Clams

For dinner we had steamers, clam chowder, corn salad, and biscuits.  I learned a few things along the way, too.  First off, there are two kinds of clams (well, there are many, many kinds of clams, but there are two common around us - ) sea clams and soft shells.  Sea clams are big and tougher.  They are commonly chopped up in chowders or into strips, deep fried, and served as fried clam strips.  Soft shells are the more delicate ones commonly used in steamers.  Or at least this is what I've been told . . . feel free to correct me.

Anyway, here are the steamers, which we ate as an appetizer while cooking everything else:

 And here are the sea clams being processed and then ready to go into the chowder:

Finally, here's dinner.  The chowder was a little different since we didn't have the right flour to make a roux and thicken it up.  Also it had some random veggies and spices added for flavor.  It was delicious though.  The biscuits were a trial with oat flour that I made by grinding baby grommet's oats in the spice blender.  It worked alright, but as you can see they ended up flat like cookies rather than fluffy like biscuits.  That's because we don't have any baking powder or baking soda.  I did read somewhere, though, that ground deer antler, also known as hartshorn, can be used to leaven breads.  Woah, bet you didn't know that already!  The biscuits were good and rich due to the butter and milk, and the oat flour tasted hearty but a bit coarse.  It's a start though!

We finished off the meal with some homemade maple ice cream which I didn't get to photograph because it was melting too quickly!

This morning was scrambled eggs with diced ham and roasted potatoes with pepper and onions.  Pretty simple, pretty tasty.  

Leftovers for lunch today, and we're off to my in-laws tonight to celebrate dear hubby's birthday, which is tomorrow, so no dinner cooking for me tonight!  Instead, we're going wine tasting this afternoon!