Oh yum. Oh bliss.

Why the God of my fathers and mothers decided to forbid his chosen people to enjoy steamed clams while permitting such enjoyment to others has always been beyond my comprehension...

Oh, that makes me hungry and nostalgic.

I grew up in Maryland. My Dad would drive down to the Eastern Shore several times a summer, and get a half bushel of steamers. He would come home and proceed to empty the contents of the vegetable drawer in the fridge into whatever other spaces he could cram them, and dump in steamers. And we would eat steamers every day for a while. I would come home from school and cook up a dozen steamers as a snack.

We never bothered with all the seasoning. Just dropped them into boiling water, maybe with a bit of crab boil dumped in.

(licking lips and wondering what might satisfy this craving.)

Never tried the Red Hook Fairway, not sure the bus access is convenient for me. (Looked it up; ha!) Will need to check B'way & 74th on my weekly visit.

"Emit faint moan."

Why, yes.

"Never tried the Red Hook Fairway, not sure the bus access is convenient for me."

It's pretty convenient from downtown Brooklyn; just take the 61 on Jay Street.

As any fule in NYC kno, good groceries are worth the effort. Fairway (and the new Whole Foods and Trader Joe's) are the subject of cultish devotion because for decades, the typical New York neighborhood grocery store was like something out of Brezhnev's USSR. Suddenly, we have access to extravagances like the rest of the USA. We're drunk with it.

Ohhhhhh, little necks. I'm going to keep that recipe in mind, because it sounds divine.

(Unfortunately, the seafood counter at our local looked pretty dismal today.)

"Emit faint moan."

I'll have what she's having.

As your fella has said, "In her former life she was a chef!"

I salute you. Mind you, the stuff would kill me but it sounds great...

--claire

Speaking of clams, has anyone else here tried Clamato Energia?

I just came across this a few days ago. It's Clamato's entry into (yes, really) the "energy drink" market. When one thinks of energy drinks, one thinks of Red Bull and the like, glucose-heavy fruity drinks with a rather icky aftertaste. One doesn't generally think of tomato juice and clam broth as an energy drink base.

But it's actually pretty good. I like it better than other energy drinks I've tried.

Clamato has apparently been marketing Energia towards Hispanic markets. Clamato's website shows a can with fairly pedestrian packaging, but the cans I've been buying are in garish reddish-orange & black, with Mexican masked wrestlers pictured on the can. Cool!

Patrick, I don't live downtown, but rather in Prospect Heights/Grand Army Plaza, not as easy to get to. The Upper West Side Fairway is less of a schlep in a number of ways. Plus, it's near Tower Records and Barnes & Noble, so I can drool over music and books before drooling over clams.

And right near Big Nick's, so you can drool in some garlic soup.

Some time back there was an ad (in New Scientist, no less) for an "energy drink" that advertised:

0 Calories!
0 Fat!
0 Carbs!
0 Sugar!
All Energy!

[Exclamation points in original documentation]

There was no explanation in the advert of how a product with no caloric content could be so darn energetic. (Well, the 250ml contents would have a theoretical energy of a little over 5 kilotons, can excluded, but if this is the intent there is a distinct lack of hazard labeling.)

Closer examination indicated a number of components, such as, well, caffeine and tea leaf extract, that would persuade some of the energy the user was already carrying around to spend itself on activities such as irritability and diuresis.

It is probably unlikely that these beverages will be relabeled as "energy assistance drinks," "glucose goosers," "whiz-bangs," or "a shot of red-eye," but at least a bit of research has been done* toward a fuller understanding of these convenience-store strange attractors.

*Or "a short step down a long Planck," as no one will have the poor taste to say.

There are foods which, for no obvious or rational reason, I just do not want to try.

Shellfish are on that list...

Fairway (and the new Whole Foods and Trader Joe's) are the subject of cultish devotion because for decades, the typical New York neighborhood grocery store was like something out of Brezhnev's USSR. Suddenly, we have access to extravagances like the rest of the USA. We're drunk with it.

Also, not unlike the rest of the USA, quality food stores in NYC have a tendency to create the "town square effect", which is to say you bump into people you know at (or near) these better stores, on account of shared tastes.

I recall bumping into a certain PNH on the sidewalk outside Trader Joe's one evening. Brimming with post-shopping glee, he was. We visited briefly. As if we had run into each other. On the town square.

But then, come to think of it, I run into people I know all the time in NYC. It's an astonishingly small town, in some ways.

There are foods which, for no obvious or rational reason, I just do not want to try.... Shellfish are on that list...

Well, I can sort of see that. They are, you know, pretty much gussied up slugs.

Still, it's a shame you can't bring yourself to try them. I grew up collecting delicate butter clams in the Pacific Northwest, steaming them in giant blue-with-white-specks enameled pots over fires on the beach. I like a lot of different foods, but steamed butter clams... I can't think of anything right now that I like more.

Over at firedoglake yesterday there was a recipe posted for mussel-and-seaweed soup (they used nori). It might be related.

Sometime I have to do shellfish soup....

