April 24th, 2005

I Prefer Syrup

First is the coleslaw, followed closely by the sweet pickles, beets, and celery spears. The Vegetable Agenda. These items are placed silently at our table in brown ceramic bowls by the staff. No sudden movements made. The table, filled with my coworkers, nods and looks at one another. We pick at these offerings tenatively, for the purposes of laying down in our stomachs a layer of solid food matter which will soon absorb as much pig, egg, and sugar as humanly possible. Under the shadow of the huge milk bottle full of maple syrup at the head of the table, we wait for the main event.

Next: split-pea soup with ham, and bowls of baked beans. Now we are off, with a clink of the ladle in the bottom of every bowl, and a drizzle of Canadian maple syrup on top. There are few opportunities to put syrup on soup, except at this, the Cabane à Sucre, the yearly Québecois celebration of gluttony, shortening, and nitrites.

The procession moves on. Women in pioneer sunbonnets bring out glazed ham, baked ham, smoked ham, ham fat, ham fritters, ham cakes, and ham and eggs. Heaps of scrambled eggs on microwaveable yellow trays and bowls of feves au lard drift pass our bloodshot eyes. The undeterminable glue of créton, some kind of pork-based gunk, spreads across torn bread. We nibble on oreilles de Cris (“Christ’s ears”), fried pig skin which turns so crispy that it could probably break your teeth if you bit down too fast. Their flavour is so overpowering that I break them with my molars and then eat the broken bits off my plate. There is nary a thought to calories or sodium; this is a ceremony of sin, an excursion into the basest corners of the human appetite. We go on a Sunday, in order that we may pray for our souls afterward.

After stuffing ourselves with this most unholy quantity of swine, we progressed to the tarte a sucre, the souffles de sucre, les beignes frites, everything encased in sugar and fried dough, and subject to a stream of syrup. Drizzling seemed apropos. One does not pour syrup. The technique is to compress the pastry with a fork, then fill the space left by the displaced air with syrup.

Then, coffee, to counteract the meditative pig-daze. No sugar provided; use syrup.

Cabane à sucre represents a deliberate lapse of health, a retort to the perpetual rumble of guilt. It is important to accept what you are eating as a once-a-year binge and abandon pretenses of eating light or opting out of the more arterially demanding dishes. Flush the thought of picking at your food with suspicion, weighing the cost of eating it with the ensuing penance you must pay. We have become a nation of birds, fishing through the bounty for the vitamin-rich or politically neutral bits. We don’t like feeling fussy, but what choice do we have? Eating a balanced diet, boring as it may be, beats the alternative. Studies, clinical trials, the evidence from our own two eyes: we’re sure of it. On this day, you will forget all these formulae, these punishments, and just eat pig until you pass out.

The staff pegs us as Montreal types immediately. Locals do not show up in the Quebec countryside wearing dress pants and stepping out of carpooled Hondas. Locals do not care that they must use the same mug for milk, water, and coffee. I ignore the possibility that the cleanliness of the kitchen might also uphold this rigorous commitment to hygiene.

After the meal, we walk down a short staircase into a small sunken enclosure. Against the wall is a trough containing fresh snow, curious, since the snow outside has been melted for weeks. An old Frenchman in a smock pours some maple syrup on the snow with careful tips of a tin can. He hands us each a stick, tells us attende trente secondes. Each of us rolls a strip of syrup onto the end of a stick, like a frozen lollipop. They are surprisingly good, perhaps better than anything we’d been served at the table. Our day is done, and we waddle back to the cars in full acceptance that our evening is lost to the couch, a pitcher of water, a movie, and a fruit smoothie made with low-fat frozen yogurt for dinner.