing like having Afghan cuisine served to you by a Russian waitress...

Oh, and did I mention that there are restrooms on the premises?  The gents have urinals that you pretty much can't miss, no matter how many lights and darks you have had.  The first time I saw them I nearly burst out laughing.  Like the urinals, the other best free part about McSorley's is that it is really off the beaten path while still largely accessible.  Most tourists don't head anywhere near here, which is not to say there is nothing to see here.  The cheapest attraction in New York City is just walking around and enjoying the experience, and there is no shortage of great shops, restaurants, art, music, and pieces of history to be found in East Village.  It's also probably one of the best places, aside from Harlem, to see how average Manhattan people exist (at least until rezoning and gentrification really get underway).   

Destination Food In Your Backyard

I was going to continue with the food posts today, covering a delightful Buffalo treasure known as the hot wing, but I searched in vain for a decent picture of the Anchor Bar, home of the "Buffalo Wing".  I've mostly gone at night, and the best I had were some very fuzzy images of their sign.  It's a wonderful place, one of many reasons to go to western New York, and I really recommend their cheese garlic bread to be enjoyed alongside their wings.   Then I realized that, in addition to not having any good pictures of anything, I was pretty much devoting a week to fast food.  While such worship is part of the American religion, this felt wrong.  People from around the world have taken a peek at this blog, and if I really want to talk about North American food, I figured I should probably talk more about Native American food, as well as more traditional fare of us newcomers from abroad.  The problem is, outside of pre-Columbian Mexican cuisine, Ojibwe and Algonquin fare, and a half bad look at how we improved on the eternal boil that is British food, I lack the proper experience to share more on such matters.

Worse, I have not done a lot of destination dining as far as such things go, or at least I've never organized my thoughts much on the places I have been.  Instead of heading head first into a food week, then, I'm going to take us to such places as a lowcountry boil when I get to them, that is to say getting to the stomach once I have visited the landscape and the history.  In the meantime, I'm going to issue a challenge to my readers: find out what sort of regional cuisine you have, and start with the First Born.  They've been here a lot longer than us colonial types, and as a result have used the ingredients on hand a lot more.  I'll start!

Here in southeastern Michigan, in addition to having access to passably decent maple syrup, and trading access to some of the best stuff in our own northern lower peninsula, we've also long since had a variety of fruits, from plums, paw paws, blueberries, and persimmons to later introductions of apples and berries; the climate here is excellent for temperate fruit trees, as we get much in the way of winter chill without excessive cold.  This part of Michigan was historically part of the Sauk and Fox nations, which after the Black Hawk War.  They were later joined by the Wendat (Huron) people, who were most likely also here and in neighboring southern Ontario centuries before their arrival in exile after their near destruction in 1649 (long story).  All of these people were excellent farmers, growing squash, beans, and corn (the three sisters), like many people in North America.   They were also expert fishers, Michigan being absolutely permeated by waterways.  Tomorrow being Friday, I'll talk about a particularly wonderful catch then, one less common so far south as Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair.

I've barely scratched the surface on local food, not even touching the contributions of many later peoples such as the Polish, and yet we've already found quite the buffet set up for us, a vegetarian and fishy one at that.  Fear not, meat eaters, there were also plenty of ungulates around to be hunted, and the deer have yet to catch on that this is not really a wilderness anymore.  That said, find out what's in your backyard; even if it is a cuisine that has evolved from far away places and through millennia of development, the truth remains that fresh and local is making a comeback, probably because it tastes just a bit more real.  There's a reason to be mindful of history and geography, after all, as a sense of continuity is helpful for figuring out perspective.   

Wednesday Filler: The Capture Of Philadelphia

One of the nicest features about a tourist side trip to Pat's King of Steaks, which we featured two days ago in a post, is that one gets impressive views of the city skyline from that location.

Right next to Pat's is a large park dominated by a baseball diamond.  Since a fence was in the day, I tried to zoom through the links the best that I could.  The end result was almost artistic, a look at a city that has had as many historic ties to dominating financial structures and Federalism as it has to religious liberty and progressive democracy.  Here we look from the working class neighborhood around Pat's, through a fence, higher up into intermediate businesses, all past floodlights meant to illuminate a baseball diamond, and finally resting in a city above all that, one of corporate finance and upper management.  Meanwhile, next to the fence, all members from all layers were chowing down on the same steak sandwiches. 

Lots of potential social commentary in one convenience-oriented photo... 

Anyway, you decide what it means.  I was thoughtful at the time, but still largely conquered by lunch.  This is south of the city center looking north; colonial Philadelphia, including the original banks and exchanges which steered the city in this landscape direction, would be to the right of those tall buildings. 

Other Blogs: Jim McCormac

Just after finishing our post tonight, I stumbled into my reading list on blogger for the first time in forever, and found a delightful gem of an article:

http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2014/12/spring-grove-cemetery-and-braun-sisters.html

Of particular note, Emma Lucy Braun was one of the past scientists who first inspired me to take a second look at the natural world, way back in seventh grade when my amazing science teacher, Ms. Williams exposed us to women in science.   Despite my many years of reading classic works on North American ecosystems, I regret to say that I have yet to read her classic work on eastern North American deciduous forests, probably because I am such a grassland and boreal forest snob.  Thankfully Mr. McCormac is not, and goes to explore all sorts of places in order to find nature at its finest.  I've actually shared his blog before, and if the article above strikes your fancy, give some more of his pages a read.  In that post, I also made note of his book, which is hands down the best nature tourist book on Ohio out there. 