1. While grocery shopping at the Fairway in Red Hook, notice the fish department's special: three dozen Little Neck steamer clams for $10. Feel brave, even though you've never cooked live bivalves before.

2. realize your mistake, return the littlenecks, and pick up some mushroom ravioli and satisfy your appetite for little globs of food.

I recall the first time I saw someone eat little necks. (my wife, sitting across the table from me at a restaurant). I could hardly finish my steak. It no longer makes me shudder to watch. But I do prefer to remain upwind, if possible.

I spent 18 months of my childhood in Maryland, right on the Patauxent River - fresh clams and crabs! As a landocked North Texan, that's where I learned to love seafood. We don't get much fresh seafood here. Any we do get is express shipped in and beyond my budget. I have to get my fresh seafood fix whenever I visit the Gulf coast.

OOps. I should clarify that remark (which makes me think of clarified butter - dang, I want some lobster!). I lived where the river met the Chesapeake bay, right near the Pax River NAS. The water there was salt rather than fresh, hence all the wonderful seafood.

Sorry, I'm not much interested in bivalves. A 10# sack of live crawfish, now, and a 10-gallon stockpot, a box of crab boil and a propane burner...

(That's for me. My squirrelfriend reacts rather badly to the crawly sort of seafood, so he doesn't get any.)

I grew up collecting delicate butter clams in the Pacific Northwest, steaming them in giant blue-with-white-specks enameled pots over fires on the beach. I like a lot of different foods, but steamed butter clams... I can't think of anything right now that I like more.

When we moved to outer Quartemaster Harbor on Vashon Island we dug massive amounts of butter clams each weekend they were in season, added corn meal to the buckets, let them sit overnight, microwaved them open the next day and melted butter to dip 'em in.

Then Red Tide moved into inner Quartermaste Harbor where (Portage having been filled in years before) the water temperature was perfect to create a permanant enclave of the little bloomers that keeps South Puget Sound such an interesting place to dig for clams. (The Department of Fisheries kills a lot of white mice each year doing spot tests. If your lips go numb, run like hell for the hospital.) Talk about Paradise Lost...

emit faint moan

**sigh** I miss bivalves. They no longer like me, but once we were the best of friends (or as good as can be where the friendship consists of one party consuming the other). Sounds heavenly.

'O Oysters,' said the Carpenter,
'You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none --
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

mmmmmm, clams. I'm given to understand that one of the grocery stores here will fly in live clams and lobsters, if you order in advance and pay a premium. The day may come....

Bruce-- I too have dug clams in Quartermaster Harbor, back in the late 70s or early 80s. A friend wanted to go sunbathe there. As I was sittin on the beach at low tide, I noticed jet after jet of water spurting out of the sand. We're coming back here with a bucket and a shovel," I said. We did, and dug up a mix of littlenecks, butter clams, and heart cockles. Took them to a party on Capitol Hill and boiled them up. Felt bad for the cockles especially, who put up quite a fight, trying to flip out of the pot with their powerful feet. But that's how it goes...Had 'em with butter and garlic and left my friends the broth. They made a good soup out of it.

Sorry to hear the red tide has spoiled all this. Maybe if sea levels rise and separate Vashon and Maury islands as they once were, things will change...

Bah. "Little necks" are not steamers. Little necks are hard-shelled clams best eaten raw.

Steamers are soft(er) shelled clams, generally dug from sand along ocean inlets (hence the need to clean with water and corn--though a good fishmongers will have cleaned them already, just as you rarely need to keep catfish in the bathtub and feed then cornmeal any more).

Steamers, because of their fragile shells and their need for cleaning, are not often or easily eaten on the half-shell.

Here's what you're not going to like: $10 for 3 dozen is an extraordinarily low price for little necks, and my guess is that these were old and past-date, and could no longer be sold for raw consumption. Hence they were sold as "steamers" with the expectation that the consumer would cook them thoroughly before eating.

But they aren't what, you know, us yankees call steamers.

Genuine steamers (also known as "piss clams") are very hard to find these days, for two reasons: First, the inlets where they thrive are these days often too polluted for safe harvesting. No steamers out of the Great South Bay, few out of the Sound, still some out of Peconic Bay. (Massachusetts and Delmarva residents may substitute their own placenames).

Second, steamers were cheap "clam shack" food twenty years ago, and while commonly available in seafood restaurants, got a reputation as cheapo, de classe food, and went out of fashion.

In recent years, the only steamers I've seen for sale at fish stores have been at the Wainscott Fish Store in the Hamptons--and at the Whole Foods on 14th (I grabbed them instantly).

Cooked, you can find excellent versions at Pier 116 in Boerum Hill, and the Peal Oyster Bar in the Village.

Here's a blog by another person who sometimes talks about groceries and restaurants in Red Hook:

http://amylangfield.com/

In lieu of the red pepper flakes, might I suggest a good chorizo or andouille sausage, along w/ a leetle bit of roughly-chopped fresh parsley? Mmmm... Oh, and a good sourdough.

> Why the God of my fathers and mothers decided to forbid his chosen people to enjoy steamed clams while permitting such enjoyment to others has always been beyond my comprehension...

