A Mother's Day Treat A Little Early

 Hi everyone. 

It is finally warming up and starting to feel like summer. I will probably say it is too hot by the time we get to Friday, but right now, it is nice to be able to finally open up most of the windows and air out the house.

Since it is Wednesday, it's time for Kathy's over at   Hummingbird Studio at the Lake blog. This week I have something that will hopefully "not gross anyone out" but was a special treat my husband surprised me with for dinner last Friday night. And it's a meal I haven't had since probably before Covid was part of our vocabulary.

These are steamer clams.

Here in New England we have some yummy seafood, since 5 of the 6 states (Vermont is excluded) have some coastline. Even here in New Hampshire we have a whopping 16 miles of it.  I'm not sure these steamers came from New Hampshire waters, but I am sure they come from somewhere fairly local.

 I even know how to dig steamers, although now you need permits and there's no more free digging at the coast to get them. My Uncle Bob, who was married to my mother's sister, came from Downeast Maine. For those of you not familiar with the area, Downeast Maine is referred to the Maine coast north of Portland. Well quite north of Portland and up to the Canadian border with New Brunswick. Uncle Bob and my Auntie had a cabin (yes a real cabin with an outhouse as that was still allowed back then) on the ocean way up on the Maine coast not far from Canada.  They had a piece of land that had been part of a large area that had been charted to Uncle Bob's family back in the days when one of the King George's ruled us in the colonies and had issued the family a charter. (I've seen the charter. It is an impressive piece of history.) 

Anyhow, I spent many weeks in my youthful summers staying with them in their cabin, and I learned how to dig clams. We would go out with our hand rakes (they look like larger garden forks with  tines and slightly longer handles) and fill a bucket, and then we would steam them to eat. 

I can't show you in this post how to dig clams, but I can explain how to steam them when you buy them. If you already know how to do this, then I apologize for the repetition. It isn't really different than if you were to steam mussels. 

 1) You need to go through your clams. You want clams that are still alive, which means their shells are closed like this one in my next photo.

This next one is questionable. The black piece (called the neck) isn't hanging out too far, and it isn't flopped over  limply, so it might be OK. But because clams eat by filtering algae and other particles out of the water, I decided not to risk it. It's not worth getting sick over.

2) You rinse them off and put them in a pot big enough to hold them and some liquid for steaming.

You can steam your clams in plain water, salt water or my preference, beer with  a little water. This is what we had for beer, so I added that and some water into my pot. I wanted to cover the clams so they all would get the hot water and steam.

3) The steaming process doesn't take  more than a few minutes once the liquid has reached boiling. You want to see the shells open up .

4) Then you need 2 small bowls and one large one or an extra plate.  Fill one small bowl with melted butter and one with the broth you steamed your clams in. My broth is darker because I used a dark beer to steam my clams.  You also need a bigger bowl or an extra plate to hold the shells as you clean the clams.

5) When you open your clams, you pull them out of their shell, dip  into the broth, then into butter and now you eat them. I like to do a few clams at a time so I open several and leave them in the broth until I am ready for the butter dip and eating.

6) And my phone doesn't do close ups really well, but when you first open up the clam there is this wrinkly black skin on the neck.  It's right under my finger in this photo. You should remove that before you eat it. It won't hurt you, but it's better without it. It is really called the mantle, and in the live clam it is what produces the shell and may even produce a pearl.

It's pretty easy. And tasty if you like clams. My husband won't eat them as he says they taste like rubber bands. (And I still wonder how he knows what rubber bands taste like-smile.)

In a New England summer clambake, the clams would be an appetizer, followed by a steamed lobster, corn on the cob, and some type of potato, often baked. In a true old fashioned clam bake, you find a low spot between the rocks on the shore or you dig a hole in the sand at the beach, light a fire, and then cook your food here. In these types of clambakes, you would often have baked potatoes because you can cook them easier than say French fries.

There was no lobster to follow my yummy clams. Prices for lobsters are really high right now. One grocery store had them on sale for $9.99 a pound. It must be the high cost of fuel causing the crazy prices, although last summer before gas went over the top they were just as high. And I'm basically local to the coast where they catch them. I can imagine what the prices are if you need to ship them right now. 

Eating clams makes me think of summer and lots of ways, reminds me of some fun childhood memories. I hope I didn't bore you with the long post and the digression back to my childhood trips to Maine. 

Hope everyone is having a great week.