Go.  Read.  Enjoy pretty photography!

Gyros In The Mojave

If you thought the end of the last post was either a crazy, desperate attempt at making junk food sentimentally patriotic, or just crazy silliness, then you are well prepared for something truly insane that will be shared today: The Mad Greek.  This is a restaurant that has all the charms of what one would expect from a Greek-American eatery that does its best to compete with the house in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Click on the image for a higher resolution version, or even save this and let your computer zoom it in for you on your image viewer.

Sadly, I don't have too many more pictures of the place, or at least none that I find readily accessible.   This one gives the glamor shot though, complete with as many Olympian statues as one can handle.  Inside, the place feels like a tourist visitor center, had one just landed at the airport at Athens.  They are pretty much a fantastic road trip stopping point, offering good air conditioning in one of the hottest places in California (Death Valley and only about a thousand and change feet of elevation lies northward, and the road to get there, California 127, actually is the left turn at this pictured intersection) as well as free public restrooms and... until 2014, the best gyros I have had in the United States of America.  The Fleetwood in Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently trumped this, but as I have not been back to Baker, California, where this wonderful pit stop is, since 2010... well...  Let's just say I want to go back.  Baker pretty much being almost as dead center into the Mojave as one can get, I think I have a pretty good excuse.

But again, the food.  The gyros are massive.  This is one of those times where I was so into the food that I failed to take any actual pictures of it, but trust me when I say that you will not need fries or even a drink to feel full.  The meat is excellent, the veggies are better, but what really makes this one stand out is the sauce.  They must put ambrosia in it or something, because it tastes amazing.  So what does it all mean, and why would I turn the blog into something resembling a lousy junk food review?  Well, the Mad Greek, like Baker itself, is something that pretty much only exists because of the American notion of transit.  When the railroad left, modern roads like I-15 moved in, and what you have is a crazy restaurant in a small crazy town in the middle of sand flats which were once lakes and rivers.  On the negative side, it is also a distraction, a man-made oasis that makes people remember their creature comforts and forget how truly awesome the North American deserts are.  Instead of enjoying traveling past ancient volcanic features and through Joshua Tree (Yucca Brevifolia) forests, the modern driver is convinced to speed through the place as fast as possible until one sees signs of "civilization", however crazy and fun they might be.

In fact, you'll have no problem at all trying to get to the Mad Greek, as the billboards are everywhere, starting mostly in Vegas heading south.

This is actually right outside of Baker, and you can see what amazing beauty lies all around Baker.  Those green larger bushes are Creosote (Larrea Tridentata), lovely little things that are probably also incredibly ancient.  They smell amazing, especially after a rain, one of the reasons to go visit the desert for its own sake. 

Instead of the wonders of the desert, one finds comfort in a rest stop or even a road sign and is immediately drawn to something garish like said billboard.  I say this because such was the reaction of many of the other patrons in the gyro palace, happy that they had been rescued from the "monotony" and "lifelessness" of the place they had to drive to get between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  Don't get me wrong, the sauce and even shakes are worth the drive, but they are pretty much a minor bonus feature to the privilege of being in a land the 'Aha Makhav (Mojave) have long considered a pretty amazing home.  If you find yourself passing through Baker, stop on by for a gyro or a salad (and get some iced tea with some amazing fresh lemons), but also consider taking a few minutes to drive up 127 or back up the nearby Cima dome to enjoy the various easy access vistas this destination dining can lead you to. 

Philadelphia: City Of Brotherly Sandwich

Part of the fun experience of traveling is to find lodging and food that is local flavor.  Its nice to see the mundane as an evolution from ages of cultural development, and how particular regions and even cities and towns have produced both high and low culture with their own touches as a result.  Sometimes it can be hard to find something that is not overly "tourist", but sometimes you have to sit back, laugh at the kitsch, and dive right in.

Philadelphia, like any destination city, is full of things drawing tourists into the bright, sparkling lights.  It manages to do this in a way that very much blends in with the normal reality of the city, however, and even though some places feel like a museum packed into a modern mess of skyscrapers and freeways, she does so out of concern for the past while moving on with the future.  "Out with the old, in with the new" does not apply here.  That's a tangent for a different time, but the lesson holds strong in the living example of finding a place to eat the local flavor.  When I was last there in 2014, I had a choice between going to some re-invented gastro pub that was a recreation of some colonial era tavern, or... Pat's King of Steaks.

This was not a hard decision to make.  What might have been hard was choosing to go there, or to Geno's, right across the street.

But, being a traditionalist, as Pat's claims they started the whole thing, and far more attracted to the particular smells coming out of Pat's (not to mention the faster moving line), I went for it.