Does anyone have numbers on the relative incidence of shellfish poisoning at the time the rules were set?

(Or it could just be one of those "if it was easy everyone would want to be my chosen people; follow these rules because I say so and it will remind you who you are" things. Maybe the feasts of <forgotten pagan idol> were famous for their shellfish when they weren't kid cooked in the milk of its mother.)

Two hours soaking time? With stuff? Should I be dead? I don't think a clam ever lived that long in the house I grew up in.

Whatever clams are labeled, my family ate 'em raw. If mom was planning on cooking them, she had to start right away or they'd be slurped.

Our normal preparation: 1) Buy 2) Leave in sack in the backyard with some ice 3) Take turns opening them, which meant you got to eat as many as you wanted first before passing them out.

Ooh---I've cooked plenty of live bivalves, but it's been many a day. Now you've got me drooling for them, I'll have to get some this weekend. I might do mussels instead, though--I love mussels. The recipe is the same, although I've never soaked them. I bring them home in a bag with ice and keep them cold in the fridge until they go in the steamer. White wine, french bread--what a meal.

Lizzy L wrote:

Why the God of my fathers and mothers decided to forbid his chosen people to enjoy steamed clams while permitting such enjoyment to others has always been beyond my comprehension...

Alan Braggins wrote:

I'd speculate that the God of your Fathers was trying to spare you a night hunched over the potty.

Alan Braggins already pointed out how easily one can get food poisoning from shellfish if it's not properly refrigerated. In that same vein, it's worth noting that, from an epidemiologic standpoint, swine are remarkably similar to humans. For instance, we swap influenza with pigs much more easily than with, say, cows, cats, dogs or almost any other animal besides humans. This is why you don't see "pork tartare" on the menu next to "steak tartare".

IIRC, the scriptural injunction was along the lines of "And the swine, though he be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch, they are unclean to you" and there was a similar one about not eatething ye those critters that walloweth about in yon seabed.

My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.

Every so often I run into someone who says, "Oh, yeah, I think I might have had food poisoning once,"--I chuckle politely and correct them. If there's any doubt in your mind, you didn't have it. I speak from experience. Picture a 10-hour workday in which you vomit every 5-10 minutes. Occasionally the festivities are punctuated by explosive diarrhea. I promise you, if it happens you'll know it for what it is.

As a 2x sufferer, I have no trouble seeing how the effects of bad shellfish or undercooked pork can be interpreted as the fury of God. To this day I will not be in the room with a raw oyster.

Quite a few things that are forbidden by God can be accounted for as a pre-scientific culture's way of steering its members away from dangerously unhygenic practices. For instance:

cannibalism - Even the most well-cooked recipe for long pork is going to carry more risk than an alligator stew.

incest - Close relations have a much stronger chance of reinforcing dangerous recessive genes and producing unfortunate offspring.

unrestricted sex - Other than eating someone, having intercourse with them is the best way to catch whatever diseases they may have. But to a mind that is innocent of a theory of germs, that poxy prostitute probably did look as if he had been cursed by God.

usury - I am confident that a particularly icky corner of hell is reserved for those bastards who stuff the mailboxes of college freshmen with Visa applications

My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.

Hmm...and all these years I've thought it was done to prop up the Italian fishing industry.

I, too, have had food poisoning twice, and I agree--if you only think it was food poisoning, it probably wasn't. If you couldn't leave the bathroom for several hours, it was. Apropos of our discussion, the first time I got food poisoning it was from fish: London Fish 'n Chips in Lafayette, CA. Never eat mushy fish. Never.

This is why you don't see "pork tartare" on the menu

I had assumed it was because of trichinosis, though I don't know how long it's been around.

Quoth Scott: My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.

It's not an injuction against fish on Fridays. It's an injunction against flesh, into which category fish apparently didn't fall. Fast days (Fridays, Lenten days, various Saints' Days and whatall) were the days where you were forbidden to eat any Land-based animal meat. Fish/shellfish were OK though. So, according to some, were ducks.

As an undergrad, I was told that the Papal edict legitimising consumption of fish on Fast Days had a lot to do with supporting the Pisan fishing industry (the sources we read were written during the Great Schism, by the Pisan Pope).

My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.

Wait--back up--I misread this the first time. The Catholic injunction isn't against fish on Fridays: it's against meat on Fridays. Catholics eat fish on Fridays instead of meat. In almost all restaurants and cafeterias, there is still a fishy option offered on Fridays: the soup of the day will be clam chowder; the sandwich of the day will be fish filet, etc.

My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.

Apologies for the rectocranial inversion. I'm not sure what I was thinking of. I've got a vague memory of my sunday school teacher saying something along those lines around 1976, but at the moment I can't reconcile my obviously flawed memory with any events that take place in the real world.

Quite a few things that are forbidden by God can be accounted for as a pre-scientific culture's way of steering its members away from dangerously unhygenic practices. For instance:

cannibalism - Even the most well-cooked recipe for long pork is going to carry more risk than an alligator stew.

