Sweet Outing

If you’re in the vicinity of St. Albans, VT (about 30 minutes north of Burlington, VT via I-89) this weekend, and you have a sweet tooth, get your maple fix at the 42nd Annual Vermont Maple Festival, running Friday through Sunday. Gorge yourself on sugar-on-snow, maple donuts, maple cotton candy, and maple creemees. (Then be ready for that sugar crash on Monday, just in time for the work week.)

This annual event (designated one of the Top 10 Summer Events by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce) draws crowds of 50,000 annually. That’s approximately half the population of Vermont. Okay, I kid, but it IS greater than the population of Franklin County, where St. Albans is located. Clearly, we Vermonters do love our maple products. (Did you know that real maple syrup–not the fake crap you can buy in the grocery store–is a heart healthy, natural sweetener that can help boost immunity? It contains zinc and manganese, two trace minerals our bodies need. Did you know you have to boil 40 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of maple syrup? ) If you’ve never had sugar on snow. . . .get thee to Vermont in the springtime! It is heaven in a snowy bowl, usually served with homemade donuts and sour pickles on the side to cut the sweetness.

But the festival offers more than maple-based food products. There are antique and craft shows, a youth talent show, fiddlers, a parade through town, tours of sugarhouses, and an 8.5 mile footrace called–wait for it–the Sap Run. (Okay, if you know nothing about sugaring, you probably didn’t get that, but trust me, it’s funny.)

If you are nowhere near St. Albans, VT this weekend, you can always order yourself a taste of Vermont’s homegrown pride over the Internet from my friends Colleen and Paul at Palmer Lane Maple. I just sampled some of their maple goodies this past weekend and Mmmm. Let’s just say I did not come home empty-handed.