Chowder, Clam Chowder.

So ever since we've moved to Oregon, I have wanted to go clamming. I don't really like clams, but there's just something about living in the Northwest that made me want to go dig up my own clams and create some fancy dinner with them. It seems like something coastal people do, and I am now a coastal person...sort of. So last Saturday, Dev and I went with some friends to hunt us down some clams. And then our plan was to have a chowder cook off. We borrowed a clamming gun from a neighbor (that's right, a clamming gun) and headed to Seaside. Now, you have to know that there is a lot you need to know about clamming. You don't just go out to the beach and start digging hoping to find clams. So in order to learn what we needed to do in order to clam, Dev took it upon himself to research it on the Internet. He looked on YouTube and various other sites and found out all there is to know about clamming. And when I say all there is to know, I mean it. This became his new obsession. But it ended up paying off because he was an excellent clammer. We went to the coast during a negative tide, which is really the best time to go because the water gets really low. We didn't have waders, so we made our own out of garbage sacks and duct tape :)













It worked really well for me and by the time we were finished, the only thing wet on me was my right foot. Everyone else got pretty wet though. There were a ton of other people out there clamming too, but there was plenty of clams to go around. In order to find a clam, you gotta walk where the water comes in a little bit. When the water recedes, you tap the sand until you see a "show" which is little whole that appears in the sand. You see that, and you've got a clam. You stick the clam gun (or dig it with a shovel, but that's harder) into the ground and pull it out. Then empty out the sand, and hopefully there is a good size clam in there.
When we started, Devin found a clam right off. And then I got one.

We had pretty good luck first starting out, but as the tide
began to come back in and as it got darker, it got a little bit harder. We ended up coming away with about 12 clams (15 per person is the limit). We brought them home and I made Dev do all of the shelling of the clams. EWwww, they were soooo gross looking! He put them in some boiling water which made them open up and then he was able to get the meat out. He then had to cut out a bunch of the yucky parts, which made me almost not want to eat clam at all. The next day, Dev made his very own clam chowder from scratch, using the fresh clams we had caught. We then went to our friends house and had the chowder cook off, which ended up not really being a chowder cook off but we did get to eat our clams and get together for dinner. It was all really fun though and I am constantly wishing we could go back to the coast to do more clamming. For more fun clamming pics got here:

Clamming at Seaside Feb 2009