Cafe Maplethorpe Blog :: PEI Restaurant

Hard to believe we made it to December 6, 2009 before the first snow of the new season. Even so, it caught us all off guard! Winter is officially here!

This has been our busiest year yet!

And one of the most fun activities has been providing culinary tourism experiences for Japanese tourists through our partnership with Prince Edward Tours.

During our afternoons at Maplethorpe, we have concentrated on pie making. Although we North Americans might view making a pie as fairly mundane, this is a new and interesting experience for most Japanese!

The type of pie we make depends on seasonal availability of local fruit. We started out in the Spring making rhubarb pies. Our Japanese guests did it all, from picking and cleaning the fresh rhubarb through to the finished pie. We have followed PEI’s seasons, moving through strawberries to raspberries and presently are working with blueberries. I can’t wait for the Fall to bring us fresh PEI apples…maybe I can come up with a recipe for cranberry pie, too!

Through the afternoon at Maplethorpe, our tourist guests truly become friends! As the pies bake we talk about the differences and similarities in our lives. We share a pot of tea and take a tour of our home, including the    vegetable garden, chicken house and (of course!) the bed and breakfast rooms.

Surprisingly, our guests report that they have been able to take their pies home to Japan! What a great way to share the authentic taste of Prince Edward Island and truly share their vacation experience with friends and family.

One of the toughest aspects of running a business in an historic building involves repairs. They just don’t make things the same in 2009 as they did in 1860! Do we try to repair the existing plaster or remove it and replace with gyprock? Do we pay someone to custom fabricate wooden trim pieces in sizes no longer available or cobble something together that looks “almost” the same as the old stuff? You get the picture…every repair involves consideration, debate and lots more cash than expected. And there are lots of repairs!

When you walk in the front door of Maplethorpe, you enter a small foyer. It is seperated from the rest of the house by huge French doors–about 8 feet tall. They are beautiful, but one would hardly notice them because they have always been propped open. This is because of the glass, or lack of glass, in the doors.

When we bought the place, one door had pieces of etched glass, broken but duct-taped in place. The other door was without any glass, just a giant hole. For safety’s sake we removed the broken glass and filled each door panel with a custom-cut piece of clear glass. We never really liked the clear glass and it didn’t take long for one window panel to get cracked, so we were back to one giant hole and one clear glass door. The place where we bought the oversized pieces of clear glass no longer sells glass retail. S0, we propped the doors open and tried not to look at them while we wondered what to do.

Jim to the rescue!

During one of his winters spent teaching high school math in Las Vegas, out of boredom he took a class in creating stained glass. By golly, he learned a few things! Over the summer he created a design, determined his color-scheme, and bought the glass he needed to make stained glass panels for the doors. Then he locked himself in the garage. We didn’t see him for weeks.

Then on July 1, out he came from his workshop, carrying the new window panels. They are beautiful! We are now enjoying closing the doors and letting colored light stream into the hallway. I think even Major Wright, original builder and first occupant of Maplethorpe, would be proud.

There. I said it. I hate yard sales.

The fact that I do not hold yard sales or attend any held by others makes me something of a freak on Prince Edward Island, home of the annual 70-Mile Coastal Yard Sale. (For information on the 2009 70-Mile Coastal Yard Sale, set for September 26 and 27, follow this link.)

I think people guess my lack of interest is simply because I am ‘from away,’ but more likely it is related to the way I was raised. Having lived through the Great Depression, my mother would never have allowed her children to be clothed in the cast-offs of others. She would never bring the used things of others into our home. Most of all, she would never stand in someone’s yard, even a stranger’s yard, and paw through their belongings. Not in a million years.

But we’re Islanders now. Every year my little village of Bedeque picks a date in June and everyone has a yard sale in their respective yards. Those who live out of the village, or who can’t hold their own yard sale on the chosen weekend for other reasons, often donate their things to the United Church where a collective yard sale is also held.

Peer Pressure

Although I have resisted participating in the Bedeque yard sale since our arrival, this year I agreed to have a sale. I don’t know if it was peer pressure or just the mountain of junk we have accumulated over the past 7 years. The important point is that I finally joined in the fun!

Well, it wasn’t fun. It was a cold and rainy day. Everyone in my family managed to have  somewhere else important to go that morning, leaving me at home to run the garage sale alone. We had many lookers, and sold a few things, but not enough to justify the time and effort spent on the project. A few people just stopped by to find out what times the restaurant is open or to see if I had any baked goods for sale.  Most of the things I really wanted to get rid of are still here, waiting to be carted off to their final destination.

I still hate yard sales.

Anita Price and a basket of fiddleheads

The fiddleheads are ready to pick!

