Spring came in with such a rush this year.  By mid-March—mid-March!—the snow had receded, the grass greened, the buds burst, the crocuses bloomed, and people were out swilling cold beer on patios, the smell of charcoal grills in the air.   A week later now, the ice on Lake Minnetonka has gone out, the first vinca bloom has appeared, and bleeding hearts and sedum and hyacinth are up from the ground.  We are known to have snowfall in late April and even early May here.

I find myself in the market feeling like something of a lost child.  I should be making all the dishes in my head: a pork loin roast rubbed with juniper and ginger and stuffed with prunes, a choucroute garnie with the last of the sauerkraut in my refrigerator, or an enormous cassoulet, bubbling in the oven with a hairy piece of pig skin, magret de canard, thick tight-skinned sausages, and white beans.  But it’s been 80 degrees, and humid to boot.  I’m not ready for salads.  It’s too early even for asparagus, and I don’t want the Mexican asparagus they have displayed like daffodils anyway.  I stand amid the produce so long, looking charily, that eventually my Sweet Boy asks me what I’m doing.  I have cooking cognitive dissonance.

But there are signs of our old winter, of winter’s routine here.  The earth is holding back a full bouquet of spring shoots and flowers, and, until yesterday, the trees were waiting, too.  And last week the taps began to appear on the maple trees as we drove through neighboring towns.   The sap is running and soon people will be boiling down in their sugar shacks and on backyard fires, and about a month from now the year’s new maple syrup will be ready.

One of those neighbors is Marsha Wilson Chall, in theory anyway.  We haven’t met, but I know we live in the same town, and according to the dust jacket of her storybook, Sugarbush Spring, she grew up keeping this tradition.  The book is a lovely way to connect with the rituals of sugaring: the snowy woods, the perfume of the fire and its wood smoke and the sugared steam of the syrupping pan, the first syrup poured into the snow and eaten as sweet streams of maple candy, the long hours tending the fire, the woolen filtering stockings, the glow of the first jars filled.  If you have a maple tree, you can make your own maple syrup at home, too.  Taps are inexpensive, if you don’t go in for the whole kit, and available at the charming Egg Plant Urban Farm Supply store, if you live within driving distance of St. Paul, Minnesota.  Or you can order online here.   You may read more about the process of maple sugaring in my article for Honest Cooking here.

Maple pudding cake, or pouding chômeur, was originally a poor man’s dessert, first made in Canada during the Depression era with brown sugar and water, but it has evolved to ubiquitously include pure maple syrup, thus upending its humble roots.  It’s still a homey dessert, but one that’s rather dear.   I bake my nutmeg- and vanilla-scented cakes in a bath of maple syrup and heavy cream and finish them in a hot oven until they are bubbling and caramelized.   They’re a nice way to make a bridge at the table from winter to spring.  And a cure, for now, for my cognitive dissonance.

This is the first in a new series of posts. So many of my happiest hours were spent reading to my two children and cooking together. And so many splendid picture books lend themselves to a particular recipe, sometimes more.  When my Honey Girl and Sweet Boy were little ones, we walked to the library with our wagon in tow every week. They could fill the wagon as high as was possible with books, and we’d walk home with it wibble-wobbling behind us, with books threatening to topple and held steady by little hands.  During the winter, if it was terribly cold or the sidewalks were too icy, we loaded the wagon into the trunk of our car and hauled it into the library.  At home, we would work our way through the stacks, setting aside the best books.  Then we would read those, over and over and over again, sometimes until my voice was hoarse.  Each of us had favorites for the week; our Honey Girl preferred silly books, our Sweet Boy loved books with a lovely music about them, and I favored sweet storytelling.   But we all loved that time together on our ratty sofa.  “Again, again, again!” my sweet ones would chirp.  And I would begin again.

The first book I’ve picked is Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban; I think we must have read it three hundred times.   It was my favorite book as a girl, and my two peanuts loved it, too.  Frances the badger loves bread and jam, and has interest in eating little else.  Her story unfolds over the breakfast and dinner tables of her sweet badger family, and at school, over desktop lunches with her friend, Albert.  When Frances grows weary of bread and jam, she is finally beguiled by a plate of her mother’s spaghetti and meatballs.  Russell Hoban’s descriptions of Frances and her family, their quiet exchanges, Frances’ and Albert’s lunches, and Frances’ little songs are charming.  And Lillian Hoban’s pencil illustrations are tender and evocative.  Curl up with it, and then make some spaghetti and meatballs together.  And when you eat them, like Frances, make the meatballs, the tomato sauce, and the spaghetti come out even.