In Lieu of Cash, Please Send Granola

I have lived in the Upper Valley for over a year now. I am now qualified to pass judgement.

And my first judgement? Granola. I don't want your stinkin' granola. Who wants your granola? I don't know anyone who wants your granola. And, yet, everyone here makes it. Do they eat it? Feed it to their birds? Wash their childrens mouths out with it if they say naughty things? For something that generally costs a few bucks from the grocery store and tastes like different flavors of "myeh" I never could fathom why people bought it, and now I live in a land where people make it.

Making things is a way of life in Vermont and New Hampshire. In that sense it is this certain sense of true self-reliance and "Yankee ingenuity" which makes folks up here remarkable and unique. Unfortunately where as back in the day people made wooden trunks and wagon trains, now they make bad art and apple sauce.

Which brings me to my second judgement: apple sauce. The second largest state export behind granola? Apple sauce. I am fairly certain in the rest of the United States apple sauce does not remains a food product passed the age of three, but here everyone takes pride in their sauce. I'm sure there's even an apple saucing subculture if I were to look hard enough. Complete with their own lingo and apple sauced-based inside jokes. Initially I was inclined to believe the popularity of apple sauce stemmed in as much part from Vermonter's refusal to admit they just grow too darn many apples, but the longer I stay here the more I am convinced they may just realy love apples.

And lastly, syrup. I know grocery store syrup is essentially a flavored corn product, but it sure takes like syrup to me (in the sense that syrup to me tastes like a flavored corn product.) It's thick, it's amber, it's smell syrupy, it's essentially syrup in ever way aside from the fact that it's not. Most importantly, though, corn syrup syrup costs half the price of real deal, genuine maple syrup. Nevertheless, despite this, genuine maple syrup is the way people prove their Yankee roots in New Hampshire. Nothing will go further for your Upper Valley street cred than showing off a pantry full of maple syrup in every grade. Yes, there are apparently multiple grades of syrup? Why? Because the last thing you want to be seen doing is eating riff raff syrup.