Maples aren’t the only trees to tap for syrup

Q: I was watching one of those TV reality shows in which people buy abandoned storage lockers and then sell the contents. In this particular locker, they said they found jars of sycamore syrup. I’ve heard of maple syrup, but I’m 70 and I’ve never heard of sycamore syrup, so I wondering if they knew what they were talking about.

A: Don’t worry, the only sap on this show was what went into the contents of those jars. While maple syrup enjoys a virtual monopoly in stores and restaurants around the country, at least a half-dozen other common tree varieties yield tasty saps that might add a variety of tastes for your pancakes and waffles.

And, yes, sycamore is a popular choice for that breakfast-table nectar, according to numerous websites that extol the virtues of back-to-nature living. According to wildfoodism.com., it has a lower sugar content than sugar maple, but is said to produce a syrup that exudes a butterscotch flavor.

“Some trees yield a sugar-rich sap which can be drunk raw, fermented into alcoholic beverages or gently boiled down to syrup,” according to the blogger at judyofthewoods.net.

“I have tried sycamore and birch sap. Both have a faint sweet taste. Birch sap is slightly astringent. It may also have medicinal value, especially for the urinary system.”

But we’re only getting started. At wildfoodism.com, you’ll find nearly two dozen trees that can be tapped for sap and syrup, including the black walnut and the butternut or white walnut.

“The butternut produces a sap that yields roughly 2 percent sugar — similar to sugar maples,” the site says. “The timing and total volume of sap are also comparable to sugar maples.”

As long as you’re branching out, you might also tap into the larch, English walnut and a wide variety of birches, including the black birch, whose herbal extracts are popular in making birch beer. And if you’re looking for a reward for all those nasty gum balls you have to pick up every year, even sweet gum trees can be a “surprising supplier of sweet syrup-producing sap,” according to Desiree Munn on her blog, Cooking Wild and Free.

It’s not just here, either. Every spring in Korea, people tap into the maple tree known as the gorosoe, which translates as “the tree that is good for the bones.” When it’s available, Koreans reportedly drink the sap straight in massive amounts, which they credit for a wide range of health benefits. Birch sap also has its fans in Russia and parts of Northern Europe. If you’d like to join them or perhaps tap into your own maple sap source (since the store-bought variety is like liquid gold in price), you can find loads of instructions at judyofthewoods.net and the www.outdoorlife.com survivalist blog. Just don’t forget that it takes about 10 quarts of maple sap to make one quart of that liquid ambrosia.

Q: While researching the history of the Belleville Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, one of our members came across some surprising information: According to her, one of our past regents — Jessie Wilderman Schneidewind (Mrs. Ferdinand E.) — survived a concentration camp while living in Europe during World War II. Can you find any information on this?

A: I’m quickly going to throw this one out to my readers, because I can find nothing in published reports suggesting that she lived in Europe during World War II, and my good friend Will Shannon, curator of the St. Clair County Historical Society, has never heard the story, either.

What I can tell you is that your former regent was born in 1888 at Wilderman Station, just outside Belleville. She married Ferdinand Schneidewind in 1916 and, the very next year, was chosen as an alternate delegate to the DAR’s state and national conventions. But the only other mention I can find while she was living came on Dec. 16, 1940, when the Belleville Daily Advocate published a photo of the then 52-year-old Schneidewind presenting a lock from the original St. Clair County Jail to another Belleville DAR regent, Mrs. Walter Tisch, during a ceremony at the Old Cahokia Courthouse.

On Dec. 18, 1948, Schneidewind broke her hip when she fell on the porch of her home at 514 E. B St. in Belleville. Just 60 years old, she seemed well on her way to recovering at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital when she apparently developed a blood clot and died on Jan. 2. Although her death drew a front-page obituary in both the Advocate and News-Democrat, neither made any mention of the Christian Scientist being interned in a concentration camp. Neither did the obituary of her husband, an East St. Louis real estate agent, when he died seven years later.

I would think something so unusual and so relatively recent might have triggered the family, funeral home or newspaper writer to have included it, but, of course, that’s no guarantee. I also wonder how or why a 50s-something mother of two would wind up in an occupied or Axis country in the early ’40s, but I suppose stranger things have happened. Making matters harder, her two sons — John and Hugh — legally changed their last name and moved hundreds of miles away, which adds to the difficulty to tracking the family. So I’m hoping if someone reading this column remembers such a story, they will write or call. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’ll keep checking.

Q: When did Cahokia Downs close?

A: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

On Oct. 18, 1978, jockey David Gall became the first rider in U.S. Thoroughbred history to win eight races on a single card during a spectacular feat of horsemanship at the once-popular track on Illinois 15 near Alorton. But just a year later — October 1979 — the Illinois Racing Commission refused to authorize any 1980 racing dates for Cahokia Downs, so on April 2, 1980, it filed for bankruptcy and never reopened. Gall, by the way, retired in 1999 after a 43-year career in which he rode 7,396 winners in 41,706 races. He is now 75.

Today’s trivia

Why did Clarence Saunders name the nation’s first true self-service grocery store “Piggly Wiggly”?

Answer to Sunday’s trivia

Coupons can save you big bucks, but the waste that goes into distributing them could make an environmentalist cry. In 2013, for example, an estimated 329 billion coupons worth $515 billion were distributed. Of those, only 2.8 billion — or fewer than 1 percent — worth $4.9 billion were redeemed. The good news is that in a poll of consumers, 72.3 percent said they had used at least one coupon.