We’ve been desperate for something locally-grown, fresh and green for weeks now, so I was delighted when Anita Price of FORAgE PEI called and offered to take me on an old-fashioned wild food hunt.

Fiddleheads are the uncurled fronds of the Ostrich Fern (mattteuccia struthiopteris) that begin to appear around late April or early May. Called ‘fiddleheads’ because they resemble the head of a fiddle, they grow in   clumps from a shallow root ball. You can find them along river and stream banks, at the edge of woodlands and in marshy areas. But I’m not telling you where we found ours–go find your own.

Know Your Ferns

There are many kinds of ferns, but only the Ostrich Fern is recommended for consumption. (That’s why it is important to have someone like Anita handy!) She showed me the tell-tale signs of a good fiddlehead hunting ground, dried foliage from last year.

Pick Quick

The fiddleheads have to be picked when they are very young and still tightly coiled–it takes only a matter of a day, or even a few hours, for the chance to harvest to come and go. It was cold and raining when we set off on our food hunt. When we spotted last year’s dried fronds, we lept out of the car in search of new growth. We found clumps of baby ferns popping up all over in a narrow band of field just alongside woods and a stream. We used paring knives to cut the heads, but they easily broke off by hand. We only harvested about 1/3 of the tender shoots, leaving many to grow and ensure a future harvest. The fiddleheads sometimes had a papery brown skin over them that we easily brushed away. Our basket filled up quickly.

Highly Valued…in Some Places

I have seen fiddleheads in the produce section of the grocery store and read that Canadian fiddleheads are exported to Europe as a specialty food item. Evidently the Ostrich Fern resists cultivation, so wild fiddleheads are an expensive treat for some. We Islanders are lucky, though–a free supper is right here for the picking. Now that I have a good supply, I will be trying several fiddlehead recipes in the restaurant for the next few weeks. I’ll be reporting on the yummy results soon!

Thanks again, Anita Price of FORAgE PEI, for your willingness to share your knowledge of wildcraft and for keeping the tradition of foraging for food alive on Prince Edward Island.

Canadian Geographic magazine recently published its list of the ‘Top 10 Farmer’s Markets’ across Canada, and the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market made the list! To view the entire article, follow the link here.

Way to go, Charlottetown Market!

According to Farm Markets Canada, an advocacy group promoting local farm markets, direct sales from Canadian farm to consumer were valued at 3.09 billion dollars in 2008. That organization’s brochure describing the impact of farm markets can be downloaded here.

By next summer we have no doubt that the Summerside ‘Spring Street’ Farmer’s Market will join the list as well.

It just goes to show that people really do want fresh, local and organic foods and are willing to go out of their way to find them.

As usual, I am behind in reporting on life and food on Prince Edward Island. It is hard to know where to jump in, so I will just start.

What a difference a month makes! On my last post (Easter), we were blanketed in snow. Now on May 15–exactly 30 days later–things are growing, growing, growing! It is difficult to describe the transformation that has occurred from the gray and bleak winter that wouldn’t leave to the vibrant season that seems to have settled in. The local CBC affiliate has been asking listeners to send spring photos and there are some beautiful ones posted on the website here.

This is that beautiful time before the mosquitoes arrive. We are getting anxious for locally-grown veggies, but it is still a bit too soon. At the market today I saw a few bags of spinach and lettuce, must have been grown in local greenhouses. One vendor had bundles of radish, but the poor little premature things were the size of grapes! (And not those big grapes with seeds inside–the tiny red grapes!) People are just desperate for tender and fresh foods!

Our tomato and cucumber transplants–in every sunny spot in the house–are waiting to get outside. Jim has the frame of the greenhouse up but the cover isn’t on. Although we haven’t had a freeze at night for the last week or two, it still gets cold and is too soon for anything not frost-tolerant to be planted.

The lobster fishers set traps on April 30 and landed the first PEI catch of 2009 on May 1. The lobster seem in good supply, but buyers aren’t, so prices are low. Early visitors to PEI will be pleasantly surprised to snag fresh lobster for around $5 a pound. We’re doing our part by adding lobster rolls to the lunch menu and lobster pasta to supper. And we hope the demand side will pick up soon so that the fishers see a better return on their hard work.

This is a holiday weekend, Victoria Day, so rain is practically guaranteed. I have more work to do around here than I could finish in a month of holidays, so there won’t be any break for us. We Islanders spend the entire winter waiting the busy season to arrive, and when it does…well, it does. The price of gasoline jumped 7 cents a liter overnight, so the tourist season is officially here. There will be no breaks now until Christmas.

We had a beautiful run-up to Easter Sunday. Friday and Saturday were warm and dry. We spent most of the day in the yard, picking up branches and raking leaves after the snow melted away. On Saturday afternoon we took a long walk down to Lower Bedeque with Tonquin and let the pup stick a paw in the open water.

