I should be a vegetarian

Last week had one of the lowest tides of the season. My friend Kiko lives right on waterfront and this being the Pacific Northwest, she has access to some pretty amazing clams -- right there in her backyard!!! Anyway, last year, after having watched an absolutely engrossing documentary about geoducks (pronounced gooey-duck, which means "dig deep" in a native language) I wanted to eat one. They showed how to butcher and sashimi these creatures. I was so curious to try one. So I asked Kiko to dig one up for me.

She showed up on my door with a large tupperware container filled with 3 clams -- one 3 inch shelled one and two 7 inch beasts. The inches refer only to their shells. The clams themselves are about 3 feet long -- each!. The little one was maybe a foot long.

A lot of people make fun of these creatures, saying they look like the horse's pecker, and honestly, when I get into the description of how to prepare these things for eating, you'll be hard pressed to believe that I really do like men and have no desire what-so-ever to go Lorena on them.

Kiko had brought the beasts to me in seawater, which allows them to spit their silt out and stay fresh and alive for when I kill them with my bare hands.

I searched frantically for a recipe or step by step instruction on how to prepare them. I found that most sites encourage you to cook them in boiling water for about 10 seconds, then quickly put them into ice water to shock them. This way the meat won't continue to cook and the clam will be killed with the heat treatment.

Consider that before I actually cooked them, I kept peeking in on them, and they all would spit at me when I opened the lid off the container. It was all very distressing. I'm used to my food being saran wrapped and served up inert. This eating stuff alive is very upsetting.

So I put my thick rubber kitchen gloves on and threw the first unlucky clam in the boiling water. And while I had prepared the sink full of icewater, I didn't think to get an implement to pluck the clam out of the boiling water, since I had used my gloved hands to put it in. I couldn't pull a Kwai Chang Kane and reach into the pot for the clam. So the 10 seconds passed while I rummaged around for some tongs and it probably got about 30 seconds in the pot before getting dunked in ice. That clam opened up, just like the websites said it would, and the disgusting process of cutting the creature out of its shell went uneventfully -- aside from the LIVE SANDCRAB inside of it. That darned sandcrab had no eyes either. My kids decided that the clam ate them off. But I digress... After removing the clam from the shell, you sever the siphon (long penis like structure which is more like the clam's nose than the clams schlong) from the body. I didn't want to put it on my cutting board at first because after it was out of the shell, I couldn't keep the clam together. Bits were falling off everywhere and there just was no integrity to the thing. There was the scary gelatinous straw looking structure that gave me the heebies. What IS that? Anyway, I held the siphon in my left hand and with my right hand tried to cut the siphon with a knife while suspended over the sink. This does not work people. Just so you know, it simply doesn't work. I had to opt for the cutting board, but I used the plastic one that can be sterilized in the dishwasher. After doing that, the clam's siphon needs to have the outer skin peeled off. One website said that it would come off like one would remove a condom. As if the phallic feel of the creature wasn't enough, I had to envision removing its condom! This is only like removing a condom if before you applied the condom to the penis, you used Liquid Nails construction adhesive instead of KY jelly. I had to skin it with a knife all the way up, and towards the tip of it, I had to cut off the end 3 inches or so. There were mussels, sea anemone and seaweed stuck to it and I just didn't have the heart to even try to scrape that off. With one scary clam done, I reached for the second with my knife and inserted it into the shell, at which point the clam shut tight, proving that it was still alive, and I screamed and ran for the arms of my husband, who said he would not enter the kitchen while I was performing these heinous culinary rites. It occurred to me later that I had simply not cooked it as long as the previous one. I already had tongs in hand when I put in the second clam. So it stayed only the 10 seconds and it simply wasn't long enough. Lesson learned. Plus, it was a bit larger than the first clam. So I boiled up some water, stuck that one in for at least another 20 seconds, then back into the ice water. Still the shell hadn't opened so I stuck it in the fridge and hoped that courage would return when I came back.

When all was said and done, I had about 2 cups of diced lovely clam meat. I did try some sashimi and it was heavenly. It tasted like a seabreeze. It was firm but not chewy. It was really beautiful white translucent flesh. The rest I chopped up and made a pasta with some shallots, herbs, and a white wine reduction. It was really quite good and I enjoyed it but I swore that I would never EVER butcher one of those clams again.

If I had to kill all the kinds of food that I eat, I would be eating beans and rice exclusively.