When the Vendée Came to Captiva
The Vendée is a department of France that has a few things in common with Sanibel and Captiva; the most obvious is beautiful sandy beaches. Tourists from everywhere visit these beaches. Birds nest in nearby mangroves along the coast of the Vendée, just like they do on our islands. However, the Vendée produces fine chicken, duck, lamb, brioche, a well-known raw cured ham, corn, wheat, and sunflowers – ah, those beautiful fields of sunflowers! As you would expect for a coastal area, oysters and mussels are exported from the Vendée, too. Ham with white beans is a famous dish from the Vendée, as is a garlic bread called préfou . And of course, the Vendée produces wine. While Sanibel and Captiva long ago lost their agricultural economies, the islands did experience, for a couple glorious years, the talents of Chef Jean Grondin, another product of the Vendée. From 1985 until his untimely death in 1987 at age 37, Chef Grondin lived on Sanibel a...