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Maple Snow Picnics

I Maine, where there are N EVERY ONE of our snowy states, such as Michigan and maple sugar camps everybody looks forward to a maple snow, snow picnic, sugar-on-snow, sugar-off party, sheepskins or leather aprons, however it's called.

Such The best sport at such a picnic, which may very well include bob-sledding, skiing or iceboating, as well, is to gather round the maple sap boiling in the evaporators or melting up last season's sugar and dipping it out by the saucerful to throw on hard-packed snow and eat the "sheepskins" or "leather aprons" it cools into at once. Such maple "wax" is a chewy confection that goes wonderfully well with pickles and old-fashioned unsweetened doughnuts. Coffe is made specially with maple sap in place of water and in order to help matters along, little wooden paddles are passed around for you to beat a saucerful of maple syrup into velvety maple cream.

Here is the lowdown on New Hampshire snow picnics contributed to our America Cooks by Ralph Barrett: "Long before Fred Harris lent his great influence to the art of the ski, long before Fred's pioneer efforts resulted in the chain of cabins now stretching across the breadth of the several New England states-snow picnics were still traditional. We always had snowshoes. We always had barrel staves, too! In fact, we got around the snowdrifts of New Hampshire all right. • .. "What to eat? Hamburg steak grizzled to a turn and served on soft rolls with steaming mugs of hot coffee. And when hamburgers are cooked over a smoky wood firewell, you have something, my friends. Sometimes sausage meat would be selected the kind that the village butcher would make himself. For indeed, we had never heard of "branded" sausage meat in those days. The local butcher would thriftily mix and mingle his scraps of pork, veal, and lamb. Grind them, and season with his "secret" blend of herbs, result being that succeeding batches never tasted alike a fact and a situation which may seem barbaric in our day of standardization of blandness on the part of the commercial meat packers. "Well, these or other meats, we would cook, each boy and each girl grappling for the chance to do his or her share. Some home-cured bacon-not too thinly slicedmight make appearance. Smoked in houses fired with apple wood or birch. Rolls and bread would be split and splattered with butter and the sizzling meats hastily immersed into the breadstuff. Mittens back on fast-for sometimes these affairs are held when the thermometer registers 20 below! And if you don't think they are topsepicurean marvels-just travel to New Hampshire and expose yourself! If you're most highfalutin you will have had foresight and have some potatoes baking in the coals. And of course you will top everything off by scattering dippers of hot melted-down maple sap on fresh snow to make perfect maple wax, or stir and stir hot syrup in a bowl until it's white maple cream. Even if you are using last year's crop of sugar-the current year's still being 3 months or more away-this you enjoy, and when tongue and palate become satiated you bite into a piece of dill pickle until its counterirritating influence prepares the mouth for more sugar on snow. And of course there are gobs of doughnuts all the time! Then off to the races. The snowshoes, skis, and bobsleds!"