Rick assures me that he likes his pancakes a little “carmelized.”

If true, this is good. Or it might be a teeny lie, but one he’s apparently willing to live with because he’s such a sweet monkey punkin’ and doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.

Either way, between the capricious gas flame on our 22-year old oven range, the heat dissipation-challenged iron skillet I insist on using, and my lapse in memory EVERY TIME about both, “a little carmelized” is how we enjoy our pancakes in HMB.

But that’s okay, because fully half of what’s fabulous about pancakes is the butter, anyway.

The other half is the maple syrup.

But even that is only true when you get the sweet elixir of mapleness on your pancakes, and only on your pancakes.

Nothing takes the warm and fuzzy edge off a lazy Saturday morning burnt pancake fest faster than sticky everything else because of a poor spout design. This is why the little plastic jug containing our current provision of [easyazon-link asin=”B00555HUDA” locale=”us”]Spring Tree maple syrup[/easyazon-link] is such an object of interest and delight.

See? See that teensy-weensy drop perched on the rim?

That one blobette is the daintiest and most elegant testament to good industrial design I’ve ever seen.

If I hadn’t been so impressed, I would never have noticed that spout-like bump (spump?) set just in the front of the actual pouring orifice.

Until now, I’ve never met a maple syrup container that didn’t drip well beyond the request made of it. And I’m pretty sure that spump physics* has something to do with why this one stops on command.

Here’s something else I’d like to know:

The maple syrup apparently comes from Canada (yay Lanark County!) and is put into containers and shipped around the country by a U.S. distributor. But where was the jug designed and manufactured? And why don’t they get some of the credit for our great pancake experience, too?

In the absence of actual knowledge, I’ll do what I always do: guess. For the manufacturing, I’m betting China. But the design?

It’s got “moonlighter from Apple” written all over it.

* In the entire section on fluid dynamics on Wikipedia, there isn’t a single instance of the word “drip.” This explains a lot.