Well, yes, but how many cultures got to find this out? It's easy to imagine people eating pigs (the Chinese still have no problem with this) and perhaps coming to the conclusion that bad things tended to happen when you did it, so... But cannibalism? Does the Bible (or the Quran) actual prohibit cannibalism, or just mention it as something bad that might happen?

incest - Close relations have a much stronger chance of reinforcing dangerous recessive genes and producing unfortunate offspring.

True, though this seems to be a universal human taboo, so it's probably more rooted in evolutionary psychology than religious instruction (though the latter will reinforce it).

unrestricted sex - Other than eating someone, having intercourse with them is the best way to catch whatever diseases they may have. But to a mind that is innocent of a theory of germs, that poxy prostitute probably did look as if he had been cursed by God.

Um, no. Religious prohibitions against unrestricted sex tend to originate in desires to clarify and control marriage alliances and inheritance, and possibly attempts to minimize the side effects of jealousy.

usury - I am confident that a particularly icky corner of hell is reserved for those bastards who stuff the mailboxes of college freshmen with Visa applications

Well, maybe, but this hardly qualifies as something "unhygienic" ;-)

I have heard that the Tudors ordered fish days on Wednesdays as well as Fridays, to prop up the English fishing industry. (The cafeteria where I work does fish tacos on Fridays. Other than the number of jalapenos in the pico de gallo, it's tasty food.)

Pork. now-a-days, trichinosis is a thing of the past. It happend because pigs were fed raw garbage with whatever that included. nowadays they're fed clean food and are pretty much genetically identical, which is why pork is not necessarily one of my favorite foods anymore, unless it's smoked until meltingly tender. I suspect the better barbecue places get their pigs from different places than Tyson. My dream right now is to buy a hog or half a hog, butchered, that's been fed naturally (living on a pasture, some grain fed but pretty natural) and living out in the sunlight (though right now our sunlight is pretty brutal...). I think part of the biblical injunction is because pigs compete for resources to do well, i.e., they're omnivorous, and really need water, they do not sweat.

The whole discussion about clams is a very wistful one, I loved them very much, then I became allergic. I discovered I'm not allergic anymore at the Boston Worldcon, I accidentally got a piece in with some onion rings in Faneuil Hall at lunch but I'm not going to tempt fate by eating a whole mess of 'em. (When I used to have the allergy, I'd get hives really fast. I DID take a benedryl immediatey after realizing what I'd swallowed but didn't even get itchy. Before, one benedryl would NOT have stopped the hives, etc., two beneryl just mediated and prevented the reaction from boiling over.) I also don't eat mussels because I think they're really close in species. I am not allergic to scallops or oysters (or the others, squid and things like lobster, shrimp and crabs. I don't eat octopus because I respect them, I would not eat turtle for the same reason). And you could not pay me to eat a RAW oyster, I took one to many parasitology course in college. Eeeuw.

Scott H: the required symptoms vary more than you allow. I am dead certain from the pattern of cases around me that I got food poisoning from a quiche left (merely) warm too long; in place of vomiting I had chills and fever of the five-blankets-is-too-cold, what's-this-puddle-I'm-sleeping-in species. There are many foods that can go bad, and many things that can grow in them, and many ways people can react to the things' toxins. (I recall reading that most "24-hour flu" was in fact mild food poisoning, although the last MD I spoke to said there really are independent infectious agents that come and go that quickly.)

I too dislike whole mollusks; I'll eat scallops occasionally but let the rest of my family snicker as they chow down on clams or oysters. This served me well on at least one occasion, a bio lab where everybody who wanted got five steamers (and could buy more) while dissecting and making a classic plate (#\3/ pencil, margins thus and so, all text printed in even small capitals,...) of a quahog (venus mercenaria, IIRC); my drawing discipline is weak, but I did well on the lab because I didn't stop to snack.

Mother from midwest: raised with things like scalloped oysters and oyster dressing for turkey (even if the oysters came in a jar). Oysters are, for me, an acquired (but not unwelcome) taste. I did once try one raw (at a restaurant) and found it interesting but, like caviar, not entrancing.

We still get lots of yummy fresh clams out here in the PNW (scarey stories of red tides aside). I like to steam them in a mix of broth and wine with garlic, tomatoes, and basil--maybe some onion if you want. Then serve them up with a lovely crusty sourdough and sop up the juices. Fast, easy and delicious! Works fine for mussels too!
Anon

I would also note that it is possible to get a very mild case of food poisoning where it's not entirely clear whether the symptoms are indeed food poisoning; that it may make you throw up before much of the toxin has been absorbed, so that you feel better once you have thrown up; and if you have IBS it is possible for the wretched stuff to transit your system so fast that it never gets a chance to do much more than speed up the already speedy natural process. If you *really* want anecdotal evidence of the last, I could regale you with the story of the chicken mayo sandwich I had for lunch at Conjose which made a reappearance by dinner time...

I've never heard of a medieval rule or law saying you're supposed to do your fishing on Sundays, and I don't think it's all that productive to make extremely broad generalizations about patterns of fish taking and fish consumption during the Middle Ages. Like so many other things, those patterns could vary every five miles: inland fish farmed in artificial ponds (often held in common by a village), saltmarsh eels, seasonal runs of freshwater river fish that might be available only to those who held fishing rights, shellfish anyone could dig from gently-sloping tidal areas, line-caught deepwater fish brought to market by professional fishermen, et cetera. Fish might be the cheap common food of the poor in one village, and relatively pricey in another.

