Doyle

January 1, 2026January 1, 2026

On transubstantiation

(That we are here at all is the miracle.)

Classroom wheat berries — Wheat plant close-up, grown on the class windowsill.

Transubstantiation is a Catholic concept, and a somewhat late one, not appearing until the 1200s or so. Catholic doctrine holds that the Holy Communion bread becomes the body of Christ during Mass, though the bread keeps its bread-like qualities..

I teach high school biology in a public school, so transubstantiation does not come up much in class. We do talk about photosynthesis, however, and if you follow the particles involved, a form of transubstantiation does happen, just not in the mystical sense.

One year in class I decided that we should all plant wheat, then take the few wheat berries we managed to grow on the classroom windowsills, grind them up, and mix them with enough store-bought flour to make a loaf of bread.

So far, so good.

Half a loaf of bread on a wooden cutting board. — Home baked bread

Before breaking the bread in class, I asked the students to tell me where the stuff of the bread came from. They (mostly) knew it came from carbon dioxide in the air.

I then asked them where the carbon dioxide came from.

It came from them.

And where was it before it left their bodies? I meant literally, immediately before it left whatever cell they wanted to imagine deep in the dark depths of their flesh.

And that’s where science banged a little too close to mortality; most of that bread got left uneaten that day.

We are, literally, what we eat. Eating is a transubstantive process. The atoms we eat do not change, they just get rearranged. Every part of you that is you (and meant to be you) came from your mother or your food.

Oh, we got some stray lead and a few zillion pieces of microplastics embedded in us, true, but those are accidental.

I don’t want to hear that plants make food out of sunlight. Because they don’t

Plants make food out of us. They need sunlight to do all the fancy work of sewing together carbon dioxide and bits of water, but most of the stuff that makes a plant a plant came from carbon dioxide.

Not dirt. Not sunlight.

The stuff of us.

December 31, 2025

Kale and clam soup again

It’s New Year’s Eve, the day beckoned with near freezing temps and a bit of a breeze, but low tide was conveniently at 11:50 AM and below normal to boot.

I was pleasantly surprised with less wind and even less water than predicted, and got my clams. Had to return to the beach twice because of extra clams tucked in my wander pockets, but not the first time I’ve done that.

Accidentally bought cilantro instead of parsley, so maybe that was the secret. Also helped that the kale used was extraordinarily sweet, so likely harvested after a frost. At any rate, here’s the recipe:

a dozen clams
about 3 or 4 cups of kale
about 5 ounces of white wine
a large onion, chopped
a handful of cilantro
several small red skin potatoes, cut into small chunks
several sprigs of rosenmary
about 1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 stick of butter
3 smallish stalks of celery, chopped

Heat up the olive oil, toss in the sprigs of rosemary, cook until ready then remove the rosemary.

Toss the butter on the olive oil, let melt

Throw in the onions and saute until just right, then throw in the wine. Add celery and kale and let simmer, adding clam stock as needed.

Prepare clams as usual, then toss back into the broth, adding water as needed. Chunk in the potatoes and let cook. Toss in the cilantro somewhere along the way,

Once potatoes are done, toss the veggies from the pan into the broth, and you’re good to go.

Serve with red pepper flakes/Tabasco.

December 30, 2025

The Parable of the Quahog and the Horseshoe Crab

Not so long ago, I spent an afternoon tossing a bucktail into a channel behind West Wildwood. The sky was steely, a mist was falling, the clouds and the sea merged as one.

While working the beach I stumbled across a couple of the holes we left clamming the day before. A few feet from one of the holes I saw a grand-daddy of a quahog–a huge chowder clam just sitting on the flat exposed by the low tide.

A quahog that big may well rival me in years on this Earth. It didn’t get that large by acting stupid, and there’s hardly enough nervous tissue for clams to get senile. Still, there it was.

I went to pick it up. It resisted.
I went to pick it up again.
It resisted again, as if glued to the beach.

I tugged yet a third time, and the sands shifted–the clam was stuck to the base of an old horseshoe crab, now buried in the sand. Her now kicking legs pushed the sand next to the clam.

A large horseshoe crab may well be 20 to 30 years old.

Here they were, an old horseshoe crab tethered to an even older quahog, waiting for the tide to rise. The quahog, guided by millions of years of instinct, clams up tight at low tide. With the edge of the horseshoe crab wedged along it edge, though, it faced dessication.

I tried to remove the clam again, but dared not pull any harder than I did. I left the two critters there to square their issue with the next full tide.

Some things cannot be anticipated, and some things cannot be fixed.