It was a bit of a subdued Memorial Weekend for us this year for a couple of reasons,
but we made the best out of it with a trip to the (rainy) Oregon Coast.
Brian and I joined brother Mark and Jill and Lyle out at Rockaway Beach.
The boys went off hunting (boys- 0 : spring bear-1)
and the rest of us headed up to Seaside to go clamming!
This is something I have always wanted to try and I was pretty excited to have a go at it!
The shovel, the bucket, the rain gear. . .
Lyle and Jill all ready to go!
It was great, Duane and Rayetta Sperl met up with us and Duane taught us everything he knows about clamming! (It was a quick lesson) ;)
I tried the shovel method (which is less harmful to the clam) but I figured since we're going to eat the little buggers anyway, I'm going for the clam gun!
Much more effective!
There were people clamming as far as you could see, both ways!
Needless to say, we got soaking wet.
It didn't help that my rubber boots had a hole in them!
Our bounty from the sea! Lyle and I, and Duane and Rayetta all caught our limit!
15 clams each!
Jill and I snuck a couple of whole sand dollars into our clam buckets as well!
Then came the not-so-fun part. Cleaning our catch.
Step: 1
Pour a pot of boiling water over all the clams that you have piled in the sink.
The boiling water pops open the shells and allows you to easily pull the clam meat out.
Step 2:
Cut off/out all the "brown" stuff you can see. This is the oversimplified version of step 2, but cleaning these little buggers was more complicated than I thought, as you want to preserve as much as the "white" stuff as possible.
And as you can see from the look on my face,
cleaning my catch was NOT my favorite part of this new experience.
Actually, it was down right GROSS!
But, we got them all clean!
We cleaned mine and Lyle's catches, those 30 clams took a quite a while
Step 3:
Fry 'em up!
I didn't know if I would be able to stomach eating the clams after the trauma of cleaning them, but it turns out, THEY ARE DELICIOUS!
It was a successful clamming trip and I can cross that off my list of things I've always wanted to try. I'm sure I'll get out there again to do it again soon, cuz it's pretty fun! It's only $7 for a shellfish license and as long as you go out during a nice low tide, you're bound to get yourself some clams!
I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend friends!
3 comments:
It looks like fun. Brings back great memories of clamming as a kid. We always got soaked and I hated cleaning them too. But I always loved the clam chowder. yum
Well, the clamming part looks like fun. I'm afraid the cleaning would turn my stomach the wrong way.
That was very fun and interesting to hear about the clam dig!
Well, we love the beach and plan to go again soon at least to enjoy the salty air and run on the beach.
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