Let me start this entry out
with a geography lesson. The Ozarks,
where we grew up, is absolutely nowhere near the ocean. I didn’t see the ocean for the first time
until I was 24 years old, and it didn’t count because I was at the back of a
small bay. It was a couple of years
later before I looked out to the horizon and saw nothing but water.
My wife had tasked me with
going to the market to buy clams. Since Lima is right next to the
Pacific, the seafood at the markets is fresh, and often still live.
Last week, I found clams
already shucked and ready, and bought 350g, or about ¾ pound, for the
equivalent of $8. I have no idea if that
is a good price or not, but the chowder was phenomenal.
Today, the market was
different. We have already established
that I know nothing about clams, but those who know me will say I will never
miss a chance at a bargain. Clams still
in the shell seemed to be cheaper than those already shucked, so I bought 20 of
the little guys, still live. It doesn’t
get any fresher than that, I thought, and I spent the same $8 on a much larger
bag of clams. I would save a dollar or
two by shucking them myself.
I chose my tool for the
task, a large metal spoon, and thought, how hard could this be, just get them
out of the shell, right?
It turns out that clams don’t
want to be shucked. It was unanimous. Redneck determination being what it is, I did
eventually get them all out of their shells and onto a cutting board, but not
without cost. I had cut myself slightly a
couple of times, on pieces of broken shell.
If clams had teeth, I would
have been bitten four times. These guys
did NOT want to be turned into chowder.
Then of course, came the
task of separating the actual clam meat from the rest of the alien being. Having zero knowledge of mollusk anatomy, I
still managed to remove anything that looked like clam-poop, and called it good.
Almost an hour after the ordeal began, I
placed my cleaned-up clams on my wife’s small kitchen scale.
400g.
By shucking my own, I had
scored two extra clams. Some people
would say it isn’t worth the time and effort involved, and they might be right.
But I still got two clams
for free.
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