‘It might as well be spring’: The fifth season is marked by mud and maple syrup

This week, I returned to a tried and true favorite, the maple balsamic vinaigrette recipe I devised for my “Pudding Hollow Cookbook.” In the fall, I like to make my vinaigrettes with tart, local cider vinegar. In the winter and spring, however, I like the more complex flavor of balsamic.

This week, I returned to a tried and true favorite, the maple balsamic vinaigrette recipe I devised for my “Pudding Hollow Cookbook.” In the fall, I like to make my vinaigrettes with tart, local cider vinegar. In the winter and spring, however, I like the more complex flavor of balsamic. PHOTO BY TINKY WEISBLAT

I added some blue cheese crumbles to my greens for creaminess, plus some apple slices for crunch. Feel free to make your salad with your own favorite ingredients.

I added some blue cheese crumbles to my greens for creaminess, plus some apple slices for crunch. Feel free to make your salad with your own favorite ingredients. PHOTO BY TINKY WEISBLAT

I was hoping to have a maple shrimp recipe for you this week. I purchased some shrimp and adapted a Canadian recipe that marinated the shrimp in maple syrup, soy sauce, and garlic. Unfortunately, the results were only so-so. The recipe was good enough to eat, but not quite good enough to share with readers.

I was hoping to have a maple shrimp recipe for you this week. I purchased some shrimp and adapted a Canadian recipe that marinated the shrimp in maple syrup, soy sauce, and garlic. Unfortunately, the results were only so-so. The recipe was good enough to eat, but not quite good enough to share with readers. PHOTO BY TINKY WEISBLAT

As I walk down the road, I’m a little saddened by the tubing that connects the maple trees in my neighborhood to large collection containers. The old-fashioned buckets that used to hang on trees were so much more picturesque.

As I walk down the road, I’m a little saddened by the tubing that connects the maple trees in my neighborhood to large collection containers. The old-fashioned buckets that used to hang on trees were so much more picturesque. PHOTO BY TINKY WEISBLAT

By TINKY WEISBLAT

For the Recorder

Published: 03-17-2025 1:10 PM

I still can’t see anything but snow and ice in my Hawley yard, but new life is in the air nonetheless. My driveway has started looking and feeling muddy, a sure sign that the fifth season is upon us.

The fifth season in New England is traditionally mud season. It’s not winter, yet it’s not spring. In the words of Oscar Hammerstein II, “I haven’t seen a crocus or a rosebud, or a robin on the wing. Yet I feel so gay, in a melancholy way, that it might as well be spring.”

We are less likely in March than in February to have snowstorms that leave snow with us permanently and strand us temporarily. Ironically, according to older neighbors, the fifth season stymied New Englanders of yore more than winter.

Older friends remember that 50 to 75 years ago winter roads seldom proved unnavigable thanks to rollers that compacted the snow on road surfaces instead of clearing it.

In contrast, the fifth season was a disaster for automobiles and even pedestrians. In those days, country schools, open during the bleakest snowstorms, frequently closed down during mud season.

Even so, I have a feeling people enjoyed mud season then just as I do now. My dog is beginning to smell plants and creatures deep below the snow. Those smells stimulate her imagination, just as the growing sunshine stimulates mine.

I love waking up to see the sun peek through my bedroom window in the morning once more. At this time last month, it was still too far south on the horizon to be visible from my bed.

And of course it’s maple time. This maple season got off to a slow start, according to my syrup-producing friends. Nevertheless, those same friends are doing their best with the sap they have. Syrup is after all a signature New England commodity … and it’s the first agricultural product of the year.

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I don’t make maple syrup, although I know a lot of people who do. Some are professionals. Some are homebodies who tap only a few trees and boil the sap down on their kitchen stoves, proud to make their own batches of syrup.

As I walk down the road, I’m a little saddened by the tubing that connects the maple trees in my neighborhood to large collection containers. The old-fashioned buckets that used to hang on trees were so much more picturesque.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the enormous amount of labor involved in boiling sap down to syrup. If the tubing helps my neighborhood sugar makers, I’m all for it. And if fancy new evaporation systems make their labor lighter, I appreciate them, too.

I recently learned that the old wood stoves weren’t the original way in which syrup was made. According to the University of Vermont’s “Maple Research Guide,” it’s not clear whether Indigenous Americans boiled their sap into sugar or syrup before Europeans came to these shores, although they still made syrup and sugar.

Even when they did boil sap, they sometimes let nature do some of the work, using the cold weather to distill the syrup in a method akin to making apple jack. The guide quotes a 1799 memoir by James Smith, who spent time in his youth living with Native Americans in what is now Ohio.

Smith wrote, “Shortly after we came to this place [they] began to make sugar. We had no large kettles with us this year, and they made the frost, in some measure, supply the place of fire, in making sugar.

“Their large bark vessels, for holding the stock-water, they made broad and shallow; and as the weather is very cold here, it frequently freezes at night in sugar time; and the ice they break and cast out of the vessels.

“I asked them if they were not throwing away the sugar? they said no; it was water they were casting away, sugar did not freeze, and there was scarcely any in that ice. They said I might try the experiment, and boil some of it, and see what I would get.

“I never did try it; but I observed that after several times freezing, the water that remained in the vessel, changed its colour and became brown and very sweet.”

Reading and thinking about maple syrup always makes me hungry. I was hoping to have a maple shrimp recipe for you this week. I purchased some shrimp and adapted a Canadian recipe that marinated the shrimp in maple syrup, soy sauce, and garlic.

Unfortunately, the results were only so-so. The recipe was good enough to eat (a fortunate thing since I hate wasting food and especially seafood!) but not quite good enough to share with readers.

Instead of inflicting my maple mania on more shrimp (which is — or should I say are? — not easy to come by), I returned to a tried and true favorite, the maple balsamic vinaigrette recipe I devised for my “Pudding Hollow Cookbook.”

In the fall, I like to make my vinaigrettes with tart, local cider vinegar. In the winter and spring, however, I like the more complex flavor of balsamic.

I don’t have the money to purchase the true Italian super-aged balsamic vinegar, which I have only tasted once, in a class at a food show. Frankly, that balsamic, which can cost hundreds of dollars, doesn’t really work in salads. It is best in tiny portions. (People like to put a drop or two on fruit, for example.)

I don’t purchase super cheap balsamic (let alone imitation!) vinegar, however. The vinegar I’m using at present (from Kirkland, the store brand of Costco) is aged and is from Modena, Italy, one of the sources of true balsamic.

The manufacturers have made the balsamic, traditionally made from grape must (fresh grape juice with pulp, stems, and seeds), more affordable by mixing some red-wine vinegar in with the must.

That addition works for me when I’m using maple syrup in my vinaigrette. True balsamic is very sweet so adding maple syrup would be overkill. The modified balsamic is more acidic but still flavorful so it works perfectly for a salad dressing.

I added some blue cheese crumbles to my greens for creaminess, plus some apple slices for crunch. Feel free to make your salad with your own favorite ingredients.

Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons mid-level balsamic vinegar

4 tablespoons maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 garlic clove, finely minced

1 tablespoon water

salt and pepper to taste (I use about 7 twists of the pepper grinder and 1/2 teaspoon salt)

10 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Instructions:

In a 2-cup jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine the vinegar, maple syrup, mustard, garlic, water, salt and pepper. Shake to combine.

Slowly pour in the olive oil and shake or whisk to combine again. This makes about 1 cup of vinaigrette, which may be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week or even 2. Be sure to bring it to room temperature (and shake it) before you use it.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.