"Wear a checkered shirt if you have one," was the suggested dress code for Strathmore's annual visit to the cabane à sucre, a.k.a. the sugar shack on Friday, April 14, 2023.
This year, Strathmore headed to Erablière Au Toit Rouge in Mont-Saint-Grégoire.
The Strathmore team took up three long tables in the dining room and feasted on a traditional Québécois meal that started with steaming hot bowls of soupe aux pois (pea soup), followed by smoked ham, omelette, sausages, tourtière (Quebec meat pie), baked beans, oreilles de crisse (which literally translated means “Christ’s ears” but is actually deep-fried pork rinds), roasted potatoes, pickled beets and freshly baked bread.
Everything was either cooked with maple syrup or drowned in syrup when it got to the table. Some people even poured it into their coffee!
After sugar pie and crepes for dessert, everyone headed outside for tire sur la neige, or maple taffy, where hot maple syrup is poured out onto the snow, and then rolled around a popsicle and licked like a lollypop.
After the meal, there were walks in the maple bush behind the sugar shack, and visits to see the animals for the kids.
Strathmore's visit to the sugar shack was enjoyed by all, and fitting end to the 2022-2023 snow removal season.