Clamming – Science teacher

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.

November 6, 2022

Clamming in November

You don’t need much.

A rake, a basket, a mud flat, and if you’re so inclined, a license.

Take what you need for dinner, eat them before the next low tide. I put the smallest and the largest back into the flat, tucking them into the mud, keeping a promise made years ago to my niece who loves clams but not killing.

A tired November bee on a tithonia flower

November can be kind, but more often than not, the dying light is unkind to those creatures that depend on the sun.

But the creatures keep moving, and so do I, to the rhythm of the tides and the pull of the rake, one life feeding on another, grace for one, the abyss for the other.

January 1, 2022January 8, 2022

Another stuffie recipe

The problem with recipes gets down to the problem with any written language—feigned immortality. If the goal is to get the exact same flavor, then you need the exact same ingredients grown at the exact same time after a season of the exact same weather.

Even then you will fail.

Consistent flavor easy to attain with processed foods. Your industrial producers have mastered consistency, but at a cost. (I am not about to knock processed foods—there is an undeniable comfort in consistency and salt.)

From my 2 year old grandchild’s garden,resting on our Adirondack chair.

My wheat berries grown on a family farm came with an apology for their small size—it was the driest year in decades and well, plants need water. A tomato grown in my garden may taste slightly different than the one from yours. The clams I raked up yesterday are sweeter than the ones I hope to harvest in March.

Recipes are incredibly useful for proportions, for temperatures, for time in the oven—but not so much for ingredients. This one happened mostly by accident—I liked it so I wrote it down, but who am I fooling?

14 top neck quahogs
1 stick butter
1 celery stick chopped fine
1 medium onion chopped fine
1 tsp rosemary chopped fine
Few sprigs of rosemary to flavor the butter
¾ cup panko, though could use a little more (it’s all I had)
Red pepper flakes
Some chopped garlic, not too much
Some dry basil (my parsley patch seems to be gone)
Gobs of Parmesan cheese, to make up for the missing panko
Tiny splash of rosé wine for when your sauté goes south—it’s what was in the fridge, but it worked.

Cook the clams the usual way—simmer until open, chop the innards, save the broth.

Start the stuffing by melting a stick of butter. I like to add a few sprigs of rosemary while the butter melts. I take out the rosemary once it wilts.

Sauté the onions until they’re where you like them, then cool things down with splash of rosé.

Add the celery and chopped rosemary and let simmer a bit. Normally I would add the garlic here, but I forgot, and I think holding off the garlic until the end worked better.

Add pepper flakes to taste.

Dump and stir the panko, and when you realize that you do not have enough, add enough Parmesan cheese to let the whole thing clump together.

Scoop stuffing into half shells, bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Serve with some roasted Brussels sprouts and homemade rosemary/garlic bread.