Clammin'

Memorial Day weekend is usually a time to get out of town and avoid the hordes of tourists that show up in Newport. They clog the streets (ok, one street), and make cycling around town dangerous. Granted, they also enable our small coastal town to exist by bringing in much needed appetites and shopping habits. Anyway, we stayed home and took advantage of the negative low tides by clamming in the Yaquina Bay.

Day One we met Vero at the beach directly in front of our house at 6am. We wandered around the surf looking for razor clams, which we had no idea how to find. After about an hour of jealously eyeing our fellow clammers who were nearing their catch limit, I ran out of patience and suggested we head to the mudflats where Matt and I have had extensive training seeking and finding clams of a dozen species. So, we drove 8 miles upstream to dig for soft shell clams, Mya arenaria, which are somewhat of a delicacy along the Atlantic coast.

Day Two we drove a mile or so up the bay and dug for gaper clams. After about an hour of digging up and crushing a half dozen gapers, Matt and I perfected our technique and dug up several whole clams, and two enormous ones. I hear they can live up to 20 years. I estimate these were at least 5 years old! We were pretty stoked.

It took us over an hour to prep the clams, Matt strung them up by their necks outside so we could stretch out the meat. I guess the necks can be pretty tough, and these "old boys" were extremely strong.
We cut, cleaned, and cooked them. Then I made a pretty awesome non-dairy clam chowder with all the bits. mmmm.