What a difference a day makes! We woke up Easter morning to a new blanket of snow, followed by snow and sleet falling most of the day. For sure no Easter Egg hunt in our yard! After the snowfall finally stopped we found bunny tracks in the pristine snow.

So, we’re still waiting for Spring to come and stay. Hope you had a great Easter!

It was great to participate in the PEI Department of Agriculture’s “Culinary Connections 2009″ program on March 3. The goal of the event was to connect farmers with product to sell with restaurant chefs and owners, who (we hope) want to buy local. This might sound unnecessary–don’t all restaurants buy local? In a small place like PEI, don’t producers and restaurants work closely together every day?

In a word, no.

Obstacles to Buying Local

It is surprisingly hard for restaurants to buy locally-grown products.

• Geography Counts! Restaurants need a consistent steady supply of the ingredients for menu items. PEI’s location (hardiness level 5), with a last average frost date of May 23 and first average frost of October 9, means a short growing season for local agricultural products. An above average rainfall or an early frost can easily thwart the business plans of farmers and gardeners.  Restaurants–even small ones like ours–rely on consistent availability of menu essentials.
• Summer Tourism Bulge! The year ’round population of Prince Edward Island is about 138,000, but each year over one million tourists visit us. (And we love you–keep coming!) Most tourists come in July and August to enjoy the beaches, golf and natural beauty of the Island. But that bulge creates a huge, temporary demand for all kinds of goods and services, including locally-raised food. It is really hard for local producers to gear up to serve the tourist market needs then quickly scale back down for the smaller numbers of residents.
• Time! Or lack of it. Sourcing locally takes time–time for producers spent on the phone and not producing. Time for chefs and owners to locate suppliers, arrange pick-up or delivery, invoice and pay for goods, etc. Buying local simply takes more time than looking at the food distributor’s catalog and making a single call.

At ‘Culinary Connections,’ I participated in a panel made up of buyers. We each spoke about what we purchase and how individual producers can best do business with us. Growers and producers were identified and shared their stories and their products. It was great to see so many new producers and hear their individual stories! Some producers even had information tables with posters and flyers. There was a lot of networking going on–it made me wish that summer was already here.

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Local Ingredients Are Worth the Effort

At Maplethorpe, we have a heart for Prince Edward Island. Buying locally supports our friends and neighbors as they struggle for sustainability and rewards them for being good stewards of our shared resources. Buying locally is our way to help maintain and support vanishing rural communities. We don’t worry about food recalls or contamination because we know the people who produce the food we buy. We believe fresh and organic ingredients taste better, look better on the plate and are healthier for our family and our customers. For 2009, look for our “Farm Gate to Dinner Plate” menu, identifying selections that are 100% locally sourced.

To find local PEI growers who sell to the public, farm markets and providers of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s), follow this link.

My Montana friend Father Gary always says that February is the worst month for unhappiness. No money but plenty of bills. A blinding flash of the obvious that the New Year’s Resolution to (lose weight, stop smoking, change your life, whatever), is a joke. Lousy weather. Fr. Gary always finds that complaints, dissatisfaction and general malaise are at their peak in February. And being a priest, he would hear it all.

In Prince Edward Island, the month of malaise is March. Today is March 3 and this is the TENTH day of school cancellation this winter for inclement weather. TEN DAYS of kids in the house when they shouldn’t be. The entire world is a sheet of ice with scattered power outages all across the Island from ice bending branches on to transmission lines. No one wants to come out to lunch in this weather, so the café is empty. (Miraculously the mail gets delivered…bills can find you through anything.) I resist the urge to call or e-mail Fr. Gary to lodge my litany of complaints—it is the wrong month for him to listen.

Ice Melt…A Reason to Go to Town

Instead, I go off to the big box store in Summerside to pick up another bag of ice melt. I head straight to the ‘seasonal’ section. Something is wrong–the smell hit me before I got past the pharmacy. Liquid lawn herbicide…you know that peculiar acrid stench. Where last week there were snow shovels and ice melt I found a sea of bar-b-que grills and islands of potting soil.

My God, people.

I stomped up to the front and asked where I could find Saf-T-Salt.

Nope, I was told. All gone. Little scraps of Pepto-Bismol colored ‘Spring Fashions’ hang nearby.

Better Than Ice Melt

I ended up buying a bag of organic granulated fertilizer and a sack of cat litter. The fertilizer will melt the ice and the cat litter will provide traction. Effective, but messy. We’ll make it through this weather and next winter I will try to remember to stock up on ice melt early in the season.

We are still 2 months from spring in Prince Edward Island. I am just hoping for no more school cancellation days.