As a rough rule of thumb in most areas, during most of the year, meat from domestic quadrupeds would be the costliest option, fowl rather less expensive, and fish and shellfish (we're not talking prime specimens of premium species) the cheapest. Most butchering was done in the late fall, when grazing and forage ceased to be an option. A few select animals would be wintered over on stored hay, and eaten only in times of great dearth. Note that the starving time in spring, when winter stores are gone and the land isn't yielding anything but spring greens, is also the period of the longest and strictest fast in the Christian calendar.

In most areas, meat was a scarce item in the diet of the poor. One way to look at abstaining from eating meat was that you were humbling yourself by eating like a poor man. Technically, fasting is eating only one full meal a day (again, like a poor man), with the option of a couple of small meals called collations which together can't total more food than your full meal. Abstinence is refraining from eating flesh or fowl. You can have fasting with or without abstinence, and abstinence with or without fasting.

There may have been popes who were friends of particular fisheries, but you don't have to hypothesize that as a reason to not classify fish as meat. Western Christendom took in a lot of territory, including plenty of areas where, seasonally or year round, fish formed a major part of the local diet, and thus couldn't be interdicted. Emulating the poor, good. Starving them out, not so good.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think about a *recipe* for steamer clams.

Growing up in Maine, I learned how it's done.

1.) Bring home clams. (The smaller, the better.)

2.) Leave them in a bucket of water (freshwater is fine, but don't add table salt!) until you've got your pot ready to go. I don't know about two hours, but it's good to soak them for a little while so the sand filters out of them.

3.) While heating up a couple inches of water in a big pot, scrub the clams under cold running water (again, to get rid of as much sand as possible).

4.) When the water in the pot has reached a boil, throw in the clams. Start melting butter.

5.) About five minutes later, check the clams. If the majority of them aren't open yet, close the lid and give it a couple more minutes. (Not all the clams will open, like not all the popcorn kernels will pop. This is normal. Don't eat the closed ones!)

6.) Get the clams out of the pot with a slotted spoon. Pour the clam broth into small containers (a custard cup is good). Pour the melted butter into similar small containers.

7.) Get clam out of shell with fork. Peel the skin off the neck (well, it's technically the foot I suppose, but we called it the neck :). Dip into clam broth to wash. Dip into butter. Eat. Make that moaning sound Teresa referenced above.

A week from this Thursday, I will be at a clambake on a beach in Maine. There will be lots of steamed clams. I will be the happiest person on earth at that moment. (Oh yeah, there will be lobster too ... and that's nice, but oh, the clams!!!)

There are lots of kinds of food poisoning, but true shellfish poisoning is as spectacularly distressing as Scott H says. Using every available mechanism, your body violently ejects everything it can eject. You can temporarily go blind. I'm hoping to get through this lifetime without ever having to experience it first hand.

Greg, I sincerely doubt the steamers at Fairway were priced that cheaply on account of being superannuated. Their fish prices are generally quite reasonable, and their quality is high. Same goes for their meat.

Meredith, i'm now reduced to a hungry, whimpering "I might be allergic" hulk. that just sounds so wonderful that it leaves me weak with longing.

But I don't dare undertake it unless I have folks waiting take me to the ER if I've not truly gotten over clam allergy. I've only challenged the idea with a bit of clam in Boston (accidentally) and the fact that Red Lobster no longer gives me hives on a regular basis (they use clam juice on just about everything that needs extra moisture...)

Paula Helm Murray: I worked at a summer camp in North Carolina during my high school years. We scraped table scraps and pot leavings into slop cans. Once a week Buck and his tiny son Buck Jr. came and hauled the cans away to their pig farm. There was speculation of the existance of his daughters Buckina, Buckella, and Buckette but that is not part of this story. At the end of each summer, Buck supplied a hog for the staff pig picking and it was delicious!

but true shellfish poisoning is as spectacularly distressing...

Ok, we're this far into a conversation about the joys of shellfish and the terrors of food poisoning, and nobody has pointed out that it's currently high summer, the exact middle of a record HOT summer.

So. . . what ever happened to the rule about "no month without an 'r' in it"?

I grew up four hours from the nearest salt-water beach, and the "r" rule was beat into us early. Have the coast-dwellers been keeping the good shellfish for themselves all these years, or have transportation and refrigeration really improved that much?

Across much of the northeast, it's supposed to be a hundred degrees F tomorrow. Clams - raw OR cooked - aren't the first thing that I'm thinking of for this week's menu.

I'll be happy if we can just get through it without a blackout.

Well, speak of the devil:

(this morning's New York Times, reg. req.)

74 Become Ill After Eating Raw Oysters

Why spend money on clams when rubber bands and sand mixed together taste just the same? ;-)

Give me that old time sashimi-wasabe-sake high any day.