Despite what some reviews might say, Pat's gives you a pretty impressive sandwich.  That, some fries, and a coke (9-10 bucks total) was more than enough to sate me for some time, and it was a pretty active day walking around much of the historic core of the city.  The steak was definitely better than what is offered for the sandwich in most other places, the cheese was pretty delightful (but honestly, as much as it sounds gross, traditionally I would have been better off going with cheese-whiz than with American, at least according to my traveling companion, as it melts and fills the thing so much better), and the bread was pretty good.  The most refreshing feature, however, was seeing the options in a nice grill from which one could self serve.  There were peppers, more onions, etc. piled together with condiments.  You can see one of the wee green peppers behind my sandwich.  Normally I'm not much of a pepper guy, but... amazing little things.  Grilled to perfection.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable experience, with a caveat: Know what you want (use the website for instruction) when you order, or else they kick you to the back of the line.  They serve people fast, and don't like to mess it up.  Seating is somewhat limited, but the tables were moving pretty fast, like the service.  In terms of accessibility, the steak shops are off the beaten path, decently south of the historic core.  Some people have said that the neighborhoods are scary, which I suppose is true if you have lived in a cave outside of some no name town in North Dakota your whole life.  As a reward for braving the non-tourist actual city, you get to see a small slice of how the normal folk live.  My take?  Pretty clean, pretty open and airy, fairly laid-back compared to New York or Washington. 

Passyunk ave and Wharton st., looking south, right across from Pat's.

Really, the neighborhood is one of families and working people, ethnically diverse and with typical urban east coast atmosphere.  We went at lunch time and the place had quite a few suits milling about.  Multiple bus lines are in the area, and if you drive, you just need to sneak a few blocks away and find a parallel parking spot.  Tip: try it off of the main eating hours for easier access.  Otherwise, be prepared to find a space in this:

South along 10th street, beside Capitolo Park/Playground, a block walk from Pat's.

Now, as for the sandwich itself, I would say that the Philly is a pretty average street food for something from an east coast city.  You get the sandwich, something European if not downright traditionally English, then you get the American spin on it turning it into something huge and more than just a snack, and then you get really good meat, lots of it, and on a superior bun, representing the Italian blessing on most east coast street and deli cuisine.  It's a democratic sandwich that has evolved in a city born of liberty, that has survived total transformation by government and high finance, and ended up as a place where you can get relatively greasy, cooked with gusto, here-enjoy-this eating.  You had suits next to tourists next to construction workers, and no one gave off any attitude or got in anyone's way. 

Next: Greek food... in the desert?!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Poutine

I decided to make this first of bad-for-you destination food posts on our perennial heart-stopper, monsieur poutine, short and sweet.  I have written about him before:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/07/poutine-mes-amis-poutine.html

Alas, then I did not have a picture to share.  I warned the timid readers out there before that it might look disgusting, and to quite a few people it does.  Voila!

Come closer.  It won't bite. 

Yep, that's the real deal, from Riverview Snack Shack in Mattawa, Ontario.  Coincidentally, they have the best hamburgers in the world there as well, but I can save that for a more detailed post.  Today, just enjoy the thick gravy, melted curds, and amazing fries sitting together in French Canada's answer to the query "and what shall your street food be?"  In our next post, the gravy train goes to visit Philadelphia, home of the cheese steak sandwich. 

Real Maple Syrup: Finale

Not too much today, just a little bit on the actual goods themselves.  Much of it speaks for itself, and the best way to now truly get to know maple syrup is to try some!  Despite my warnings as to what constitutes good, holy, and amazing syrup, give your local producers a shot first, or at least as close as you can get, because nothing compares with the taste of home, or at the very least, familiarity.  If you have trees of your own and the previous year was of average to generous precipitation, consider tapping one yourself once you learn the basics!  The sap, the most basic product, is very much edible and pretty much one of the best "flavored waters" you can get from mother nature, at least where they grow (I'm still learning to like coconut water).  It's pretty pure stuff, at least if the land on which your maple grows is.  As normal, never tap or consume anything wild unless you know what you've got.

As far as the syrup goes, keep in mind that you may sometimes find varieties ranging from really thick and dark stuff (awesome for baking and cooking) to medium (your average, good for pancakes syrup, what most default options will be) to light (which is nice to drizzle on desserts).   One recommendation I cannot help but make, regardless of "grade", is source simplicity: keep it from one place.  Unless your source is so far south or west that the syrup needs a boost from elsewhere, let your syrup be the child of a single sugar bush.  If they only have blends available, maybe... just move on.  There is usually no reason for a Quebec or Vermont maker to draw on blends from outside their territory, so if you see such a thing, definitely go running or stick with their single source stuff.  That goes for wine, too.  Sure, that blend of grapes might be tasty, but you're a sinner for drinking it.  I'm not a snob, or anything, just a picky traditionalist.

Anyway!

The syrup can provide a candy like treat in and of itself, when drizzled on snow.  This is best after it is freshly boiled up, and sugar makers love to give out free samples if you happen to visit them at this time of chilly bliss.  This is obviously usually done far enough north where snow persists well into March and even April, depending on harvest and production time.  In Quebec, this culinary art is practically a required event for citizens and visitors alike.  This can also be done even with the raw syrup, which I have only done once, on the Seneca nation reservation south of Buffalo, NY.  While the syrup gives you something more of the consistency of candy/taffy, the sap gives you a veritable snow cone, be it a very watery one.  Experiment!  Make ice-cream!

Oh, don't forget the actual sugar.  It works just as well if not better than cane or beet sugar.  I have never tried it in tea or coffee, but I am sure it would work fine.  The best part, though?  The candies!

They are not for everyone, but give them a chance.  They taste amazing.  Let them melt in your mouth!  If you feel unpatriotic about the maple leaf shape, have no fear, I have even seen Ethan Allen-shaped candies, and even various native hero candies.  Speaking of which, if you get the chance, find such a native hero.  Sometimes tradition tastes really good. 

