September 2009

In addition to farming the sweetest oysters and mussels on the planet (the colder the water, the sweeter the meat, and believe me, it might only be September, but it’s already damn cold up here), Prince Edward Island grows a hell of a lot of potatoes. Something like 25 billion pounds or about 75 pounds of spuds for every Canuck in the Great White North.

Which would explain why the Islanders refer to themselves as spudheads. In fact, they’ve got a Potato Museum on the island, in the little community of O’Leary (there are Irish everywhere on PEI) which is surrounded by acres and acres of potato fields. If you ask a local how to get to the museum, they’ll tell you to just look for the giant potato, a fiberglass spud some 14 feet high that was put up by potato farmers without the least hint of irony.

The other thing they’ve got at the museum, besides the enormous spud, is the Potato Hall of Fame. I don’t even know what to say about that. I just imagine some little kid fidgeting around at the dinner table on some farm in O’Leary when his mom, who is standing at the porcelain sink paring spuds for dinner, says, “Hank, did you know that yer granfadder is in the Potato Hall of Fame?”

Is this then something Hank can reveal to his friends at school? And does this make him more or less likely to get pummeled on the playground? I just don’t know.

That aside, Andrew Morrison, the chef at the hotel I’m staying in, Dalvay By-The-Sea, made a fabulous potato dish last night from some PEI fingerlings. I asked him for the recipe and he just sort of waved me off. “It’s simple,” he said. Just boil up the spuds and rough dice them, then brown them in a little putter, sprinkling with sea salt and fresh ground pepper, then finish them with sliced green onions, crumbled bacon, fresh baby spinach leaves, and a couple of tablespoons of cream.

Definitely a recipe that should be in the Potato Hall of Fame.

Perhaps because my physique is such that, until middle-age spread took over, I was regularly asked if I played football or basketball, I’ve always enjoyed the gustatory habits of large men. Like Andrew Chase, a Toronto chef and cookbook author who has the stature and girth of, as well as an eerie resemblance to, Big Bird. Minus the feathers and yellow coloring, of course.

Andrew loves impeccably fresh seafood. As do I. He’s the sort of guy that would (and did) ask me if I wanted to go in with him on a 100-count box of Raspberry Point oysters to take back to our hotel in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island in case we, you know, got hungry later that night.

This just after the two of us had stood chilled to the bone on an oyster barge in the middle of New London Bay eating fat malpeques, the queen of Atlantic oysters, faster than James Power, who runs Raspberry Point’s oyster farm near the pristine shores of Prince Edward Island National Park, could dredge them up off the muddy tidal basin floor.

James Power harvesting oysters in New London Bay. Photo by David Lansing.

The sea breeze cutting our faces like knives, we’d grab the icy oysters as they moved up a conveyor belt on the barge, quickly pry them open and slurp them down, marveling in their salty, clean taste and sweet finish.

How many did we eat out in the bay before our hands got so cold that it was difficult to even feel the slippery mollusks in our hands? Enough that James good-naturedly reminded us that it took him six to seven years to groom these little sweeties.

“Consider leaving a few for the spudheads,” he said, a spudhead being a local from Prince Edward Island. There’s a reason why they’re called spudheads, of course. But we’ll save that story for tomorrow.

This is embarrassing, but when I was first invited to be one of the judges for the Potato Seafood Chowder Championship on Prince Edward Island, I said yes thinking it would also allow me to spend a few days in one of my favorite cities of the world, Vancouver.

Because isn’t PEI one of those places between Vancouver and Vancouver Island? You know, Salt Spring and Cortes and Prince Edward Island, right? So when I got my itinerary and saw that I had to fly into Detroit—Detroit?—I thought, That’s just wrong. Why would they fly me to Detroit to get to Vancouver?

At that point I googled Prince Edward Island and guess what? It’s nowhere near Vancouver. In fact, it’s on the exact opposite end of Canada. In the Atlantic, not the Pacific; near Nova Scotia, not British Columbia.

So what do I know about Prince Edward Island?

Nothing.

Except when you come over Confederation Bridge, Canada’s $1 billion bridge to nowhere (more than 40 percent of the islanders voted against building it in 1992), what strikes you are all the odd little provincial blue highway signs that don’t just point you towards Charlottetown or Cavendish but give you culinary information: Fresh Produce, Lobster Suppers, Afternoon Tea.

Imagine, you’re driving down this little two-lane country road and there’s a sign telling you where to turn for a lobster supper. I think I like it. Sort of.

Strawberry Man photo on PEI by Gary Boole.

With summer over and the tourist season just weeks away from shutting down, it seems everyone on the island is selling fruits and vegetables. Everywhere you go are little stands with homemade signs promising PEI potatoes or beets or pumpkins. Or, my favorite, a Humpty-Dumpty like strawberry sitting on a green stool in a cow pasture pointing the way to fresh berries.

Those not selling produce are, instead, offering up the sort of things semi-retired men whose wives prefer they not spend their free hours hovering in the kitchen make out in their wood shops: birdhouses roofed with old license plates, bright red Adirondack chairs, weathervanes shaped like cows or pigs or roosters.

This says a lot about the people who live here, don’t you think? They are clever, industrious—and have a lot of free time in the winter.