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Posted: 04 Jan 2012 01:00 AM PST

Growing up, at least one long weekend every winter, and sometimes two – if I was lucky – my father would pack up me and my sisters and brother and take us skiing in Ludlow, Vermont. My mother hated skiing, but she was all for ski school for the four of us. Soon, though, my siblings slid over to her side on the exerting-oneself-in-the-cold front, and after an old football injury of my father’s made it impossible for him to grace the slopes with me, my skiing vacations came to a halt.

Luckily, my mother’s younger sister had moved from Princeton, New Jersey to Stowe, Vermont, and I started going up, alone, to ski the much larger mountain with my aunt and uncle. Instead of a bunk bed in a rented condominium, I got a spot on the floor next to the fire, with three large labradors for warmth. Peppermint tea thawed my hands as I waited for my aunt to put dinner together, and we would sit by the huge windows overlooking the white-covered mountains and watch it snow.

During the day, we skiied all morning and all afternoon. I relished a mountain large enough to get lost on, where all the runs were different, where we could suddenly end up somewhere completely unfamiliar. My aunt greeted lift operators by name; I felt like we were celebrities, or at the very least, part of some secret club. For lunch, we stopped at the cafeteria-style restaurant, or we drove into town to a restaurant, where I ordered buffalo chicken wings and ate with relish. Afterwards, we wandered as long as we were able in the cold, and I took in the small-town atmosphere that was so foreign to me.

My mini-vacations in Stowe always ended with an errand: picking up local maple syrup to bring home with me. I never opened it until I got home – in the mornings, we started early and had no time for pancakes before hitting the slopes – but as soon as I arrived back in New York, safe and sound, the little bottle of local syrup reminded me of afternoons skiing with my aunt and evenings playing with the dogs and watching movies under a warm blanket, while snow fell softly outside.

Recipe: Pumpkin-Maple Loaf

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin purée
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cup flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (or equal parts cinnamon, ginger and cloves, with a pinch of nutmeg)
1 pinch black pepper
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup flour
2 Tbsp. butter
1/4 cup raw sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin and oil well. Add the sugar and eggs, and mix well to combine. Without mixing, add the flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Carefully fold the dry ingredients into the wet, and pour into the prepared loaf pan.
In another bowl, combine the maple syrup and sugar. Drizzle over the top of the cake evenly. (This layer will sink into the middle of the cake later).
In a small bowl, crumble together the flour, butter, sugar and salt with your finger tips, until it resembles crumb cake crumbs. Sprinkle over the top of the cake evenly.
Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean with a few crumbs attached. Allow to cool fully before slicing.

Emily Monaco is native New Yorker, living and writing in Paris since 2007. She loves discovering new places and, of course, their local cuisines! Read about her adventures in food and travel at tomatokumato.com or follow her on Twitter at @emiglia

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Wednesday, January 4, 2012