It seems that all this spring weather is leaving us a little less inclined to spend time inside updating the site! Our last snowfall was around the end of February, and while we were worried for a bit that is was all just a tease, it seems that spring really is here. Leaves out, flowers blooming, grass growing and sun shining – it’s true, spring’s here!

In Quebec, spring means the sugarshack, which you could probably tell by the decadent post below this. I’m clearly the type of person who loves lots of sugar and fat, as a few weekends later, I headed off to another sugarshack for our Easter meal.

It’s the same sugarshack my family’s been visiting for years, La Goudrelle in Mont-St-Gregoire, so I already knew what to expect. If you want a very comprehensive overview of the place, I wrote about it a few years back on Midnight Poutine. I won’t go that much in detail this time round, but here’s the gist of it:

The food! The idea stays the same in pretty much all sugarshacks: you sit at a big table, and they serve you family-style, meaning they bring out big bowls and platters of the food, and you all serve yourselves. At this sugarshack, it’s all-you-can-eat, so they’ll keep bringing the plates as many times as you ask for them.

There’s pea soup, which is a bit underseasoned, but that’s okay, since I like to pile salty, crunchy pork rinds (known as oreilles de crisse in Quebec) into it. With that, they serve creton (very much like pate), little rolls, pickled beets, pickles and coleslaw. Need to get your veggies somewhere in this meal!

Next comes a strange egg concoction – very spongy and cakey, which is ideal for soaking up maple syrup. With it, two types of ham, also great with the never-ending supply of maple syrup at your table. Bowls of (slightly bland) baked beans and potato wedges arrive, as do mini-sausages. These sausages had a great sweet sauce, but were a very weird consistency – mushy…but still good.

But just in case you haven’t had enough maple syrup, dessert is a good place to catch up. Grand peres are fried doughballs that just absorb maple syrup. Also served are doughnuts and some teeth-achingly sweet sugar tarts. End the meal with some maple syrup on ice (tire), and you’re on a sugar high for hours!

The area around the sugarshack is a great way to burn off all those calories, if you can manage to roll yourself away from the table. They offer a horse-drawn wagon ride through the maple trees and a fenced in area with a few dejected-looking goats, geese with sad, sad clipped wings and a llama. You can also walk all around, visiting all the buckets filled with that sweet, sweet sap.

See? Lots of wildlife!

We’ve been doing lots of cooking and eating these days, just not a lot of writing. We’ll catch up soon! Coming soon, some poached eggs with hollandaise sauce, an early spring BBQ, vegan brownies and review of a pretty dismal sushi resto…