Sandy Chowder

Emmett Walls’ wife used sandy clams in her chowder.

I went across the sound to have dinner with them and my soup was crunchy and had the effect of grinding my molars if I attempted to chew any of the large bits of potatoes, celery or clams in it.

In order to have totally avoided this unplesant sensation, I would have had to simply swallow whole spoonfuls of chowder brimming with pieces of ingredients large enough to choke me to death.

Therefore, it was a must to do at least some cursory chewing. My skin crawls just recalling it, the bits of sand getting into the teeth, the grating, gnashingness of it all.

When you make chowder with fresh clams, you have to keep the clams alive in a big tin vat of clean seawater overnight so they will open up to do their business while nobody is watching and, when they do, all that sand will come out of them.

If you do not “wash” the live clams in this manner, you’ll be in for a sand-in-mouth experience. This applies to clams you intend to eat raw, or steamed, as well. It’s just that the trapped sand effect becomes much more pronounced in chowder. When eaten raw or steamed, the clams are usually slipped right down one’s throat in a single slurp, often with a dip of drawn butter, or a cocktail sauce, or perhaps a mixture of Marie Sharp’s Habenero Pepper Sauce and 100 proof Russian vodka. In this manner, one does not really chew them as much as greet them with a mild squeeze of tooth and gum before allowing them to pass. Thereafter, the trapped sand moves rapidly to the gut, where it may have an overall cleansing effect over a period of hours.

However, when boiled in a chowder, clams shrink and, if they are sandy, you are going to get that hideous sand crunch and grind, oh dear Lord!

Thank God there was plenty of cold beer at the table so that the sand could be washed down as fast as possible after partially chewing a spoonful of the offending chowder. Even if the swishing of the beer in the mouth has the tendancy to cause an inordinate amount of foaming action that can leak out around the lips giving one the appearance of being a hydrophobic dog.

One of the terrible things about all this is that Emmett’s wife is actually named Sandy.

At one point, she got up to go into the kitchen and Emmett whispered to me, “There’s sand in the chowder, eh?”

I said, “Sandy’s sandy chowder.”

I didn’t find the quip that particularly amusing, but it certainly struck a chord with Emmett. He began to laugh like a jackal and, of course, I followed right along in one of those silly moments where you loose all control for no explainable reason.

Sandy came out from the kitchen.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I lied. “Just thinking about something.”

“Then why are both of you laughing?” she asked.

Emmett said, “We think alike.”

I said, “Thanks for the Sandy, chowder. I mean, the chowder, Sandy.”

She said, “You’re welcome.”

Emmett fell over on the floor in tears.