Maple-Brined Pork Roast with Roasted Pear Chutney

The nights are cool and the days are warming. Maple trees start to drip their liquid gold into buckets from Maple farms across the NorthEast. Did you know that it can take up to 40 gallons of the sap to produce just one gallon of syrup? If you haven't ever been able to visit a maple farm, I highly recommend it. It's an amazing process and I've never heard of a maple farmer that wasn't happy to have a few extra hands around to help. You better hurry though, the season often only lasts 4-6 weeks before the trees bud and the sap stops running.

Virtual Potluck and Coombs Family Farms

Photo from www.coombsfamilyfarms.com

Every year around this time, the weather starts warming up and Maple trees start to release their sap. When I lived in Montreal I loved this time of year when sugar shacks would start popping up all around the countryside. These little shacks would create wonderful meals centered around the wonderful maple syrup. Every dish had some kind of maple product in it and we even drank maple water; the pure sap straight from the tree.

Orange Cinnamon French Toast

It's one of those breakfast for dinner kind of days. Minnesota just can't make up it's mind on this Spring thing and it's supposed to snow a few inches tonight. Breakfast for dinner is a pretty frequent occurrence around here so I did branch out a little bit and went with a new recipe just to throw in a little variety, for the kids of course. I grabbed my Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen because I thought I had seen some breakfast recipes in there and it's been a little neglected since I bought it a few months ago after seeing a demo of Tom in action.