Eddie's Isle, or Prince Edward Island (PEI) as it's more commonly known as, is the smallest province in Canada. It has approximately 140, 204 of the nicest people in the country calling this place home (Stats Can) . There's a handy map up above for all of those who have no idea where it is. On a recent road trip out to the East Coast I decided to make a quick stop over to Eddie's Isle to experience island life - relaxing, camping, clamming, walking along the red cliffs and Cow's ice cream! What more could you really want in life? Honestly.
Our adventure started by hopping the Confederation Bridge. It was fun to drive across so much water to get from New Brunswick to PEI. Our main goals of PEI included a trip to Cow's Ice Cream (my personal goal, haha), see the red cliffs, camp and clam for our dinner. Unfortunately the dates when we were in PEI didn't allow us to take any of the super fun clamming trips in the tour brochures. We called around to a few places and either were greeted by a message advising us that the tours were not being offered until later in the week or we were told that we couldn't get onto a trip which was already booked. One kindly gentleman told us that we didn't need a clamming tour in order to get our own clams! We were sent up to Green Park Provincial Park with a pail, two spades and the excitement of digging up some clams. We were told the basic idea for clamming: 1. Go during low tide. 2. Know when low tide is! 3. Look for little holes in the sand 4. Dig and hope that you don't break the clam! 5. Make sure that the clam abides by the government standards for clamming.
Once we arrived at the park we were shocked by the lack of people we saw. We were told this beach was a popular clamming spot. Where were the helpful people who were supposed to show us how to clam?! As we stared at the beach with our hopes slowly being washed away, just like the tide, we noticed two boys bike by. We cross our fingers that they were local boys and my friend called them over. Score! They know how to clam! We spent the next hour or so digging with the boys learning how to find our dinner. They also taught us a few other things - like how to find mussels and other things in the water that we can eat. At the end of our trip out to the beach we ended up with enough clams to make dinner!
We filled up our bucket with beach water and set out to cook our clams. We had purchased a small camping stove which was supposed to heat up the bucket. We set everything up and waited for the water to heat up. We waited. And we waited. And we waited.
We realized, after waiting 40 minutes for the water to heat up, that our little cooking stove was no match for the clams. We eventually decided to camp at the provincial park and get some fire wood. As soon as we had the fire up and going the water heated up quickly. We cooked the clams in beach water, white wine, lemon and some parsley. I don't know if this is an official recipe but I had no complaints. Our biggest tip for cooking clams is to make sure you don't over cook them. They cook quickly once they're in the boiling water! I didn't have much of a complaint on how they turned out. I can't say that I was all that hungry at the end of the meal! Yum. If you come to the East Coast try your luck at clamming. My only advice? Ask a local where it is safe to clam - sometimes there is an outbreak of algae which can be dangerous. All-in-all it was a great day!