National Pancake Day was yesterday. As usual, I’m a day late and a dollar short. Nevermind that I had a pecan waffle with extra pecans sans syrup at the Waffle House this morning.

Still and all, I offer you this, my homage to maple syrup (and to pancakes though indirectly.)

As a child, I did not like pancake syrup though I loved the shape of the Aunt Jemima glass bottle. Everyone thought I was weird, but I much preferred my pancakes and French toast with tons of butter. Dripping with butter. Drowning in it. Floating.

Some time during my misspent early adulthood, I did not mark the day in my calendar of things to remember, I was unceremoniously given pancakes with syrup already applied. Not wanting to be one of those people, I unenthusiastically loaded a forkful and put it in my mouth.

Oh my. All the pleasure pheromones and chemicals and other assorted signals lit up like a Christmas tree at the North Pole and I smiled big and broad.

Real maple syrup tapped from trees is one of God’s gifts

Going out for breakfast at about lunch time is one of my favorite things to do and I was an expert on who offered real syrup and who was using that high fructose corn syrup swill. The field narrowed until we were down to Cracker Barrel with their miniature bottles of real Grade A Vermont maple syrup. I loved those little bottles too and would ask for extra so I could squirrel it away for maple syrup emergencies at home. Alas and alack, they too succumbed to the HFCS swill, and I stuck to eggs over easy or French toast with extra butter, no syrup.

[An aside: I feel the same way about whipped cream vs. Cool Whip.]

Now I will confess to using Bisquick to make pancakes, unlike my son, the chef who whips egg whites and other complicated steps when making his pancakes extraordinaire, but I draw the line at fake syrup. Some things are sacred. I don’t care if you like that dreadful stuff. There are some things I will not allow in my kitchen.

I have a fond memory of being about 9. Early morning on Bellows Beach, which was just a few blocks from Waikiki proper on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. It would have been about 1968. I was dressed in scratchy over-starched blue jeans bought new for this camping adventure and a white windbreaker. We had cooked our pancakes and bacon on the craft lesson od upside down coffee cans and tuna fish cans filled with wax and a wick. You lit the tuna can, turned the Yuban can over on top of it, used your small canteen frying pan to