Country

Most of mine has come from friends and customers. Clams and lobster. Deer and moose meat. Oh. And fresh caught bluefin tuna. Napes are really good.

Love your work, Country. Report back if you find anything. This morning I got a call from Maine marine patrol warden who told me the reason Maine scalloper's have to shuck aboard the boats is because of red tide which causes PSP, or Paralytic Shellfish Poison. While clam flats and other inshore shellfish harvesting are closed during red tide blooms, scallops are generally caught offshore and there are no closures there. From that I'd guess that PSP can be detected in scallops when they're shucked. After getting the call I did a net search to find out more and came across this excellent link. Scallops With Roe - Rules, Regulations and Food Safety RRO, Please read before eating raw scallop roe. No point in getting sick or going to an early grave.

I called the Maine DMR (Dep't of Marine Resources) today to find out more about this. Got transfered here and there - mostly to voice mails - and never did get an answer. Maybe I'll try calling the law library tomorrow...

To easily shuck (open) clams without cooking them, for instance for fried clams. Put the washed clams in a suitable bowl or pot, fill with boiling water, let sit for 30 seconds, drain and fill with cold water. I got this tip from a friend that used to work in a shop where they shucked bushels and bushels of clams every day. It works. Open the clams over another bowl if you want to save the liquid for broth, etc.

I stopped in at my local fish shop to get some clams (Maine steamer/softshell) so I could steam a few for supper, but Kendall's wife was feeling generous and gave me almost twice as many as I wanted (and paid for ) so now I have many more clams than I'll eat tonight. I'll cook them all tonight and shuck out what I don't eat so I can make a spaghetti/pasta clam sauce tomorrow for supper. I usually just use onions and garlic sautéed in some EVOO/butter and toss in some flat leaf parsley with the clams and that's it. Any ideas to do something else will be appreciated - but no exotic ingredients please. This is the coast of Maine.

In an earlier post I gave a link to a Google search on storing olive oil and one of them (at Chowhound) has this: "Actually, for fine olive oils, do not chill in the fridge for long; if any moisture is in the bottle (humid air, eg), it will condense and spoil the oil faster than if you had left it at room temp." So one wouldn't want to take a cold bottle of oil out of the fridge and leave it open for any length of time on a hot humid day. Also, from the Google search, Keeping Olive Oil Fresh by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. I don't know much about her except that she comes from Camden, Maine, a couple of towns over from where I live. And apparently divides her time between there and an olive farm in Tuscany. She also has a blog with two articles at the top on EVOO and one of them gets into "fusty oil". Interesting...

Really?? Why, some kind of crazy regulation, or just custom?? At least in Maine, and maybe in other states, I think it's a law that scallops have to be shucked on the boat.

What a deal. Maine scallops are retailing for $12-13, so boat price is probably $8-9, and wholesale somewhere in between. So $17 for those is almost a steal.

ScottyBoy - I went to your website and checked out some of the pics of your food. Nice! But a 4 ounce scallop??!! They sure grow big on the West Coast. Never seen anything like that in Maine. How much a pound for those beauties off the boat?

Google? I've never refrigerated, but never left out in the light or uncapped either.

Thanks for that, nolnacs. Good blog. I've always had a pretty dim view of Philadelphia and you've brightened it considerably.

Those PEI and NS lobsters must be tougher than what we have in Maine. The only time I cooked a lobster for 20 minutes (21 actually) was when a friend gave me one that weighed around 12-15 pounds he got dragging for fish. Had to cook it in an old wash boiler it was so big. And, yes, it wasn't legal... I take the bands off regular lobsters too. Hold on to the crusher claw and take that one off first.

That blender is crazy! But, looks like it revs to 12,000. 2 kW generator is a good idea. One of the Honda 2000's, like at this link would do the trick. These little Honda's are really quiet. I have the 1000 (1 kW) and can hardly hear it when I'm using it outside the woodshed during power outages. And it even handles a 1500 watt starting load on the new fridge!

I hadn't read your post carefully before I made mine above. None of what you list, not even a rice cooker, would work powered by a standard car battery - whether 12v or 120v through an inverter. Too much current draw. dcarch is right. Stick to propane for anything needing heat.

Look into getting an inverter for cars that converts 12v dc to 110-120 ac. That way you can run standard appliances as long as they don't draw too much power. No toasters, for instance. And be sure to keep the van battery charged, as well as being careful not to discharge it too much as it shortens the life of the battery. Of course, the same goes if you're using just 12v. Here's a link to a Google search for car inverters.

That's unfortunate. I liked reading Sifton.

This time of year I go out to the garden and get it.

For what it's worth, the Professional Chef (CIA, 7th ed. 2002, p.252) recipe for brown veal stock includes roasting the bones at 425-450F, until the bones are a deep brown, 30-45 minutes. Doesn't it seem a bit counter-intuitive that a brown stock would be made without roasting the bones?

Harking back to my Army days in the late '50s, I recall the Spam hash - potatoes, onions and peppers that seemed to appear on the Saturday menu whenever one particular mess sergeant was on duty. The mess hall was in another building (at the Presidio SF) but if we had our windows open we knew what was on the menu as soon as we got out of bed. This is diverging a bit from canned meat, but now I'm reminded of my time in the Navy back in the early 60's when our aircraft squadron would go to sea aboard an aircraft carrier. After a couple of weeks the fresh eggs would run out and breakfast would often consist of reconstituted eggs and potatoes with a side of fried baloney.

Just a heads up... Today, in addition to Ruth Reichl, Russ Parson is going to tell how to make the "perfect french fry"! Katie's right. Terry does ask some very funny questions and, also, asks seemingly innocent questions that often draw more candid responses than the interviewee might have offered otherwise. She's a great interviewer.

This week Terry Gross is featuring food interviews all week on NPR (National Public Radio). For more info Go Here. Yesterday's featured interview was with Grant Achatz. Today's was on bananas - and quite interesting. Tomorrow interviews with Ruth Reichl and Russ Parsons. Terry Gross does great interviews and the interviews on yesterday's and today's programs can be heard at the link above. I meant to post on this yesterday - but, better late than never.

Beautiful description. I can see it now - just like I was there. Thanks.

This thread is getting ridiculous, but I see no problem with someone from another country who has come here, taken the time and effort to learn the English language, and opened a restaurant insisting that English be spoken when ordering. My father's parents came here from Denmark at the turn of the last century and had to learn the English language before they could become citizens. Perhaps Genos's family had to do the same. Getting back to religion, I earlier mentioned the auto body repair shop and the open bible on the desk. Sort of similarly, when I was young our volunteer fire department would occasionally try out a "new" used fire truck to see if it would be better than our old one. One test of this was to see if if a stream of water would get higher than the local Baptist (Christian) church steeple. The way this thread has gone I suppose someone could have found fault with that...

Down the road from me is an auto-body shop. Tim, the owner, is one of the best, and certainly most honest, body repairman I have ever known. He is also a Christian and keeps a large bible open on his desk - where estimates are given and bills paid. He reads the bible during his lunch break. Because I'm not a Christian (or anything else), should I not patronize his business because of this?

Let's go back to the first sentence of munchymom's first post that got all this started. Shouldn't that be the bottom line? If the only hint of proselytizing was a piece of paper on the host stand (which I never would have noticed) I don't see why this has turned into such a big deal.