It is low tide in Eastport, Maine,  the right time to go clam digging.  This part of the coast experiences the most extreme low and high tides.  It can drop as low as 28 feet below the sea level , changing the landscape dramatically and opening clam beds.  If you don’t mind getting a little muddy, dirty, and sweaty, grab yourself a pair of rubber gloves, a pitch fork, and a bucket, and go dig some clams.  Have some fun in the muddy sand!

Right in our backyard, there is a clam bed waiting to be explored. The smell of salt water and seaweed flows around the area making us more excited about finding clams. As soon as you walk on the ocean bed, you hear this subtle pop from little holes in the sand, revealing the exact location of the clams.  Bigger holes mean bigger clams.  As soon as you start digging and bring them to the surface, sometimes the clams squirt out a stream of water like a little fountain, splashing us and making us laugh.  It is good to dig five or six inches from the holes so you don’t stab the little guys. The clams should be bigger than two inches in size in order to keep it.  

In an hour, Jeremy and I dug around ten pounds of clams.  We try to dig enough for one meal for two, since the seafood is always better eaten fresh. After we rinsed the clams, we placed them in salt water from the ocean and left them overnight so they can spit their sand out from inside.  Keeping them in salt water is important because the fresh water will kill them. 

The next day, I used a sponge to scrub them and rinse them well to eliminate all the sand out.  We boiled  the clams in white wine sauce with onion for about ten minutes and garnished them with fresh parsley.  The clams tasted sweet with a hint of the ocean.  Packed with lean protein and nutrients, the clams provided such a great meal for us to remember.  

Another recipe that I have tried that I found in NYT Cooking: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015765-steamed-clams-in-spicy-tomato-sauce, was steamed clams in tomato sauce.  Just to make it easy to eat, I removed all the shells and added a piece of toast.  So good!!!