Bad Bob diversified his assets in the 90s and bought, among other things, a small maple farm.
That’s the reason Jack is so particular about providing the maple syrup Bitty uses in his pies, because it’s literally his maple syrup. He goes home every year and makes it himself.
Somehow it takes a really long time for Bitty to figure this out.
Bitty and Jack return to Georgia the summer between Junior and Senior year only to find a large refrigerated shed in the back yard, filled with what looks to be two dozen unmarked oil drums.
“What the heck is all this?” Bitty questions, examining the barrel and finally cracking a seal to take a sniff. “It’s … maple syrup?” Jack is curiously silent, and when Bitty looks up at his boyfriend, he finds Jack’s face is very red.
“Honey?”
Jack hesitates. “Remember that farm I wanted to take you to, the one Maman and Papa went to every spring?”
Bitty nods, because how could he forget the way Jack raved about the ‘little patch of land’ his father had purchased outside Beauce.
“It’s a maple farm,” Jack whispers, and Bitty is somehow even more confused than he was before.
“That doesn’t explain why it’s here.”
“It’s syrup,” Jack breathes, counting the barrels. “It’s about . . . thirty-thousand dollars worth of maple syrup.”
“And why would there be thirty-thousand dollars of Canadian maple syrup at my parent’s house in Madison, Georgia?”
“Papa’s been fined several times by FPAQ for distributing his stock outside approved channels.” At Bitty’s confused expression, Jack explains, “The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. You know OPEC, in the middle east? How they control oil prices by controlling the supply? Same basic principle, but with maple syrup. Producers in Quebec have to sell through FPAQ or they can get frozen out of the market. Papa has the money to pay the fines, but he takes it personally now.”
“That’s insane, still doesn’t explain why there’s several tons of syrup hiding out in our shed like a secret meth lab.” Bitty goes back to the barrel and presses the stopper closed when it hits him. “Wait, is your father using my mama to fence illegal maple syrup?”
Jack shrugs. “Probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is all very illegal.”
Canadian Breaking Bad au.
Bad Bob, in full hockey gear, “I am the one who knocks!!”
Since none of y’all in the Check Please fandom know how it’s made, and I’ve read some pretty traumatising things in fics, I took these pictures especially for you today. And some are taken from the internet.
We dig holes on our maple trees so come Spring, they leak through metal peens.
In Québec, maples wear buckets. It’s FASHIONABLE.
Now, these are the quaint little érablières (maple tree places?), but others don’t mess around.
Then, what comes out can’t be eaten directly (except by squirrels), it needs to be boiled into one of these motherfuckers here
Now there are different ways of cooking maple, so you can have syrup, butter, and other goodies. What interests us right now is what we call “tire” (pronounce teer)
Below are pictures I took today at the Sugar Shack fair in my town. There are barrels of already boiled tire, and you need to boil it again to serve it.
Then you pour it on the snow, in neat little lines. I should have taken that one, it was bigger than the one I actually got.
Now you take a popsicle stick, start at one end and roll it up. You need to wait until it’s cold enough to stick together, and then you have to make sure it’s not lopsided or anything otherwise it gets all over your fingers and that shit’s sticky as hell.
Here you have the result (it’s pretty small, should be bigger). It’s so sweet, the best part is the cold snow that melts in your mouth at the same time.
And THAT’s how you eat tire sur la neige. Yum yum. (say hi to my friend photobombing me). I don’t want to read false maple representation on future fics from now on, or the angry French Canadian fairy will come and set you right!
Steel Phoenix Studios 