<p>I love to cook because i love to eat! My mother worked outside the home when i was ten or so. She’d prepare meals (traditional Chinese home cooking – not Chop Suey or Sweet & Sour Pork!) and leave them covered on the table for my older brother and me. Not satisfied with that, I took to asking her to teach me how to prepare them so I could eat it fresh off the stove top! Basically cooked for my brother and me 5 nights a week until I went off to college. Afterwards, I was always the cook in my households – my roommates loved me! When I got married, an early (but brief) source of tension btn my wife and me was territorialism in the kitchen! I relaxed a little and our friends chided her too. </p>
<p>LOL: some nights my wife works so it’s dad cooking for the two girls. Still love my time in the kitchen – making my mom’s old recipes! YUM!</p>
<p>Did I hear on NPR the other day that NH maple syrup was up to $45/gallon? I almost crashed the car, which would have been a shame since then I’d have to refill it at $65/tank. </p>
<p>They said it was a problem in NH more so than in Maine or Vermont, not sure why. </p>
<p>In fact, the news said maple syrup costs rise because of higher fuel costs (for the heat to sugar down maple sap to syrup at a 40:l ratio).</p>
<p>I’m crushed. Carbon footprint all over my pancakes, really upsetting.</p>
<p>Gee, paying3. now you’ve given me “the guilts.” I’ve been hoarding fresh maple syrup that a farmer friend taps from his trees-unbelievably good-and when that 40:1 ratio was mentioned, I hadn’t even thought of the fuel cost! I will be imagining footprints on our chocolate chip pancakes and challah French toast. ;)</p>
<p>Another person who rarely has to make waffles, dh makes them every weekend from scratch. And we always use real maple syrup, preferably grade B. I can’t hear you on that carbon footprint thing. La, la, la! ::fingers in ears::</p>
<p>Come on, ladies! Does our plate of steaming pancakes with fresh maple syrup have to be spoiled with this stupid “carbon footprint”? I hate that phrase! Shall we stop breathing, too (ooh, we make CO2, oooh)? ;)</p>
<p>I do not :love: to cook, but I do not mind it. Chemists are good cooks by training. My mom absolutely could not bake, so at the ripe age of 10 I decided that I had to take the matter into my own hands. My 12th birthday was celebrated with a napoleon cake with fabulous filling and strawberry compote. I baked so much, we were out of flower all of the time. Sigh, I do not get to bake anymore - H prohibits me from doing it for the sake of his waistline.</p>
;)</p>