Flexing Our Mussels

Day 22

Another lazy day with a slow start. We're realizing now how worn out we were from our first two weeks on the road. Breakfast involves a little bit of a walk through “camp town”, as we call it, to retrieve our groceries out of the community fridge. Whoever volunteers to make this walk usually has coffee awaiting them upon their return.

It's beautiful and sunny today, so we spend a few hours by the pool. This campground miraculously has some vintage Vanity Fairs from the mid-90's; anyone who knows me knows my love of a Vanity Fair. Lying poolside with a pile of magazines is my idea of heaven.

After a chlorinated hour or two, we decide to venture out; not too far this time, not as far as yesterday. There is a coast that's within our “neighborhood” that we keep bypassing, so we decide to check it out. We ride west through Rustico, Cavendish and Stanely Bridge. In Long River we pop into the Kitchen Witch restaurant, a little place that's both charming and haunting with it's stark black and white palette. It's in an old school house from the late 1800's, and run by an American ex-pat and her Canadian husband of 35 odd years. Though these people are wonderfully nice, their food was a snooze fest and their décor is comfortable, though eccentric and dispensable, like a flea market booth. They do offer tea leaf readings though, but the leaf reader wasn't there today.

From our disappointing lunch we continue west to Malpeque, a name you may recognize as it generally proceeds “mussels”. This little harbor village is lovely, and somewhat abandoned at the hour we visited. This allowed us to poke through the marina, greet the dock cat, and take pictures of things these fishermen see everyday of their lives. From here we circle around east again, this time taking deep red dirt roads through farmer's fields. PEI is a motorcycle riders dream. The Girl is doing much better now that we're treating her like the cruiser that she is rather than a touring bike.

On our way home, we stop in a Poissonerie (now just called simply a fish market) and buy mussels and clams. If you turned your head a few degrees to the right, you could see the very water where these creatures were just a few short hours ago. The very water, as they have an aqua culture outfit in this particular bay. We also get a loaf of their crusty homemade bread. From our favorite country store at the bottom of the road to our campground we snag some more salad mix and a lemon.

Because of the recent rain, we can now have a campfire. We buy the wood from the campground, it seems like some kind softwood like fir. The Pirate gets the fire blazing, and then tends it down to hot coals. We put our tall, borrowed stock pot over the coals, and wait for the 2 inches of water to come to a boil. Once it boils, we add the clams first, and let them steam about 2 minutes. On top of the clams we dump the mussels, and cover that up for another 10 minutes exactly. Meanwhile, the last of the garlic butter we bought in Gaspe is melting in a Sierra cup near the coals.

While this is coming together, a nice little thunderstorm blows through. There we stand, in our rain gear, passing Crown Royal back and forth, waiting for these bivalves to blossom. The storm clears just as the food is ready. It has left everything soaked, so we simply dump the pot of shellfish over the picnic table like a giant wooden colander. We put it all back into the pot, squeeze half the lemon over it all, and commence to feast. We tear bread off and smear it thick with ADL butter, and pluck salad greens out of the bag with our fingers. This is the way it should be.

It seems clear to me that PEI is a place for ingredients, and not amazing preparation. Granted, I have been here only 3 days, but in those days I have figured out to revel in the groceries that are available here, and not the restaurants.