Hi Michele,
Today, I checked our local grocery store for pigeon peas- no luck. I will be visiting Dover, NH this week so will check there as they have several grocery stores, but I'm skeptical I'll find them. I'll keep you posted.
We went to my Dad's house to make more buckets to collect maple sap. He said when he was a kid they made their own taps from sumac branches and collected the sap in empty coffee cans. My kids really enjoyed watching the sap run off the taps into the buckets. They were surprised how fast it runs out of the tree.
Hopefully we'll collect enough to make syrup, but we need quite a bit to be boiled down. We're going to see if a neighbor will let us tap some large sugar maples on her property. I love Maple EVERYTHING (sugar, syrup, candy, cookies, etc.) so keep your fingers crossed for us. I've embedded a video below from the University of Maine for you to see. It shows some basics about tapping trees. We used the same metal taps that you will see in the video.
In other news, my daughter had her braces tightened today, and my son had braces put on, so I'm preparing liquid meals for the next several days. Both kids are extremely uncomfortable. I'm making lots of smoothies and soups. Do you have any good recipes? ~Caroline
