Hello everyone!
It's been a crazy week around here so far.... Tony and I are in the home stretch of moving our household to just a few blocks shy of the Olympia High School area. It's been 7 years
since we last moved and holy moly we seem to have accumulated a lot of stuff in that amount of time. Let me tell you, the whole idea of creating a downsized, low overhead life gets more and more appealing with each Disneyland souvenir and single function kitchen item that has to be packed away in a box. With that in mind, this week we're featuring our fresh local steamer clams at special pricing and offering up a one pot recipe that's as easy as it is delicious!
I have good news this weekend for all the Hood Canal spot shrimp fans out there - the
first official Skokomish Tribe shrimp opening is this week! We have our order in with our fisherman, and if all goes well they'll arrive at our shop on Friday afternoon directly out of the water and fresh as a daisy. Our wish list includes enough shrimp to last through the weekend, so we should have plenty for everyone who wants to indulge. J
In the cold case this week we have some fresh true cod, fresh rock cod, fresh black cod and fresh sole. We expect to have plenty of fresh Alaskan king salmon (they extended the ocean troll fishery - woot!) and some fresh fat Alaskan halibut are on the books as well. We got another lovely Chehalis River sturgeon from our Quinault Tribe connection and tomorrow there's Ahi and Mahi Mahi on the way from Hawaii. (I've asked for some sun to be included in that box as well, fingers crossed.) As a preview to the Hood Canal spot shrimp we have 20 pounds of Westport spots on order for tomorrow and a nice stack of crab cakes ready to roll. Clams, mussels and oysters are in great shape and should be plentiful - come see us!
~Kira
p.s. We're just a few days away from the ocean salmon fishery opening for Washington/Oregon and commercial razor clam season opening on our coast as well. Keep those two things in mind if you're planning ahead into the next couple of weeks!
since we last moved and holy moly we seem to have accumulated a lot of stuff in that amount of time. Let me tell you, the whole idea of creating a downsized, low overhead life gets more and more appealing with each Disneyland souvenir and single function kitchen item that has to be packed away in a box. With that in mind, this week we're featuring our fresh local steamer clams at special pricing and offering up a one pot recipe that's as easy as it is delicious!
I have good news this weekend for all the Hood Canal spot shrimp fans out there - the
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| Skokomish Thunderbird |
| Steamer Clams |
Yet another fabulous reason to live in the Northwest (as if the buckets of rain weren't enough!) is the abundance of clams in the many intertidal regions. I have many fond memories of a garden rake, a bucket and the beaches of Tokeland ~ on the hunt for steamer clams! The most commonly found clams are manila clams, native littlenecks, butter clams, cockles, eastern softshells and macoma clams. The terms "steamer clams" or "butter clams" can apply to almost any of these local clams. At the shop we offer our favorite, the cultured manila clam.
Manila clams start life as free swimming larvae that feeds on phytoplankton but within a few short weeks they find their home in the sand. From there, on local Totten Inlet, it takes about a year and a half to develop into the harvestable 1.5" size we prefer. For most of our nearly 10 years of business we've sourced our manila clams from The Olympia Oyster Company and we love those guys. Our clams arrive fresh off the beach on Tuesday and Friday mornings each week.
If you are eating your clams the day you get them, just leave them in their packaging until you're ready to start cooking. If you need to keep them for a day or longer, place them in a bowl and lay a double layer of damp paper towels over the top. They should stay happy in the refrigerator for a couple of days!
We have lots of excellent recipes for steamers. Some of our favorites from the archives are clam linguine and Tony's clams with spinach and fresh tomato. Read on for a new one that really adds a lot of complimentary flavor to the excellent clams! |