The Pink Cricut

I had this crazy idea to make homemade clam chowder-- which was a great idea in theory, except we live in IOWA and it is the middle of WINTER. 

Hmmm... our grocery amazingly did have "fresh" clams in the deli.  However, since they were obviously flown in, they were not as fresh as they would have been if we lived on the coast.  And, since we don't live on the coast, I know very little about what fresh clams are supposed to look like, smell like, etc.

So, Kyle and I scrubbed the shells, and steamed them.  They opened very quickly, so maybe we had the heat too high?  Then, as we were taking out the meat, (family project--everyone wanted to be involved, especially Alexis) we noticed that the colors varied, and the smell varied.  We threw them all in, and continued with our recipe.  It was a fairly simple recipe, found in the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. 

When it was finished about 45 minutes later, we all sat down with our bowls of chowder.  It looked like the clam chowder I have had at good restaurants,  and the broth was great.  It was creamy and the perfect consistency.  But, unfortunatley it was very salty.  Not so salty, that you couldn't eat it, just salty.  I didn't add any salt, the clams were just too salty. 

Since, I was the only one who liked clam chowder to begin with--and one of the only ones who had even had clam chowder before--I thought some bites (with clam) were good, and some bites were very off.  It was liking eating a bowl of minefield soup.  Would you get a good bite, or a yucky bite.  Finally, one by one we stopped eating the soup--not because we were disgusted--but, because we just couldn't go through with the whole bowl.  I think I was mostly convinced that some of the clams may have been bad, and I didn't want anyone getting sick.

So, although I won't post the recipe-- I did want to share, that sometimes we do have flops in the Hamer Kitchen-- it happens.  We also learned that we need to learn more about uncommon seafood, before cooking it from scratch.  Not that clams are uncommon, but most households, in the midwest do not cook them from scratch.

Ps. We did order in Pizza later

Next, we are going to try our hand at Lobster bisque-- and I am hoping like crazy it turns out AMAZING!!