Well, maybe not. But we’re pretending it’s summer to get our minds off of a week of cold, gray weather and nothing says summer like a clam boil, for sure.

Clam boils are a polarizing topic. It’s like the Greeks and the Turks arguing about who makes the best baklava.

My cousin Anita and I don’t have kids, and our moms are both gone, but we have our 90 year old aunt Dee and we have Anita’s mother-in-law Annette, and neither of them had plans on Mother’s Day so we made it a party at Dees house. A clam boil, cold beer (or in Dee and Annette’s case a small glass of sherry) and some good company helped brighten the drear.

Clam boils are a polarizing topic. It’s like the Greeks and the Turks arguing about who makes the best baklava. Some purists say it has to be a clam bake, with a pit dug into the beach, a hot wood fire to heat the stones, seaweed to steam and release it’s salty goodness into the food, clams, lobsters, corn on the cob and a burlap cover to keep in the heat. Not an easy thing to do on a public beach and it requires hours of prep. Others are okay with a clam boil but differ about what goes in it. My husband’s family claims to have made clam boils in New Jersey, but when he started talking about cherrystones and chicken in the same pot the New Englanders all but booted him from the room. Survey people in the area where I was born and raised and you’ll come up with about the same list: steamers (soft shell clams), sausage (plain old breakfast links), hot dogs, white fish (cod or haddock), linguica (a Portuguese sausage made from pork and highly seasoned with paprika, giving it the red color), sweet potatoes, onions, white potatoes, and if there’s room at the top of the pot, corn on the cob. There’s never room, so if it’s fresh corn season we just cook it up separately. We never had lobster unless a fisherman owed my dad money, so most times we did without. Plus, my mom and sister never liked the stuff. Since most of the folks I grew up with didn’t have money for lobster either, I wonder if that’s how the white fish ended up in the pot, as a substitute. A happy accident, IMHO, as it’s one of my favorite things in the clam boil.

When I was a kid the fish would be cut up and wrapped in parchment or foil while the clams were “cleaned”. How do you clean a steamer? Rinse ‘em, put ‘em in a tub of cold water and sprinkle in a good dose of black pepper. Makes ‘em pee and spit out the dirt. Seriously. See the bubbles in the last photo below? Yup, that’s a clam peeing.

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Once the fish was cut and wrapped we’d then make individual packets in cheesecloth to mete out the goods to each attendee; a hot dog, a piece of linguica, 2 sausage links, a packet of fish, a white and a sweet potato, and an onion. This was a good system for a big crowd and the food stayed hot. Clams were served in a separate dish after the pot was emptied and the clams were revealed. I noticed there was always horse-trading among the guests – a hot dog for a sausage, a sweet potato for an onion. And when that was over folks were back at the serving table looking for seconds. So we started to do it differently: we made individual pouches of all the ingredients and put them on big serving platters so people could get just what they wanted and there was always enough for seconds.

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So now that the cheesecloth bundles are all prepared and the clams are clean it’s time to assemble this bad boy. Clams at the bottom, potatoes, onions, then meats atop the clams, a foil tin for the linguica so the whole calm boil isn’t too heavy in paprika, and an onion and one of each of the potatoes on the top to test for doneness. As you can see, we couldn’t get a kernel of corn in there, never mind a few ears.

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Fill the base ¾ of the way with water, season to your liking with salt, pepper, beer if you so choose, and anything else you desire, place the pot on top and set it on the stove to boil. Then you can kick back, drink beer and wait for the boil to be ready while you socialize and watch the antics of your aunt’s foolish dog, whose sniffer kept reaching closer and closer to the stove from her perch on the back of said aunt’s recliner.

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When the onions and potatoes are tender, usually about an hour after the pot begins to boil, it’s time to eat. Melted butter and clam broth are set at each place, the food and clams are put into platters to be passed around, and as usual I’m too busy to take pictures so the photos below are of the platters already pretty picked over, but I did get a shot of my plate!

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We sat and ate, and talked of memorable clam boils and clam bakes of the past, and tried to figure out who had Uncle Eddie’s copper clam steamer, the one we could use to make a clam boil for 30 people, and then we ate some more. And when we were done we rolled everything up and tossed it in the trash, as you can’t have a clam boil without paper plates and a paper tablecloth to contain the inevitable mess.

So our plan was to ignore the gray and damp by pretending it was summer, and after a delicious meal, playing cards and enjoying dessert the sun made an appearance to indeed brighten our day. That’s what it’s all about!

I hope you all had a happy and blessed Mother’s Day.

Deborah