Clam Jam 2016

Another clamming adventure for the books! We went back to Double Bluff beach on a gorgeous summer day with the tide below -3. The trip was very last minute, but we ended up having a very rewarding day.

In the morning, Forrest was so excited to leave the house... that he had crumbs all over his face from inhaling breakfast. He was a hot mess, with his harness all in a twist. 

This year, we went further out than usual. The area that we chose was really rocky, but there were whole clans of clams under the sand!!!! Forrest was scouting the area and greeting the other clammers for us. 

While we dug and dug some more, Forrest wandered nearby and sniffed just about everything. He even ate a crab! I guess he doesn't remember last time, when got nipped in the nose. LOL

Eventually he got tired and wanted to lay near us. He's not a young chicken anymore! 

After cleaning and prepping our catches, Mike made us clam ceviche! It was DELICIOUS.

Next, JR sauteed some clams with garlic, onions, and butter.

The main course was a heaping pile of butter clams in a white wine sauce.

And the clam finale - baked clams with Ritz cracker crust.

With Tambi and JR to share their culinary genius, we had quite the feast. It was a lot of work, but we also had more hands to do the prepping and the cleaning. Last year, Matt and I only trusted ourselves to make chowder... and it took FOREVER to clean the damned horse clams! I'm glad we got some butter clams this year, too.

I think my clam fix has been satiated for the year. Because we dug so far out on the beach, the walk back to the car was extra brutal. And these clams were NOT light. 

Can't wait to go crabbing next! 

Clam out with your clam out!

Went clamming again! This time we went to Double Bluff Beach on Whidbey Island, and it was just as fun.

Forrest had a grrrrrreat time, and I'm pretty sure he had a lot of "firsts" that day. When we got on the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry, his tail went WILD. And he got the crazy eyes!

Sadly, dogs aren't allowed on the passenger decks so we hung out near the car. No worries though, only a 20 minute ferry ride to the island. When we got to the beach, there was a music festival setting up, and we were really lucky to be there early. At 10:00 AM the parking lot was already full, and we parked about 20 cars down the road from the park entrance. The walk out to the water was nice, lots of ocean life to see. And Forrest got to run free!

In fact, at one point, he was so excited to see the crabs that he turned into a sloth!!!!

When he didn't have other dogs to play with in the area, Forrest was poking his nose into crab bellies... that is, until he got snipped by one! He didn't play with crabs after that. =) There was lots of sniffing and exploring happening for Forrest while we dug for clams. Matt was on rake duty, I was on trowel duty, and Mel was on shovel duty. We poked around for a while before we found the sweet spot where all of the clams were hanging out. It was near the shell/rocky land, just like at Dosewallips! We ended up finding PLENTY of large horse clams but no other kind of clam. Although, I kept finding enormous mollusks - like the size of my head!

We certainly each caught our limits, and hauling the large horse clams back to the car was.... a gruesome trek. It was a good workout though, hopefully burned enough calories to make up for the chowder binge in advance!

Cleaning horse clams was... not fun. Matt was particularly bad at it, so I ended up doing almost all of our share of the haul. It must have taken well over an hour to get through all of them! And my hands and arms were tired already.

We seared some of the precious tongue meat and seasoned it with sesame oil, soy sauce, and chili paste for "dinner". We were too exhausted to do any real cooking. It was good though, almost like sashimi!

Today I made chowder with the rest of the clam meat, and oooooooh booooooy we have chowder for daaaaaays! I think I *may* have overdone it when eyeballing the measurements for this recipe...

After I packed two soup bowls for the freezer, and after we both ate dinner, we still have plenty of chowder left.

Aaaaaand a close up.

I'm pretty proud of myself for this "living off the land experience" -- dug 'em out, cleaned 'em, cooked 'em up, and now I ate 'ems!!!!