Shown: Riley Fadden, age 3, helping clean clams.
When we were kids growing up on the Oregon coast, digging clams was fun and sport for the whole family. We could rarely catch any razor clams—they just weren’t as plentiful on the Oregon coast as they are in Washington, and those critters are fast! As soon as you see the tip of its siphon in the receding surf, you start to dig like crazy, but it senses you coming, perhaps through the pressure of your footsteps in the sand, and it heads straight for China.
Vake saw somebody using a clam gun, just a metal cylinder with a valve top, for pushing into the sand over a clam, closing the valve, and pulling up the cylinder of sand, clam and all. Being an old sheet metal man, he fabricated one, but made it larger in diameter than the commercial model. It turned out to be too heavy for most men to lift out of the sand when it was full. He gave it to a local man, Mr. Bones, who had lost one arm (I assume in a logging accident). Mr. Bones was powerful, and had developed extra strength in his remaining arm, and he could use the clam gun just fine.
Going after mud clams, now called “Oregon soft shelled clams,” was a whole different matter. Any time the tide was low on the river, you could dig your limit of 36 clams per person, per day. We learned to stick a finger down an apparent clam whole, to feel if there was a clam in it. Feel just the slightest sensation? It’s too small. Feel a good, positive contact? You’ve got yourself a big one! Dig next to the clam hole, follow the hole down with your fingers, and there it is. Guard your bucket from the seagulls that follow you down the shore. They’ll steal the clams right out of your bucket if you give them the chance.
Sticking her fingers in the clam hole was hard for Tina’s daughter Kaia to trust. She’s soon to be an RN—you’d think she’d be less concerned about sticking her fingers in strange places, but she lives in the Arizona desert. There, holes have spiders in them. Big spiders.
Clamming has its risks. It’s easy to lacerate a finger on sharp shells in the clam hole. The tide turned on Sandy and me once, and we ended up wading back to shore in water up to our armpits, but saving our clams and shovels. And when Brook took Sandy’s boy Ricky clamming, Ricky got stuck in soft mud. Brook had to pull him up, toss him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then use his hands to pull his own boots out of the muck, to wade to firmer soil.
Brook learned a trick from his grandmother Milly: When you are ready to leave the clam flats, you put your biggest and best clams at the top of your bucket so you look like a mighty hunter.
Brook uses clams to make his grandpa Vake’s clam chowder, which is a classic New England style chowder made with diced potatoes, cooked and drained, a little celery for flavoring sautéed in some bacon, lots of chopped clams, and milk. Sandy recommends using Yukon Gold potatoes, and deplores thickening the chowder with cornstarch the way some people do.
Brook also makes clam fritters from a family recipe for Aunt Sylvia’s fish cakes.
1-1/2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp paprika
½ C milk or clam juice
2 eggs
1-1/2 tsp grated onion
1 tsp melted shortening
10 clams (Brook recommends using a LOT more clams)
Rinse the clams and put them through a chopper. Make a batter of the other ingredients, and stir in the clams. Take 1 spoonful of batter per fritter and fry on a hot greased griddle or in deep fat.
Tina has a clam recipe, too, for clam dip, but uses canned clams for it, since the clams need to be cooked before being added to the other dip ingredients. Here is her recipe, as Brook transcribed it:
Two 8-oz packages of cream cheese
1 can minced clams, drained
1 T sour cream
Worcestershire sauce
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Parsley
Soften the cream cheese and add clams and enough of their juice to flavor the dip; give the remaining juice to your cats. Add one T sour cream and remaining ingredients to suit your taste and flavor. Let it chill for an hour unless you are hungry; in that case, let it chill for ½ hour.