Coming up next, a slew of posts on various other destination foods, domestic and imported!   

Real Maple Syrup: Part Four

Though no tree can really compare with the noble Sugar Maple for excellence of syrup, there are three minor contenders at least passing mentions, all of which are largely bottomland species, preferring the lush damp world of the shoreline and riverbank to the upland home of the Sugar Maple.  We start with a species we have already been introduced to, a tree of incredible habitat diversity and stunning beauty:

Red Maple (Acer Rubrum)

A map for this species was already given in the first post of this maple series.  Click that link to find it!

The Red Maple produces what is probably the next best maple sap for getting syrup after the noble Sugar Maple.  It has a similar sugar content, but a distinct problem in that Reds break dormancy before most other trees, and they do it fast; the window for sap collecting is very short when compared to even the lesser maples.  This should not be surprising coming from a tree that is equally ready to face brutal northern winters as well as some brief passing of a seasonal dip in Southern Florida (and theoretically even the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico, but don't hold me to that until I find the trees and get famous and stuff).  Sure, the trees are probably not reverse hardy by any stretch, but what's important is that Mr. and Mrs. Red Maple hail from a powerful evolutionary tree line; while you are most likely to find one down near the drink, you would not be shocked to find one up in the hills or in an abandoned field.  I could make a small fortune in the nursery trade off of some that appeared in various gardens I have tended, more so than any other "weed".  Like any good "weed", they grow pretty quickly, at least until they are 10 or so.  Other trees which can then get established in their pioneering wake or are slow to wake up then usually overtake them, and they seldom tend to dominate forests.  Perhaps this is for our viewing pleasure, as they sure do look nice making passers by ignore the rest of the forest.

They look simply amazing, the equivalent in red that the Sugar Maple is in orange.  Except for the sumacs, no tree, even in flower, produces such a vibrant red.

This picture, and no picture really, does this tree justice.  This was taken somewhere in SE Michigan.  I have very few pictures of them on hand, even though they never fail to capture my attention and camera.  The yellow tree to the right is actually a female.  They turn yellow!  In the background are Sugars. 

They are often also provided with a reflecting pool, being rather fond of life at the water's edge. 

Cedar Lake, Algonquin Provincial Park.  This was a hazy day, in August of 2012.  As you can see, the tree has already turned, as many trees on the edge of waters which have been cooled by cold nights will.  This makes our showman stand out even more.  Those other shrubby things are Speckled Alders (Alnus Incana) and some Myrica.

What's more, they have one more trick up their sleeves: the females turn yellow!  This can be seen in the neighboring tree in the first photo, in case you missed the caption.  They sometimes grab a little orange in the mix as the color game comes to an end, as can also be seen.  Anyway, it is no wonder that the tree would warrant more scrutiny and eventually be selected for harvesting by our first syrup and sugar makers.  Beauty and accessibility combined make for an attractive package.  Why wander through a forest when the trees are usually right at the edge?  That said, the Reds are just a bit more intense in flavor than the Sugars.  This actually makes for better straight sap consumption (yes, this can be done, as boiling into syrup essentially does not cook the product so much as concentrate the sugars) than the Sugars, at least to my taste buds.  Again, however, the window is small on getting the sap while it is running.  These trees flower insanely early in the waking season, and waste no time in arising after the winter slumber.  While repeated freezes can make sap run again, anything even over a week makes them taste... well, gross.  In terms of terroir, I have tasted sap from upland northern species and find that the rare loam-growing upland Red has reliable taste, while those growing in clay further south are actually even better, but the variability of the waking season further south makes for a difficult tapping.  I have never sampled any riparian tree sap, probably because it is easier to tap a tree on land than from a canoe.

Silver Maple (Acer Saccharinum)-Yes, the Latin name looks suspiciously familiar!

This is an entirely different animal, not being found much on uplands at all, being dominates instead of the river bottoms (they can't take shade in the uplands but can handle it with the extra nutrients of the waterside).  They can be flooded, like the reds, and make for a beautiful scene with the more southerly Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum), which likes to play even closer to the deep end of the pool.  They break dormancy and bloom even faster than the Reds.  They are beautiful (no I don't have pictures, which is odd because they are everywhere, including in my brother's backyard of his previous home) and despite their natural wet home, often get planted as ornamentals; trees in parks in central Toronto have been there for some time and reached incredible girths.  In terms of syrup, I am told (but have never had personally experienced) that they taste like the Sugar Maple, but apparently the sugar concentration is so low that the process is not worth it. 

Thanks, USGS!  If you were wondering where to find them that far south, its usually in the microclimate of the waterside. 

Since they have roughly the same range as the Sugars, with the exception that they grow two hundred or so miles further south in both directions of the compass, one is probably best off using a Sugar instead. They are amazing trees, however, and are planted as noted because they shimmer in a breeze, their leaves being silvery underneath and pale green above.  In the fall, they turn a less than brilliant yellow. 

Boxelder (Acer Negundo)

This one is a bit... weirder.  It grows amazingly well from Guatemala to the far northern plains in Alberta, as well as in the east. 

Many thanks as usual to USGS and the original map maker, Mr. Elbert Little.

