This Is Not a Clam Scam

Ach, I slept too late and now I'll never sleep tonight. All people with children may now politiely tell me to go screw.

Friday night, in lieu of party plans that fell through, Tom and I went to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. It was a splurge, but deserved, I felt. There is nothing more relaxing to me than sitting at a dimly lit table, sipping wine and waiting for the good food to be brought to me. Ah.

Everthing was great until the entrees arrived. Tom's dinner included clams. The waiter had failed to mention that clams were a part of the special, but we both like them and were happy. Yay, clams! This was our thought.

I waited until Tom had eaten two before I asked for one. I unstuck it from the bottom of the shell and slurped. And chewed. And crunched. A lot. I had just eaten a teaspoon of sand with my little clam.

Tom ate four more, all full of sand. He kept eating them because we do not complain at restaurants. We would rather eat sand than make trouble or draw attention to ourselves. I believe I said, "Just eat everything else and leave the clams."

But when the waiter asked if everything was alright, we told him about the sand. About how the sand was more than just a little-we would call it excessive. We also said we weren't upset, God no, but just thought the kitchen should know.

He looked at our pile of six empty clam shells and I knew what he was thinking: Clam Scammers. But he took the dinner away and brought a new one.

Some Background on Preparing Clams: There really is no way to remove sand from a clam after it's been cooked. It has to soak before being cooked for a long time and spit the sand out on its own. And then, it has to soak again. If the soaking didn't happen, there's nothing to be done later. So we didn't have high hopes about the clams in Dinner Number Two.

Tom put the first clam in his mouth and the entire restaurant could hear the crunch. The waiter asked and we told.

Luckily, we live in America where portion sizes are so gigantic that we could easily share my dinner and have dessert and espresso on the house and still leave feeling like we had a good meal.

The moral of the story is, order the clams, hope for sand, and get free desserts and coffee.

Yep.