These dinners are early spring rites of passage, like Easter and Passover, but the religion is food. Sticky sugarmakers exhausted from working round the clock at the whim of the trees, finally relax to a meal. Some of this year’s dinners just ended weeks later than usual because of the season’s delay, with the late cold snap in northeastern North America where the syrup industry is located. (See “Geography in the News: Maple Syrup“)

This year’s Polar Vortex, aka Bipolar Vortex, weather patterns plagued 2014’s maple syrup season, with the climate’s 70-degree February days followed by Tax-Day snowstorms. (Ironically, April 15 was also the date of this year’s Sugar Moon, the first full moon of spring). Maple sap