It does not have normal leaves as we imagine most maples to have, as they consist of multiple little maple leaves in a giant compound leaf, arranged in a palmate pattern.  I have never taken a picture of a Boxelder, even though I have seen them in the most incredible places, including in little depressions and valleys in the high plains.  They are never far from water, and are often a good sign that it is near, be it high in the mountains or across the otherwise treeless plains.  Like our other two featured maples in this post, they break dormancy early and quickly, and are mentioned here not because they make powerful syrup, which they can, albeit worse than the others, but because they can be found in the north well west of the other maples.  I have had this maple treat me once, as the raw sap, tapped by an Ojibway woman in northern lower Michigan.  She told me that her people, and other First Born from farther west, including the Lakota and Black Foot, only have this maple to draw from, and they usually don't even boil it to a syrup, but drink the sap straight, mostly mixed with the sap of the Sugar Maple which out west they had acquired in trade from further east.  The stuff I tried was such a blend, and it was probably the tradition and respect talking instead of the actual taste buds, but it was pretty decent.  Sometimes the best taste just really comes from the trees where are found home... even in Vermont.

There are other trees capable of producing syrup from sap.  These, however, are the four genuine articles for honest-to-goodness maple syrup and sugar, with the orange majesty of the Sugar being the true real deal.  Next: the finale.  Then we can move on!

Real Maple Syrup: Part Three

Eastern North American Maples: A Brief Guide To Sugary Goodness

I wanted to cover all the syrup trees in one post, but these fine trees deserve more attention and better pictures than what I can give them.  I've lived around these trees most of my life, and yet I always seem to focus on the pines, spruce, fir, etc.  For now then, a shorter look at the individual maples, starting with a whole post for the top tree:

Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum)

This, without a doubt, is the best tree to draw sap from, by far.  The map included in the last post, in fact, is pretty much biased towards the best terroir for the noble Sugar Maple, to the expense of the other trees.  To be fair, this is a maple almost made to work with the cycles of frost and thaw.  Few others, if indeed truly any, trees germinate at only two degrees above freezing.  That's right, our little friends sprout when it is 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and not much warmer.  This is not to say that they are a true northern tree; while they can handle extreme lows, they do need some decent length of summer heat to truly make it.  They are a species that needs the sun, and also a species that needs the cold, like their frequent companions the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus). 

The range of the noble Acer Saccharum.  Thanks again, USGS!

In pre-colonial times, many moister forested areas in the eastern-central part of North America would have featured a dense canopy of Sugar Maples towered over by White Pines the equal of some of the most amazing giant trees out west.  In the fall, one imagines how amazing the bright orange foliage would have been in contrast with the towering, swaying pines.  Many of the first colonial residents in virgin forest areas left awe-struck accounts.

Oh, did I mention they turn orange?  Sadly I have no pictures to really do it justice...

Taken at Maybury State Park.  Maybury has lots of excellent second-growth beech-maple forest, as well as some of the furthest southern Tamarack swamps.  These are northern extensions into what otherwise starts to turn hot and dry with oak savannas and tallgrass prairie. 

With the exception of the Sassafras (Sassafras Albidum), the other maples, and the sumacs, no tree comes close to sheer brilliance.  One imagines that the First Born and then the colonial arrivals took notice of such brilliance and figured something special must be in the Sugar Maple.  In Vermont, home of the supposed best syrup ever (I will never let it go, Green Mountain guns at my door or otherwise), the spectacular autumn show which makes Bostonians and New Yorkers jam up their expressways in search of colored leaves is pretty much made by mountains of orange trees pocked by smaller concentrations of red and yellow.  The Adirondacks and Opeongo Laurentians (Algonquin), on the other hand, also feature a lot more lakes, somewhat darker skies, and a higher inclusion of northern conifers.  Alright, alright, so Vermont looks nice too.  Anyway, even further south where you get more southerly elements as well as a lot more beech trees in the mix, the noble tree still manages to steal the show. 

Maybury State Park again.  That is the same second-growth beech-maple forest back there, while the front is a reclaimed field turned into a prairie restoration; the soil and tree cover in the immediate area points to a moisture level that would have made most of this still forest.  You can easily see in this picture how Sugar Maples tend to stand out as the dominant species.  I did not make it over to successfully identify the bright yellow foliage.

The First Born probably made the stuff, inspired by the orange leaves, well into Tennessee, as long as the odd winter kept things cold enough, long enough, and provided an appropriate thaw.  Obviously, such winters would not be common at lower elevations, and to this day commercial production of syrup from any tree ceases much farther south than the Great Lakes basin.  That said, the Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, and colonials certainly made syrup along the northern forest extensions along the Appalachians.  Sugar Maple would be the primary choice for such an activity, considering as how most other reliable and tasty maple species such as Silver and Red (next post) tend to be lowland, river loving species.  That said, while the syrup would come from higher than where most people would dwell, and the southern Appalachians have the same problem that the ocean-proximate New England mountains have: maritime influence.  The Smokies, for instance, are temperate rainforests.

Not that Sugar Maple forests are too far off, in some ways, from that sort of lush dampness.  Where the beech trees that so often pair with them start to taper out (Fagus Grandifolia is a tree of vast range, equally at home among the north as it is in Florida and even Mexico), Sugar Maple becomes the dominant tree and starts making the place look really green,

A bit more southern than intended, still at Maybury.  Nevertheless, maples are far more dominant here than beech or most other trees.  The wee plants on the ground are seedlings, the majority of which will die off from lack of light in the next year or so. 