Scott H said:
Every so often I run into someone who says, "Oh, yeah, I think I might have had food poisoning once,"--I chuckle politely and correct them. If there's any doubt in your mind, you didn't have it. I speak from experience. Picture a 10-hour workday in which you vomit every 5-10 minutes. Occasionally the festivities are punctuated by explosive diarrhea. I promise you, if it happens you'll know it for what it is.

This is, in fact, not true.

There are two main types of food poisoning, both caused by bacteria.

In one type (for example, botulism or Staph aureus), you ingest food that is contaminated by bacteria, which have excreted a toxin into the food you're eating. This toxin makes you sick quite quickly. (within hours)

In the second type of food poisoning, you ingest the bacteria which then grow in your digestive system and produce a toxin that makes you ill. These types of food poisoning tend to occur 3 to 10 days after eating the contaminated food--so it's far more difficult to get the cause right.

Almost all people have had food poisoning at some point in their lives; upset stomaches and diarrhea are mostly likely due to a mild case of food poisoning rather than a misnamed "stomach flu".

See: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001652.htm
and
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/foodborneinfections_g.htm

re: pork, trichinosis, etc.

Whether or not trichinosis is a thing of the past, from what I've read, the meat industry still takes precautions against it. Hey, all it would take would be a single slip-up. I remember when I was a kid our neighbor actually somehow contracted trichinosis--it is a pretty serious disease.

It's well-known that cooking kills any trichina cysts in pork, and in other meat, particularly bear, that is prone to having them. What's less well-known is that chilling at X degrees for Y period of time (don't have the numbers handy) will do so as well. Pretty much all pork you buy in the U.S. is required to be chilled thus. That's why I don't worry when the pernil in my Cuban sandwich at Cibao (corner of Clinton and Rivington, Manhattan--the best!) looks pinkish once in a while...

> true shellfish poisoning is as spectacularly distressing as Scott H says

And yet many cultures are still happy eating shellfish. I'm still curious about whether there was anything specific to Jewish culture at the time that made it a more common or worse danger (such as being denied access to the sea and fresh shellfish for a long time).

I have seen references to the economics of pig-keeping that suggest it is more of an expensive luxury for a nomadic desert tribe than it is for people who can let them forage in woodland, for example. (Wikipedia says something similar.)

Sort of bemused by this thread. There are photos of me at Oyehut when I was less than two months old, sitting in my stroller while my parents dug razor clams. On the day of my father's mother's funeral there was a record low tide, and the family headed out to Nisqually Reach to dig geoducs. Every family reunion for decades included a fast trip to the nearest gravel beach to dig manilas for steaming and butter clams for chowder. And the Sunday nearest Dad's birthday was an occassion to go out to Uncle Zaza Simmon's place for fried oysters and Auntie Myrtle's biscuits, which had to be loaded down with butter and jam or they'd float away.

My kids haven't done any of that; my husband is from Texas and views all sea food with suspicion. In any case, the beachs where we habitually dug rock clams were contaminated with sewage starting in the early sixties, and the geoduc grounds are almost all subject to DNR shellfish leases. Simmon's Oysters finally went belly-up financially in the last decade, a victim of competition from Taylor United and of being too far down-sound to have dependably clean water.

So clams to me are a food of lost childhood, of a time where a Western Washington kid could see the Milky Way on any clear night.

But they definitely belong steamed in plain water and eaten with melted butter (or, for some of my more reckless uncles, with Tabasco sauce).

I caught up on this thread this morning. And while reading about trichinosis stuff, there was a TV series recently where the guy/host would get dropped off in some gawd forsaken place and he'd have to survive for a week. The show was basically him showing how to survive in various different locations. I thought it was on the discovery channel, but I couldn't find it on their list. And my google-fu, as always, is busted.

Anyway, one episode, they drop him off in a scrub-filled desert. He finds a small stream for water. And at one point he then shows how he eats grasshoppers: first, pull the head off, and then cook them on a rock or stick. I can't remember, but I think it was because of trichonosis, or maybe tapeworm, or something. And cooking them would kill the parasite.

Which then it makes me wonder if there is some ancient religious text against eating grasshoppers...

Speaking of food poisoning...

It only adds insult to injury when you are perfectly fine on the way to the dentist, and you think that the slight queasiness halfway through your six-monthly cleaning is because the water jet has gone astray, you sit up to clear your throat - and have to bolt for the toilet to throw up.

They were very nice about it, and said that it was going around and two of their staff were off with it. At least I seem to have had a mild dose, because I'm feeling a lot less miserable than I did a couple of hours ago.

Greg, it's on The Science Channel in the digital range of programming (on our local Time Warner it's #223). and it's called Survivorman. Friday Nights, 9 p.m. ET/PT

On one hand it's interesting, but after a few of them it's boring (especially as background noise...)

Paula Helm Murray: I've always known that allergies can develop throughout life, but I've never known that it's possible to recover from an allergy. I've become allergic to more and more things as time has gone on. Your comment has given me hope that I might someday become un-allergic to msg, for one, and sulfites.

Bob Oldendorf: I lived in northern California for, um, 12 years, and my take on the "months without an 'r'" rule was simple: don't order crab during those months, because it won't be fresh--it'll be frozen. I never knew there was anything else behind the rule.

