We live here now.

OK, so enough people have been asking me, “How’s the PEI diet going?” that I should probably publicly reiterate, we’re in the very preliminary stages of evaluating the diet, not going whole hog, so to speak.

I describe our current eating style as the, “Oh hey, if we were only eating PEI food, this would count!” stage of the game.  So, please don’t give us more credit than we deserve!  We may have noble intentions, but we’re only human.

All that being said, the Spring Street Farmer’s market in downtown Summerside has been a lifesaver.  It’s now been I think 4 consecutive weeks that we have not needed to cab it uptown to the Atlantic Superstore because we can buy almost all our weekly grocery needs at the Farmer’s market.  I can’t tell you how thrilled we are about this, and our decision to move here has been completely validated on this fact alone.  (We do need to hit the ValueFoods 1-2 times per week for things like butter, milk, cream, apples and household products.)

Jen and Derek have been our exclusive suppliers of all kinds of interesting salad greens (we couldn’t care less if we never see iceburg lettuce again!) while Emmerdale Eden farms (previously known as “The Cheese Guy”) blessed us with not only portabello but also shitake mushrooms last week, in addition to the most heavenly of cheeses and organic bacon.  (How weird is it to have heard Jedidja say that they were getting p.o’d with one of their pigs… oh, and next week, there will be bacon!?!) I feel bad that I don’t know “egg and beef” guy by name, nor do I know “waffle/sausage vendor who sells us rhubarb jam” nor the “fish truck guy” who give us halibut that doesn’t even taste like fish and the best smoked salmon we’ve ever had.  If I weren’t so shy, I would have struck up a conversation or two.  Heck, I only spoke to our mailman for the first time today and found out he’s from Toronto (Rosedale)! (He noticed our York University alumni magazines.)

Today, Jedidja joined us at Dooly’s for beer and pool… so much of the former we mostly forgot we were playing the latter.  We do always go for the PEI brew on tap, and we got so caught up in socializing that we only left just in the nick of time to deliver Joe to bowling, so I have a feeling we’ll be supporting another local business tonight (A-1 Beamer’s Pizza, who have been so, so good to us even in just these few short months) as he didn’t have time to eat first.

Dooly’s had a whole stack of the  Farm Fresh 2009 Directory brochures out, so I snagged one of them.  A happy coincidence as I’d been reading about ideas for both a Food Trading Group and an Online PEI Farmer’s Network just this morning.  So, we are still exploring ways to localize our food and food supply chain, but since we have travel plans for much of the summer and apparently winter takes forethought and planning, we can’t reasonably start anything until next spring.  We are in the idea-gathering stage and simply enjoying the fruits (and veggies, and meat) of the Summerside Spring Street Farmer’s Market to the greatest extent possible.

This morning’s breakfast, for example, was smoked salmon and Jen/Derek greens on homemade biscuits.  Last night’s dinner was a combination of leftover chili (local meat, but canned beans/tomato and grocery store onions, peppers) with pre-cooked farmer’s market potatos (thanks to egg and beef guy) that was leftover from making fish cakes with fish truck fish.  Don’t even get me started on the scrambled eggs w. shitake mushrooms/bacon breakfast we had with Corey last weekend!  So, I think we’re doing quite well with what we have, but we certainly have not forced ourselves into any kind of hardship, or required MacGyver-esque maneuvering to put a complete meal together.

The only things we could possibly complain about (and I use that term loosely), are

• the fact that we really do have to haul our butts out of bed at what seems like a terribly unreasonable time Saturday mornings to ensure that things like mushrooms aren’t sold out.
• we don’t always know who will/won’t be at the market, and what they will/won’t have for sale
• It’s only on Saturdays, and we may return home from a business trip on a Sunday/Monday/Tuesday and be out of luck for that entire week grocery-wise.

Minor quibbles for sure, but enough to make us willing to try to establish better relationships with local food producers/organizations for sure.  For a normal week at home, though, the market has more than provided and I don’t think we’ve ever eaten healthier!

Thank you to the Spring Street Market, and all the vendors, organizers and supporters who make it possible.  You’ve made it pretty difficult to envision life on the road this summer (although our house sitters are in for the time of their lives!), and we’ll make it back to you just as soon as we can.

Related Links:

Jen and Derek’s Farm Fresh Veggies – http://farmfreshveggies.blogspot.com/

Emmerdale Eden Farm - http://www.emmerdaledenfarm.com/

Jedidja’s Blog (New beginnings and continuing adventures in food, fitness, farming, and sustainable living on beautiful Prince Edward Island) – http://newlyplanted.blogspot.com

We’ve been watching the series 100 Mile Challenge on the Food Network and of course, we’ve always tried to eat as much local food as we can.  Remember how we decided to take on a raw food diet a couple of years ago?  (Of course, we were assisted by the fact that our oven was essentially a carpenter’s bench in the middle of the floor at the time)

Well, we’ve been contemplating an all-PEI diet this time as the island is small enough to basically consider that our 100 mile radius.  (Technically, we could even include some areas of other provinces, but the PEI border is much simpler to use.)

So far, we’ve simply started making a list of what we think we’ll have to do without to see whether there are any real snags or non-starters, and of course debating whether PEI roasted coffee counts.  (What do you think?)

Our concerns right now:

• yeast – we make our own bread and can buy local flour at the Spring Street Farmer’s Market, but I don’t know whether we can get local yeast
• rice – we do eat a lot of rice because it’s convenient, but we can always cut it out
• bananas – I’ve heard the kind of bananas we have access to are little more than nature’s junk food anyway, but we do like them for a quick hit of something
• tea (for me, green tea) – I don’t like herbal teas at all, so unfortunately I don’t think any of the crazy alternative melanges will cut it for me.  It will probably have to be just hot water and lemon for me.  “Lemon?” you ask?
• lemon – apparently it’s super easy to grow lemon trees indoors in Canada.  This will happen.  (I’ll just buy the tree before we start any challenge!)
• sugar – I don’t like honey, so this will be interesting
• salt – I’m not a big salt person anyway, and I’m not sure whether Summerside harbour is the best source water for home desalinization.

So, this is very preliminarily stage 1 of the pre-PEI diet challenge.  I spent some time this afternoon reading about the nutritional benefits of potatos, and that will become its own post later.

Right now, though, Joe wants to play pool, where locally-brewed beer is served, so we’re already in compliance!  Well, technically, we’d need to find out whether all their ingredients, especially yeast, are from the island.

This leads us to one of the discussions we’re having – is it good enough to include local products like the coffee and the beer because at least we’re supporting local enterprise?  Or, is that hypocritical because we won’t be supporting the local Chinese restaurants and coffee shops, for example?

We have some details to hash out, and probably will try to read the 100-Mile Diet book for some suggestions.