 ...with the exception of heavy leaf litter on the forest floor.  The canopy is thick enough to prevent most light from reaching the forest floor.

Not quite what I was trying to get at (a bit south of what I wanted), but the maples are pretty dominant here.  This was taken in Brighton Recreation Area, one of the most underrated and unmentioned places in Southeastern Michigan in which to get a good look at the native landscape.

In the farther north, the forest then almost looks like something from Ohio or Pennsylvania instead of Laurentian Canada.   

This is about three and a half miles north of Brent, Ontario.  In this moist, loamy environment, the dominating maples cut out competition from the slower growing northern conifers, and in the modern absence of wildfire, never get killed back now and then to let pines get a foothold.

In the future I can probably snap up a shot of what I'm talking about, but these two pictures come close.  The road shot is obviously crowded with underbrush from the extra light.  One can easily see how this species would be very attractive for making syrup, however, as in the ideal situations (see map in previous post), you get what is called a "sugar bush".  This is a naturally provided area with most of the trees being the syrup givers, relatively little underbrush to have to fight through, and the whole thing being remarkably convenient.  I could go on and on about this tree, and I might in the future, but one last item of concern draws us to a close here today: taste.

If you've never had maple syrup, get the hell off your computer and go try some.  If you have, think of the richest, most smooth maple taste you can imagine.  This is syrup and associated products from the Sugar Maple.  In other maples the flavor can sometimes overtake the other delicate features and even the sweetness; not so here.  Everything is perfectly balanced, all the more so if you can get the triple crown of glacially-deposited organic loam, Canadian Shield minerals, and that awesome northern water to make the maple sing with all the voices of heaven.  Needless to say, you don't want the bottle saying "made from x, x, and x in x, x, and x.  I may be biased, but just like in wine, the purity of singular source does not confuse the senses with complications to an already delightful complexity.  Oh, and one more thing that makes it even better?  Paper Birch (Betula Papyrifera) is usually close at hand in such northern places.  While I would never advocate stripping a birch, which usually scars and kills the poor thing, the First Born, especially the Ojibway and Algonquins, who use the entire tree, still have traditionalists who make cooking vessels out of birch bark (they heat the water with red hot stones).  Trust me when I say that the addition of that birch leeching into the syrup enhances it akin to an oak barrel kissing the grapes in wine.

Real Maple Syrup: Part Two

Moving along in our discovery of one of the most amazing native things ever produced from the continent, maple syrup, we must question why some syrups are naturally superior than others, and the answer lies in something similar to what makes wines different from one another: Terroir.

Terroir is a mystical, magical concept.  Like many French words, it has no powerful English equivalent with which to express its full meaning, but basically it comes down to all the things that make a plant do what a plant does best: react to its environment.  This includes weather and climate, soil, etc.  In the case of Vitis Vinifera, a.k.a. the wine grape, things are obviously extremely complex due to human intervention in cultivating numerous forms down through centuries of loving manipulation.  Various species of maple (and by extension, other possible syrup friendly trees), in contrast, at least our North American trees, have not nearly been selectively bred to the same extent that wine grapes have.  That said, we do have a small assortment of species to choose from in the syrup game, and also said, we find that nature is remarkable in that has long produced variations within species without our help.  In part, this is because terroir has affected our leafy friends in such a way that trees are likely to have some small variations in form and resulting taste even when sampled from neighboring areas.  A Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) from central Tennessee would find itself facing a rather brutal winter if it were to find itself suddenly in Quebec, to say nothing of what the same shock would be like for a Red Maple (Acer Rubrum), a far more generally adaptable species, suddenly finding itself no longer in the swamps of Southern Florida but among the shorelines of the Ottawa River.

This sort of stuff gets commercial tree growers in trouble quite a bit, especially where more tender temperate ornamental trees like the Eastern Redbud (Cercis Canadensis) are concerned.  One of the most obvious differences in terroir felt by a nursery grown tree from the South and imported into Le Nord would be the new and strange frigid winter that the tree would find itself trying to be hardy to.  Likewise, the tree would find that Le Nord is not nearly as hot in the summer as it was back South, to say nothing of how much less humid and rainy!  Finally, it would also find that the soil was so very, very different from what it grew up in.  I could go on and on about terroir, or Phytogeography, which is pretty much what the core of this blog is about, but...

The maples!

Most maples are creatures of the forest, and thus are very fond of mixed-light conditions and moisture, moisture, and more moisture.  With the exception of the aloof, adaptable, and mysterious Box Elder (Acer Negundo), none of our temperate eastern maples are courageous enough to venture far into the drier prairie lands, and the Red Maple will not even make it very far into the eastern prairies of Illinois or Indiana, being completely afraid to face the possibility of drought combined with fire, which is another reason why I probably found even the thought of central Illinois syrup to be funny (to be fair, Sugar Maples and Black Maples are apparently made of tougher stuff and can indeed be found in forested patches there).  Sure, the maples can be planted further afield from their comfortable natural ranges, but they might not produce enough starch in their roots to make syrup production viable.  Syrup production in most places was not the best in the March of 2013, owing to the colossal hot, drought-heavy summer that was 2012.  The brunt of that disaster was felt in the True Midwest, but trees were sufficiently stressed in all but northern New England.  Rocky, sandy, well-drained northern Ontario and neighboring western Quebec and northern Michigan baked and dried to a crisp.  Massive forest fires made life even more difficult.

