Start flipping pancakes, it's Maple Syrup Day

Is there anything more Canadiana than maple syrup?

Well, maybe hockey, Tim Hortons, the Canadian flag, poutine, the canoe, moose or our politeness.

But we digress.

Canada is famous for a lot of things and maple syrup is right up there.

And maple syrup is what we're going to highlight today because Dec. 17 every year is Maple Syrup Day.

The origins of the day are murky -- no one seems to know when exactly it started or by who.

But, hey, in an era when every food, drink, disease and cause has its own national or international day, maple syrup has every right to have its special day.

To digress once more, while researching this story I came across some doozies in the couple of days before Maple Syrup Day.

Dec. 15 was National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day, National Cupcake Day and Cat Herders Day and Dec. 16 was National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day.

By the way, you could incorporate maple syrup into those days by spilling the sweet syrup on your ugly Christmas sweater, using a maple syrup cupcake recipe and adding maple syrup to the chocolate you cover anything in.

I guess you could set out a saucer of maple syrup, instead of a saucer of milk, to help herd cats, but we don't know how effective that would be.

There are two Pancake Days -- Sept. 26 and on Shrove Tuesday -- so, another natural tie-in to maple syrup.

Well, enough of all that, let's get to the merits of Maple Syrup Day.

The natural first step is to have pancakes smothered in maple syrup today for breakfast.

You could substitute pancakes for waffles or French toast and you could even glaze the bacon you have with it with maple syrup.

Speaking of maple-glazed bacon, I came across a recipe for maple muffins with maple cream icing and maple-glazed bacon sprinkles.

In fact, there are endless recipes out there featuring maple syrup and let's not forget, maple sugar.

Maple syrup and maple sugar can be substituted in virtually recipe that calls for regular sugar -- so bring on the maple cookies, maple cakes, maple candy, maple pie, maple ice cream, maple rocky road bars, maple chocolates, maple profiteroles, maple donuts and maple creme brulee.

Maple syrup can also go savoury as a glaze for any meat, not just the aforementioned bacon, but salmon, pork, turkey and chicken.

Use maple syrup to sweeten and sticky up roasted vegetables.

Add maple syrup to your coffee, latte, hot chocolate or martini.

Incorporate maple syrup into the stuffing you fill the Christmas bird with.

You get the idea -- maple syrup has myriad uses.

Maple syrup has also ended up in many products, which is why naturSource has Maple Almonds and Hot Maple Almonds in its snack portfolio.

Why exactly is maple syrup so Canadian?

Well, long before Canada was Canada, the Indigenous people here discovered that the sap from maple trees could be collected and boiled down to a sweet and delicious syrup.

Legend has it an Indigenous chief threw his tomahawk at a maple tree in the spring and sap started to pour out.

He collected that sap and his wife used it to cook the venison in, creating maple syrup and an ultra-tasty dinner at the same time.

Another legend is Indigenous peoples discovered the 'sapsicles' (icicles of sap) dripping out of trees and liked not just the frozen sap, but cooked sap, too.

When settlers came to Canada, they embraced maple syrup and amped up production to the point where Canada now makes 80% of the world's maple syrup.

The US, which also has maple forests in the northeast of the country, is the next biggest producer.

BC doesn't really have maple forests, so we're not a maple syrup producer.

But that doesn't stop us from enjoying maple syrup whenever we want.

Canadian maple syrup is exported to 50 countries, so it's an international sensation.

On my travels, I've poured Canadian maple syrup on pancakes and waffles in Thailand, Australia, England and Mexico.

91% of Canada's production comes out of Quebec, easily making the French-speaking province the maple syrup capital of the galaxy.

The rest of Canada's volume comes out of Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

To get technical, when it's cold, maple trees store starch in their trunks and roots.

In the spring, as it warms, that starch converts to sugar in a xylem sap.

If you split the bark or bore a hole into the tree trunk, sap drips out.

Collect that sap via a spigot in the trunk with a pail hung underneath.

Or, as with more modern, commercial operations, a series of taps, pipes and pumps collects and transports sap to a central location.

It takes 40 gallons of sap to boil down to make one gallon of maple syrup, so it's a precious commodity.

The price runs around $10 for a 250ml bottle.

So precious that, you may remember, in 2012, six million pounds of maple syrup was stolen from a Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers facility.

23 people were eventually arrested in connection with the crime, but one-third of the plunder was never recovered.

By the way, anything labelled 'pancake syrup,' 'table syrup' or 'maple-flavoured syrup' is not the real deal, but likely corn syrup sweetened with cane sugar.