Day Seventy-Six: A Clammy St. Paddy's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I do love a theme (you should see me: green shirt, green-striped leggings, green Converse, and a green crocheted flower in my hair) but it turns out, I like all the classic Irish dishes. And I've already overcome my Irish cream thing. I looked up some typically Irish foods, and the only one I was uncertain of was Dulse, which is dried seaweed, and which would be difficult to find in my little town, anyway. I didn't do a ton of research. I'm sure there are certain cow innards that appear in Irish dishes as they do in English dishes, but I was lazy and decided to go with something I already had in my cupboard. Something I've been dreading, even though I've had it before. Here's my logic in pretending it's a good St. Patrick's Day food: There are a lot of Irish people on the east coast. The east coast is famous for its clam chowder.

That's right, I finally went back to clam chowder. Actually, I've had it twice now. Once that I blogged about and once that I'm pretty sure I forgot to mention, on the weekend of the ski trip when I first had my stuffed, bacon-wrapped dates. The first time it was the canned, low-fat, low-salt kind and I found myself absolutely repelled by the chewiness of the clams, often swallowing the larger bits whole just to get them down. The second batch was much yummier, and infused with bacon (everything really is better with a little pig fat), though the clams were a little gritty. This batch, also from a can but full-fat and full-salt, was just about in the middle. I only had one instance of grit and it was minimal. The clams were chopped smaller than the first batch. The soup itself was just better than the first batch. And I think, both from eating clams and mussels and other chewy things in desserts (rice pudding, etc.) I'm getting used to chewier consistencies and they don't bother me as much as they used to. I'm also getting used to seafoody smells and flavors. They're almost pleasant. This clam chowder, that I was so dreading revisiting, was pretty good. I might even order clam chowder in a restaurant on a cold day.

Wow.

As a little footnote, things are going to get more interesting soon. I promise. I've been really busy and I stumbled across this cache of desserts I don't like and kind of stalled out there for a while. But up ahead we have more sea creatures and mammalian/avian innards. Yum, right? If not yummy, they'll at least be interesting.