Friday, January 21, 2011

The Razor Clam...

...is a strange little beastie, even among the world of bivalve mollusks. Being a clam, it has a shell but its shell is of the softer or more brittle variety - in other words pretty darned thin and vulnerable- certainly not like most clams with which I am familiar. The shape of this clam is basically that of a straight edged razor (yeah usually only old timers know about straight edged razors). The type I am speaking about, of clams not straight edged razors, are of the genus Ensis not Siliqua. I bought a bunch of them this evening. They are all about 5 to 6 inches long and look like the ones in this article though they could be the ones in this other article. I saw Andrew Zimmern, of Bizarre Foods, eat them raw on a show recently and picked up the bunch with fine but weird eats in mind. The one he ate was huge compared to the ones i got but they will have to do. I am guessing I got about a pound of them. In that, I am estimating that about 2/3 to 3/4 of the weight is eatable because the shell weighs so little due to how thin it is.

Right after I got home with em, I cracked open my cook book and took a gander at the section on clams. It said to clean razor clams, you snip off the end of the neck (I hope they meant the foot), cut em out of the shell, cut and scoop out the black muck and mire (I am guessing that is the equivalent of clam poop) and cut away other dark parts and then what you are left with is what you eat. The good thing is you don't need to pry or shuck open the shells, they come apart or break apart easily enough by hand. Well, I did all that and what was left was alike to the regular meaty part of a regular clam - just narrower and longer in proportion.

Now once I had done that, what else could I have done but eat it. So there it went through the lips over the gums and after a bit of chewing - look out stomach here it comes. It was absolutely delicious - I mean that - really I do. I love my seafood, and love raw clams and oysters, and now have to say I love these weird looking clams, that remind me of my great-grandfather's straight razor, as well. After one, I had another. Not that one wasn't enough to satisfy my curiosity, well really it wasn't because you can never really tell from just one taste of delicate flavor if it was good or not. Get that - it has a delicate flavor. The flavor is also definitely a clam like taste but something else too, something that I could not figure after just one clam. When I had the second one, I had it figured, it tasted something like a clam and something like an oyster! Mmmmmm that was gooooood, very gooooooooooood!

Despite how good they tasted, I decided to place them into a holding pattern until tomorrow. I have the in-laws coming over tomorrow for Christmas dinner. Yeah, I know, it is a bit late for Christmas. They were supposed to be here the day after Christmas but we got about 14 inches of snow that day and the snow just killed our plans. (Oh my goodness - have I offended a liberal -should I have said the snow just made us change our plans instead of being so violent prone as to have said killed our plans?) Well - whatever - tomorrow I am going to kill some clams and I am guessing my son and my two brothers-in-law are going to help me annihilate them and I don't care whom that offends - I am going to enjoy the little slimy critter as they slide down my throat.

All the best,
GB

Apple iPhones and Why I Will Never Buy One

I will probably never buy myself an Apple iPhone, nor any other product that is sold by Apple. Why is that? First and foremost because I cannot stand the Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. It's a personal preference or should I say lack of preference when it comes to him for me. The guy creeps me out just looking at him. Each time I see him on the news, I almost actually expect to see an aura of glowing words floating around him - those words: ultra leftist liberal exploitive leech. Just have always gotten the creeps when I saw him. Take that along with the crowd that first bought Apple computers big time, way back when, and I am really creeped out. They were all pretty much just like him except not as rich. Nowadays he has gotten more of a main stream crowd if only because mainstream, sadly, has gone much further left than it used to be. Of course you also could consider his politics - they are, I imagine much likethat aura I mentioned. His politics seem to play over onto his business dealings and into how he treats his customers too - like he is the Pied Piper and they are the morons rats which must blindly follow him. Of course that is all just how I feel about him, but it is enough to make me not want to buy his products.

Need an example of what I am talking about. Go
here and read the article about where it is reported that the latest Apple gimic is removing then changing the screws in the back of iPhones, when they are brought in for repair to Apple service techs, to screws that the user (as in the OWNER of the phone) cannot later remove or would find very difficult to remove. Thus, the owner cannot even do something as simple as easily changing the battery of the phone. And guess what, it seems they were keeping it a secret from their customers! If that is the Free Market at work, give me the CCCP anyday.

He may be a genius, may be a savvy businessman, may be the penultimate computer geek, and may be filthy rich and his iPhones and iPads may be snazzy with all the virtual bells & whistles but none of those are any reason for me to admire him or for me to even consider buying his products - he and his business practices just scuzz me out that much.

Mind you, I do not wish him any ill, I realize he is out on medical leave or something like that, it is just that the latest report about them allegedly screwing their customers by changing the screws was over the top for me, enough so that I needed to vent.

Later 4 U,
GB