Clams


out here, at the sea shore, we will have on occasion, "red tide alert", which means it is not advisable to go clamming. the raw sewage gets dumped into the bay from the over-flowing treatment plant. however, i got to admit now that i think of it, we didn't have too many if any red tide alerts last year.

They still happen, but not to the degree that the agency that monitors that stuff will raise an alarm.

There are rivers and canals in the Chicago area that are polluted, because what happens is during flood season, Chicago dumps their overflow sewage into the Chicago Ship & Sanitary Canal. They had some kind of ancient abandoned subways or something and they flooded them with water for their "deep tunnel system" to store overflow sewage until they can treat it. That's cleaned up the rivers quite a bit in the last few years.

And eventually that nasty **** and **** winds up in the Great Lakes. So then the fish from the Great Lakes fisheries have that **** and **** in them, and when you consume any of the fish caught there you are consuming the **** and **** too!

Sweet!

But I followed the creek with satellite images and found that it's tributaries all originate in farmland. Nothing comes from Chicago. So the ONLY thing that's likely to be in this creek would be runoff from fertilizer or whatever poisonous crap the farmers spray on their fields. But I imagine that if there was any poisons in that water, it wouldn't be literally crawling with life.

Yes, it is crawling with life, life fertilized by the runoff from the fields.

Just think, if you eat the fish, clams, frogs, etc from that estuary, you are consuming the runoff from the fields.

Nice.

yeah, i think BP is telling us everything is ok in the Gulf, like the eyeless fish..????

Oh, sure, why do fish need to see anyway?

Hell, let's just keep recklessly polluting the air, the land and the water. Who cares, right? We just eat around the red tide warnings, and when we can harvest something to eat, if there are bad spots, just cut them out and give them to the cat or the dog.

They'll eat it.
 
I was going to have him show me how to safely cook the clams & if we can find another crawdad, I'd have him cook one too.

One? It takes a bunch to make a meal for just one person, and several pounds to make a meal for two or three.


Wow, .. check this out:

Your wiki link for "freshwater bivalve", showed this photo:

View attachment 16523

which looks exactly like the ones in the creek here, it was linked to this page: Margaritiferidae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

which says

Margaritiferidae is a family of medium-sized freshwater mussels, aquatic bivalve mollusks in the order Unionoida. They are known as freshwater pearl mussels, because they are capable of producing pearls.

You wouldn't like them, because they are union mussels, and I know how much you disdain organized labor.

Pearls, eh? I'm rich! RICH!

Maybe next time I give Mrs. Duck a pearl necklace, it won't be the metaphorical type.

You're one sick puppy Duckie.
View attachment 16523
 
One? It takes a bunch to make a meal for just one person, and several pounds to make a meal for two or three.

I don't know about crawdads cuz we only saw one, but as far as clams go, finding enough to feed a bunch of people would be no problem at all.

You wouldn't like them, because they are union mussels, and I know how much you disdain organized labor.

Commies!!!

You're one sick puppy Duckie.

I'm sick? Maybe I should see a quack.

I just steamed one of the big clams. It was open about 1/4 inch when I took it out of the bucket of creek water, and when I touched it's guts, it retracted and closed the shell, so I knew it was alive.

I used the Glenn method and just put it in the water, 2 cups in my big giant chili cauldron. It was already open about 45 degrees during the time it took to scrub the sea-weed or algae (green stuff) off another clam, but I left it steaming for an extra 5 minutes or so cuz I was expecting it to open up 180 degrees, but it never did.

I think I over-cooked it. It looks gross, with little flappers and stuff.

The old geezer's been over here bugging me all day, so I showed him the steamed clam and asked if he was hungry. As a joke. But to my surprise, he actually ate it. Or half of it anyway. He gave the rest to that wild beast he calls a dog.
 
They still happen, but not to the degree that the agency that monitors that stuff will raise an alarm.



And eventually that nasty **** and **** winds up in the Great Lakes. So then the fish from the Great Lakes fisheries have that **** and **** in them, and when you consume any of the fish caught there you are consuming the **** and **** too!

Sweet!



Yes, it is crawling with life, life fertilized by the runoff from the fields.

Just think, if you eat the fish, clams, frogs, etc from that estuary, you are consuming the runoff from the fields.

Nice.



Oh, sure, why do fish need to see anyway?

Hell, let's just keep recklessly polluting the air, the land and the water. Who cares, right? We just eat around the red tide warnings, and when we can harvest something to eat, if there are bad spots, just cut them out and give them to the cat or the dog.

They'll eat it.
Better than eating off the truck stop buffet....
 
Hey @Cerberus, ... what's this look like to you?

View attachment 16524 View attachment 16525

Yeah, .. the bathroom sink is pink, LOL

It looks like steaming isn't an option for these larger clams. Each one of these clams weighs like 2 or 3 pounds. Most of that weight is in the shell.

The one in the photo above, the part that was hanging out like a tongue when the shell opened, is like tire rubber, but the rest of the clam guts are still raw. This was the case with the last 2 that I steamed. I put the meat in a ziplock bag and threw it away. I guess they'll need to be slow-cooked if I'm going to eat them, and I still haven't bothered soaking them in corn meal or anything to make them poop out the sand. I'm mainly doing this just to get the meat out of the shells because Mrs. Duck is obsessed with the shells.

Right now I've got about 3 gallons of water in the chili cauldron and I'm going to boil the shells to try to get the green stuff off the outsides of them. It won't scrub off, even after they've been steamed.
View attachment 16524View attachment 16525
 
Well Duck, it looks like a clam to me. Althought the coloring is right to the most part, just a few IDKs would make me not eat it. Not sure about eating any shellfish out of a creek, not big on praying to the porcelin god. Clams,mullocks, and such are cheap and can be bought from the local seafood shop. Think i'd do some serious water testing before eating anything out of a creek esp since you mentioned the farmer up stream. In minimul amounts, naw not going to hurt you, but after that i'd be worried.


Now, on the main point, seriously Duck, you've never had real cajun food or crawfish? Dude your so missing out. Crawfish et tu fe is to die for. But only if the rue is done right. You gotta go to New Orleans down by the french quarter , listen to some live music and eat the best southern cajun food you could ever imagine. Its a little spicey so be careful.
 
Now, on the main point, seriously Duck, you've never had real cajun food or crawfish? Dude your so missing out. Crawfish et tu fe is to die for. But only if the rue is done right. You gotta go to New Orleans down by the french quarter , listen to some live music and eat the best southern cajun food you could ever imagine. Its a little spicey so be careful.

I live in ILLINOIS. The closest thing we have to "cajun" food here is a bottle of "cajun" flavored seasoning I got at the grocery store and put on chicken.

Except for one time I was ****-faced drunk at a party and this skinny moocher guy who was living with this 400 lb fatass woman who happened to own the house with the pool we were partying in, happened to be a recent migrant from Galveston. We couldn't remember his name so we just called him "Galveston".

He made some kind of cajun dip and some kind of cajun salsa and both were the best things I ever ate. However, ... I was extremely drunk at the time and probably would have thought McDonald's was the best thing I ever ate.
 
Cajun dip i understand but not the cajun salsa. Cajun food is alot of crawfish and spices with rice. Last time i was in Louisiana i came across some dude who called me a coonass. Man i couldn't stop laughing and neither could my friend from there. Evidentily we were laughing for diferent reasons. Came too find out later it meant an ignorant person. Didnt realize he knew me so well. lol
 

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