That year, Vermont won the award.

Thankfully, most of the time the inland north does better.  Why?  A little thing called maritime, or oceanic influence.

The most powerful maritime climates in the world are usually envisioned as being temperate western Europe, the Pacific Northwest, etc., but a typical cold January day even in chilly Nova Scotia is decidedly more moderate of a chill than one would find farther inland, even New Brunswick and Maine. Champlain and friends discovered this first hand when their colony of Saint Croix was established in a very chilly position, and soon made way to the other side of the Bay of Fundy where they established the roots of future Acadia in what is now Nova Scotia.  Saint Croix was on the "inland" side of the bay, gaining no benefit from the prevailing westerlies which would skim the mostly unfrozen waters, pick up moisture, and moderate the winter chill.  Still, even Saint Croix is much more mild than places further inland, such as the St. Lawrence valley.  The ocean, westerlies or not, is like a giant road block for intense continental chill.  New England, as a result, is a tropical paradise compared to neighboring Quebec and upstate New York.

That said, the same can be noted for upstate New York in comparison to Michigan and southern Ontario, and then Michigan in comparison to Wisconsin.  The Great Lakes, you see, have a small amount of maritime influence of their own.

Public domain, see the original at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041130.html.

The above picture features a north western wind, but the overall effect remains the same: downwind of the lakes one gets moderated temperatures and a ton of moisture.  In the summer, this sometimes has a reverse effect of creating something like a coastal California marine layer, wherein the water and shoreline areas are under heavy cloud while inland the place is delightfully sunny.  In any event, even smaller bodies of water can influence climate, with an unfrozen Lake St. Clair providing small scale changes to the local climate.  The larger lakes, though, are truly things of raw climactic power.  Superior creates its own weather systems!  Well, she does until she manages to largely freeze over.  The lake effect runs to a screeching halt once the bodies get a coat of ice.  A total coat is rare for all but Erie, but enough of the surface area gets frozen in places like Georgian Bay, western Superior, and the Straits of Mackinac, that winter does come and the true maritime influence disappears.  The result for the local terroir in places like northern Michigan, the Adirondacks, and the Opeongo Hills section (Algonquin highlands) of the Laurentian Mountains is the best of both worlds; New England meets Boreal.

Like in the deserts of the western United States and Canada and northern Mexico, elevation rise is the second factor in enhancing this climate soup.  As air rises on the Porcupine, Adirondack, or Laurentian mountains or onto the Mio Plateau, all of which are significant rises above the surrounding lowlands (a change of at least a thousand feet in many places), it cools if even ever so slightly, and dumps out moisture.  In each of these locations, a slight rain-shadow is even created.  The most noticeable of these is in the central Ottawa valley of Ontario, where Jack-Pine savannas and cacti can be found.  Like in the desert sky-islands out west, the Opeongo portion of the Laurentian mountains contrast this scenery with moist spruce-hardwood forests, replete with maritime expectations like Red Spruce (Picea Rubens) and Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis), well west of their happy Appalachian strongholds.  Then of course there are the maples, benefiting both from the same moisture, and the final ingredient of terroir: recycled life and powerful organic soil (and on the Mio plateau and in the Laurentians, glacially deposited sand an loam to assist in drainage).  Powerful for trees, anyway.  Farming never took off in any of these mountain lands, confined instead to nearby clay belts in the surrounding lowlands.  The end result is a logging paradise, and more so, a maple syrup dream, the moisture of the Appalachians with the winters of the interior (sorry Vermont, you are just close enough to oceanic protection to make the slight difference for the pickiest syrup-enthusiast), perfect for feeding a tree and then keeping the food locked away from pesky winter thaws.  When that sap starts to run, it really runs.

In review, the best sort of syrup (and remember, that local soil can make you even pickier) comes from here:

And yes, x does indeed mark the spot of syrup in its Platonic form, but that is just my opinion regarding the finest terroir.  What can I say?  Those Canadian Shield minerals are just amazing.  Next post, we will start looking at individual trees, and we will cap off with individual products.  And before I get any letter-bombs sent to me from the Green Mountain state, Vermont syrup is fine.  Honest. 

Real Maple Syrup: Part One

While I was out today, dearest mother, who is thoroughly Canadian to the core, insisted that she simply could not live without maple syrup.  I agree, to a point.  I personally cannot do without a supply of good maple syrup.  Naturally, I looked at what was available, and naturally, it was from northern New England.  This is not to be unexpected, as maple syrup has been an ongoing concern among the Green Mountain folk for some time, ever since the earliest settlers to New England noticed the first born making it through the winter a bit better because of it.  That said, the first born a bit further north taught some other trans-Atlantic arrivals a thing or two about the miracle sap of the maple tree.  The French arrived on the scene even earlier than the first residents of second born Massachusetts, and believe me, Canada is far more savage in the winter time than anything coastal New England has to offer.  In the words of Samuel de Champlain, "there are six months of winter here". 

