Oyster Blog
Apr 22, 2008: Quality Control. Somebody's gotta do it.
The camera caught up with Adam and Louie wandering through the single oyster pens one blindingly-sunny day in late March. It was the first daylight low tide of the season. Hello there! Finding an oyster to sample wasn't terribly difficult. Adam opens the oyster and eats it while Louie looks on in approval.
Apr 16, 2008: Hama Hama in the Belly
Larry from New Jersey had some clams, oysters, and smoked salmon sent to him as a birthday gift. We'd like to eat at Larry's house some day; he sounds like someone who knows food. Here's how he prepared the seafood: The Manila clams were simplicity itself. I just rinsed them in a colander, and added them to some simmering tomato-basil spaghetti sauce. I have a very good Italian deli nearby, which provided the sauce, though supermarket sauce would have done. After I added the clams to the sauce, I covered the saucepan, and they opened within six minutes or so....
Apr 16, 2008: Gooeyduck
The geoduck clam is the biggest clam in the world. Pictured here is a teensy two year old, but they can live to be 150 years old, or older. They frequently weigh more than 5 pounds. And yes, they're ridiculous. Geoduck live deep in the sand, and while they can retract their neck to avoid predators, they can't retreat completely into their shells, like horseclams can. One geoduck with broken shell, two horseclams. Eye of horseclam Disco Duck
Apr 14, 2008: Champion Deep Dish
Last weekend 22-year old Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti, a professional eater from Chicago, consumed 35 dozen oysters in 8 minutes to win the Acme World Oyster Eating Championship in New Orleans. Read the AP article here for a glimpse into the weird world of competitive eating, and check out the Chicagoist for an up-close picture of Deep Dish.
Apr 11, 2008: Tree Cookie Signs
That's a lot of tree. The giant 'cookie' came from a four hundred year old Douglas fir tree that fell down a long time ago. A big flood washed the tree down the canyon and left it serendipitously in a hayfield. We cut the cookies off the log about four years ago; they've been curing in a woodshed ever since. In the picture below, you can see that the tree nearly died when it was about 20 years old. Something damaged the bark on one side of the tree--either a bear ate it, or another tree knocked it off. The living side...