Apparently, it's only a central New York delicacy, but the ideal accompaniment to a clambake (why "bake" when you steam?) is salt potatoes, created when Syracuse saltworks laborers tossed new potatoes into the boiling brine, fished them out, and ate them. Proportions of roughly 4 lbs of new potatoes to 1 lb of salt. Throw salt in water, bring to boil, add potatoes, roughly 20 minutes or until tender. They'll have a visible, but not overbearing, salt crust. Dip in melted butter. Eat.

mary, I was allergic to furry animals when I was young and now I don't have any problems with cats, dogs, rodents, etc. I haven't tried being near horses yet.

There is a phenomenon known as "growing out of allergies". It happened to both me and my father: childhoods spent in sneezing misery and trips to the allergist (misery in themselves) followed by relatively peaceful adult lives. The number of things (milk, wheat, shellfish, cats, pollens I never heard of ...) that I was tagged as being allergic to at age 7 that actually seriously affects me now is damned near zero. I drink lattes, eat crab and lobster any chance I get, keep a cat, and actually survived this year's cedar fever season without taking to my bed, even though our whole lot is covered in junipers. High mold count can make me tired and irritable, but otherwise I'm fine. (I *have* carefully avoided getting bitten/stung by anything more serious than a mosquito.)

Survivorman

That's it!

after a few of them it's boring

I've only seen three or four times, probably because I was looking on the wrong channel for it and only watched it as I was flipping channels and stumbled on it.

I did notice it would go flat now and then, but it seems that that's a function of the reality of surviving versus, say, the fantasy. One episode I saw, he was in the woods in Oregon, and it rained the entire time he was there. The basic issue of survival was staying dry, and as it happened, I think he had a rain jacket on. He did a bunch of running around trying to find food, but for the entire week, he didn't eat anything. Apparently there was nothing edible.

One other episode I saw was him in the desert, and he ate grasshoppers, some fruit off of some cactuses, and some kind of weird plant that I can't quite recall.

Now, the fantasy of survival is captured in the show "I shouldn't be alive". The reason I call it fantasy, is because as the name of the title says, these people were put in circumstances with a 1 percent chance of survival, and they lived. What they don't show is the other 99 percent of the people who died. One episode showed this guy who had a boulder land on his legs and pin him. One guy with him was unable to budge the rock. They were ten miles into bush country on some island. The other guy had to make the hike in time to catch the next ferry at a dock. Otherwise it would have been another day before they got help. The terrain was also rough enough, that he couldn't do it at night and had to wait till sunup, and given the ferry schedule to arrive every morning at 10 am orsomething, he had to hike pretty damn fast.

When the rescue folks choppered in, the brought hydraulic jacks to lift the rock off him, and the medavac doctor started treating him. THey recreated this whole thing with actors. They also interviewed the participants. And the doctor said he thought there was no way the guy was going to live.

Apparently, when part of your body gets crushed, the part builds up some toxic chemicals, and when the person is removed from whatever has him pinned, those chemicals can end up killing the person. One of the reasons the guy lived was that he had been under the boulder so long that the veins and arteries had clotted and so the chemicals didn't get past the crush point and enter his body.

One episode I saw, he was in the woods in Oregon, and it rained the entire time he was there. The basic issue of survival was staying dry, and as it happened, I think he had a rain jacket on. He did a bunch of running around trying to find food, but for the entire week, he didn't eat anything. Apparently there was nothing edible.

And this is why I don't watch that show--this guy couldn't find anything edible in a forest in Oregon despite it being a time of year during which it rains? Heck, I could do better than that, and the forest I grew up around wasn't even in the Pacific Northwest. Lemon sorrel and oak trees both grow in Oregon...

If I'm going to watch something called "Survivor Man", I want to watch someone who could survive longer than it takes for his body-fat stores to run out.

Wednesday fasting has been around in Catholicism for quite some time. The names of the days of the week in Irish come from the monastic tradition (well before 1000AD*) where Friday = Dé hAoine, "day of fasting", Wednesday = De Céadaoin, "day of first fast", and Thursday (imaginatively) = Déardaoin, "day between two feasts.

*For some reason writing this made me wonder what a comic called 1000AD would be like. Doughty saints smiting evil with their croziers. Battles with Irish and Vikings (probably on both sides). Meanwhile, far away in Constantinople, the imperial artificers have created a most unusual device ...

"Lemon Sorrel" (Rumex acetelosa?) and oaks (especially Quercus garryana) do, indeed, grow in Oregon, but not in what a Northwesterner would call a forested area; that's why the precontact population of the Northwest used old-growth forests as a source of raw materials for basketry and housing and canoe construction, and for some seasonal foods, but otherwise stuck to the prairies and the shoreline.

The only readily available food source in a typical NW coniferous forest during the rainy season is a wide and tasty assortment of fungi, but it's really advisable to go after those with an expert at your side.

(takes off ethnobotanist hat)

"Lemon Sorrel" (Rumex acetelosa?)