Therein lies a key truth about maple sugar production.  The whole journey begins with the sap of the tree being liberated from its arboreal prison, a process which happens only when the holy elixir flows.  For this to happen, the tree must become aware that its dormant period of winter rest is coming to an end, and starch stored in the roots then rises in order to get the tree back up and running.  The next part is the real trick, namely that things need to get cold again at night so the whole process is not rushed by the tree.  A slight increase in temperature over freezing during the day is enough to make the tree run more of that delightful root energy back higher into the crown.  Obviously, to get any sort of sap at all, the maple tapper is best off being in an area where such conditions are likely to happen on a regular basis.  Theoretically, any maple that will produce sap that can make for decent tasting sugar can be used, as long as the tree enters and exits dormancy; maple syrup has been made with some success down into the higher elevations of Georgia.  Funks from central Illinois near Bloomington has been producing "sirup" since the 1840's.  In a moment of sheer snobbery, I regret to say that I declined to make a visit while en route to Springfield.  To be fair, I was shocked to see any sort of a sugar bush in the heart of the eastern tallgrass prairie in hot, humid, flat Illinois.  I have since had the opportunity to try some of their creation, and it is pretty decent, considering the unfair conditions they have to deal with in terms of what may jokingly be called a spring thaw. 

Look at that, see, I'm already ranting. 

Anyway, as with so many other agricultural things, syrup can, and indeed does, vary based on a number of conditions.  While few would argue that differences between syrups are as noticeable and pronounced as those between wines, the truth is that an Illinois sirup made from a Black Maple (Acer Nigrum) will be noticeably different from a New Brunswick syrup made from Red Maple (Acer Rubrum).  Some people, such as your author, can also tell the difference between a Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) syrup produced in Lapeer, Michigan and the same produced in Mason, Michigan, places with relatively similar climates and even soil conditions.  Maybe I'm picky and imagining things, but one imagines that trees with such huge ranges and such varying growing conditions would be not without variations in sap taste, let alone general botanical characteristics.  Mr. and Mrs. Red Maple, after all, can be found everywhere from tropical Southern Florida to windswept and rainy Newfoundland:

Thanks, USGS!

Next post, we shall explore the wonderful world of things maple in terms of climate, weather, and all that stuff that happens up in the sky.  (And yes, Vermont syrup is fine, and yes, I will tell you all about how wonderful if inferior it is, etc.  And no, Everglades syrup is not a real thing).

The Mystery Holiday, Where People Got Drunk Last Night (Times Square), And 2014

New Year's eve and day have always been something of a mystery to me.  Many people, even those who don't overly imbibe the night before, expect to get the day off, and are often quite surprised that even essential services and stores remain functional and open for business.  Maybe the day is seen as a time of "me" in contrast to the function of Christmas, which in North America seemingly serves a two-fold function to the secular public as a time of family obligations and a time to spend deeply into debt in order to satisfy supposed needs of gift recipients.  The whole exhausting affair might in fact give purpose to the night of selfish excess which provides for cheap entertainment; large bar tabs can otherwise be forgotten in the suds.  In the rest of the Gregorian calendar observing world, people do in fact celebrate, but in North America, more so in the United States, Mexico City, and urban Canada, people get downright crazy.  No other place in the world gets more insane than Times Square.

Clutter, shadows, and isolation among the bustling heart of a city...  Insanity as urban art.

I could write a rather lengthy post about the history, glitz, glamor, shame, etc. that is involved in this meeting of roads in Midtown Manhattan, and I actually have written about the statue of a Roman Catholic priest which is the unnoticed centerpiece of the northern part of the square.  Really, though, that is easy information to find, and this is one of those instances where the description simply pales in comparison to the experience of exposing the senses to it in person.  No photos of it really do the place justice; it pretty much glows.

Its amazing what standing just a few feet closer into the scene with the same camera on the same settings can do to this classic picture scene.  The signs all seemed to have gone off at the same time, the construction is hidden by passing cars, and even the metal plates on the road seem to light up.  This angle is, of course, looking south towards One Times Square.

It glows almost as good if not better than Vegas, perhaps even more so.  Vegas exists to purposefully take your money without any regret, surface of otherwise.  Tourist New York, on the other hand, exists to take you and your wallet on a ride that you both seem to, above all else, enjoy, and not merely for the purpose of spending.  That said, even while you can be entertained here just by people watching and taking in the sights, all those signs, especially the big ones front and center on One Times Square pretty much exist to get you to spend something.  They want you to eat, drink, and take in a show.  They even want you to know that the police and around to make sure your experience is as unmolested as possible.

Which leads us into the second bit of our post, and away from the relatively quiet February scenes photographed above.  It seems that last night, much like last year in general, people were gathering to protest and break the silence about what they view to be ignorance.  Apparently more protests against racial discrimination and police brutality were set to take place last night in Times Square, but there were so many people there to simply party, revel, and lose themselves in the moment that nothing significant ever got underway.  The protestors could not even make it to the party, and Times Square did its usual job of distracting everyone from the reality of what was happening in the rest of the country.  2014 has largely been like that, though, perhaps more than any other year before it. 

The 24 news cycle and the ebb and flow of internet trends have largely ensured that people really don't think about things like government spending and corruption, international incidents, disease outbreaks, and even, well, joy over things that have gone right.  Times Square is a reminder that our society often gets bombarded by all sorts of information, is driven towards pleasure, and has a very short term memory.  Times Square is a lovely place in some ways, but one that is extremely artificial.  It is very purpose driven towards an intoxicating excitement that in the end is all too ephemeral.  In many ways and for many people, such was the experience of 2014 in North America.