It's the little things....

This is a recipe exchange. And that is mostly what I'll be posting here. But occasionally there will be things I'd like to post that aren't about a recipe per se. Or at least not directly.

Like today, driving to BART on my way to work, I heard a story on NPR that just stuck with me. Because it's about the way the little things and the big picture are all related. And it just made me sad. Are we really going to continue not changing our behavior (collective and individual) so as to propel ourselves further into a world where maple syrup is extinct? It's not life-or-death, I fully realize. People and lives will go on if we aren't able to get real maple syrup anymore. But what else will be affected if the sugar maple isn't able to survive? What else is at risk of disappearing? And really, what is the world coming to when maple syrup is in danger of becoming a relic of the past? I ask you.

For today, I take small solace in knowing that Vermont is still 74% wooded, and New Hampshire is 80%. Those are odds in our favor.

Climate Connections: Signs
In New England, Concern Grows for Sugar Maple
by Ketzel Levine

Morning Edition, October 29, 2007 · Consider the color of fall leaves on a sugar maple tree: peach, orange, lemon, mango. It's an autumn delicacy, a thunderhead of foliage.

The species is also quite long-lived. In the Carlsons' forest in Sandwich, N.H., a few date from the 1700s. Martha Carlson has a number of favorite trees, with stories to tell about each one.

"I was tapping the trees right beside my house, and it was early in the season," Carlson says. "It was 34 degrees, and the sap was just pouring out. Then a cloud went over and the sap stopped. You could almost hear the tree click off."

An exquisitely sensitive tree, shuddering at the slightest chill, the sugar maple has a wide variety of residents, ecologists and scientists worried about how it will fare should Northeast temperatures rise as projected during the next century of climate change.

Read More....