I don't honestly know. It's about 8 inches tall, with double-lobed leaves in clusters. Yellow flowers that turn into spikey seed pods that pop if touched when ripe. Tastes kind of lemony, hence the name I suppose. Also I'm told you shouldn't eat too much at once.

and oaks (especially Quercus garryana)

It occurs to me that oaks wouldn't have helped; barring anything to cook them in he'd've had to do cold-water leaching of the tannin and that takes weeks.

The only readily available food source in a typical NW coniferous forest during the rainy season is a wide and tasty assortment of fungi, but it's really advisable to go after those with an expert at your side.

My point, ineptly made, was that if they're going to do this sort of show they should have gotten an expert. :)

ahem.

clears throat, steps to microphone

Oh, this was a real nice clambake,
We're mighty glad we came.
The vittles we et
Were good, you bet,
The company was the same.
Our hearts are warm, our bellies are full,
And we are feeling prime.
This was a real nice clambake,
And we all had a real good time.

Enoch:
Remember when we raked them red hot lobsters
Out of the driftwood fire?
They sizzled and crackled and sputtered a song
Fittin' for an angels' choir.

Girls:
Fittin' for an angels,
Fittin' for an angels,
Fittin' for an angels choir.

Nettie:
We slit 'em down the back and peppered 'em good,
And doused 'em in melted butter.

Carrie:
Then we tore away the claws and cracked 'em with our teeth
Cuz we weren't in the mood to putter.

Girls:
Fittin' for an angels,
Fittin' for an angels,
Fittin' for an angels choir.

A guy:
Then at last come the clams.

Guys:
Steamed under rockweed and poppin' from their shells.

All:
Just how many of 'em galloped down our gullets,
We couldn't say ourselves, oh,

This was a real nice clambake,
We're mighty glad we came.
The vittles we et
Were good, you bet,
The company was the same.
Our hearts are warm, our bellies are full,
And we are feeling prime.
This was a real nice clambake,
And we all had a real good time.
We said it 'afore and we'll say it again,
We all had a real good time!

I reckon Ray Mears does a pretty good job of the bushcraft and survival documentary. BBC, maybe sometimes co-productions with American companies. Though there's a difference between the craft-skills and knowing what are the edible plants and fungi in a particular place.

Coming up next week on the Beeb is a documentary on a recreation of Scott and Amundsen's rival expeditions to the South Pole, testing the equipment and techniques that were used. Apparently the boots were more comfortable than the modern ones.

That's Oxalis, then, and yes, there's Oxalis oregonus (oregonum?) but I can't imagine trying to subsist on it. And in a way, the emphasis on dry shelter is apt; you'd die of hypothermia a lot faster than starvation.

Still, sounds like a lame show, I have to agree.

Apparently, when part of your body gets crushed, the part builds up some toxic chemicals

Usually potassium. Normally, about 98% of your K is stored inside your cells; it transfers back and forth as needed. Smashing cell walls releases it. Hyperkalemia does bad things to your neuromuscular system, and enough will stop your heart.

There's an episode of Trauma where a guy's been brought in after a two-story fall, and he's having problems beyond just the blunt injury. It's interesting because you watch the head of service working out what might be wrong from the evidence; the EKG is unstable, but his big clue is that the patient's urine is going from lemonade-colored to tea to coffee, so he waits for the electrolytes to come back from the lab. Bingo. So he gets Ca on the way to the operating room.

What that has to do with clams, I don't know. But I've got two different things that can cause hyperkalemia, and, well, it's like remembering that Kryptonite is green. (Unless it's, you know, red or something.)

About the Biblical food laws:

They make more sense if you ignore the safety issues, which is a 19th century rationalist explanation. Consider the laws as an expression of the Order of Creation.

Compare them to the creation account in Genesis 1. God created the fish of the sea. Therefore, you eat fish from the sea. Things in the sea that aren't fish (eels, lobster, clams) are clearly things that have left their God-ordained place and shouldn't be eaten.

God created the birds of the air. Birds that don't fly (hoopoe) are disobeying God and shouldn't be eaten.

God created the beasts of the field. For whatever reason, the Hebrews connected having cloven hooves and chewing the cud. Beasts that fulfilled only one of the two (pigs, camels) were somehow malformed, and shouldn't be eaten.

God created the insects that creep on the land. Insects creeping around elsewhere (lobsters), are way out of order and shouldn't be eaten.

There's a lot of scholarly research that supports this reading of ancient Israelite practice, and it extends to other parts of life as well. Google ought to give you more information, if you're interested.

juli,

that is an interesting theory. i like to have those around, because while i can't really explain to people why i keep kosher, it is nice to give them theories to chew on (so to speak).

kashrut also bars all carnivorous animals, though (fish that eat other fish don't count, because fish are barely considered living). does this theory touch on that?

> Birds that don't fly (hoopoe) are disobeying God and shouldn't be eaten.

Hoopoe fly. They occasionally reach England having migrated from Africa.

Erm, that was supposed to be a link to http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/h/hoopoe/index.asp

Does anyone know where I can possibly get some geoducs? I live in massachusetts. If so please email me at soulelegance@aol.com.

It's a good thing that this person has clammed up.