Making maple taffy at Winterlude, Ottawa

Ottawa's annual Winterlude festival takes place in February, around the same time as the area's maple trees begin to offer their first taste of sap, which gets turned into syrup and, as seen here, taffy. Maple taffy (tire d'érable in French) is a confection made by boiling maple sap past the point where it would form maple syrup but not so long that it becomes maple butter or maple sugar. It is part of traditional culture in Quebec and northern New England. In both Quebec and Northern New England, it is poured onto the snow and then lifted either with a small wooden stick, such as a popsicle stick, or a metal dinner fork. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_taffy)