Once a year, my dad's entire, enormous, extended family got together to enjoy a giant clam bake hosted by my great aunt and uncle. While family gatherings of this style may be common place in coastal towns throughout the country, I feel it is noteworthy to mention that this gargantuan family seafood festival actually took place smack dab in the middle of Ohio. One of my grandmother's younger sisters had married a mountain of a man who chose to pursue a career in agriculture there. Together, with their children, they owned and maintained acres and acres of sprawling farmland. They specialized in raising pigs, but they also kept some big, old brown cows in their barn and a few other farm animals made special guest appearances from time to time.
Out of all the regulars that hung out in their little barnyard, my personal favorite was a curly-coated hound named Clyde whose shaggy fur was once jet black until he got old and it gradually turned to salt and pepper. Clyde was a friendly pooch who spent his days lounging near his little dog house conveniently located in my aunt's side yard. From this particular vantage point, Clyde could easily observe the whole of the farm and alert his owners to any unforeseen changes in the surrounding environment. Clyde the dog loved his job and he prided himself in doing it well, but from time to time, he may have gotten a bit carried away with his self-appointed responsibilities. He barked in order to announce every single activity happening on the farm from guests arriving, to lose pigs on the run, to clunkety tractors passing by. Unfortunately, his ability to prioritize proved to be to somewhat problematic as kids on bicycles, oinking pigs who were safe and secure in their pens, and corn stalks blowing in the breeze garnered the same exact response as unwanted intruders. In fact, Clyde liked to bark so very much that he eventually developed chronic doggy laryngitis. Despite his unfortunate health condition, he continued to bark at everything in sight, ignoring the fact that no sound came out anymore. Clyde was the unofficial head of the clambake welcoming committee, silently greeting all the hungry guests as they arrived at the farm.
When you first arrived at my aunt and uncle's farm, it didn't go entirely unnoticed that it was a bit of a stinky business raising pigs. It was a working farm after all, but if the breeze was blowing in the right direction and even when it wasn't, after awhile you just didn't notice the smell quite so much. This was especially true if you wadded up bits of paper napkin and stuffed them inside each of your nostrils, however, if you happened to be older than seven, this technique was probably not for you. Through some rarely understood social phenomenon, the very moment you turn eight, you immediately become far too cool to walk around a family gathering with brightly colored party napkins sticking halfway out of your nose. This was difficult for the under seven crowd to understand as they found their unique stink-stopping technique to be both effective and highly entertaining.
No matter what camp you actually belonged to, it was virtually indisputable that getting to see all those adorable little piglets up close, made the sometimes smelly situation much more tolerable. Unfortunately, every single one of those cute little pink piggies with curly-q tails eventually grew up to big, honking, hairy hogs covered in mud and who knows what else from snoot to hoof. Why my aunt and uncle hosted a clam bake instead of a pig roast remains somewhat unclear, but for me, this clam-centered occasion was the event of the season, something that I eagerly looked forward to all year long. I constantly pestered my parents throughout the spring and summer months, demanding to know if it was time for the highly anticipated clam bake yet. I began to bother them about it as soon as the winter weather broke as I was certain that meant clam season was just around the corner.
I absolutely adored spending time with my aunt and uncle, although it wasn't likely that we would spend a ton of time with them on the day of the big clam bake. They were far too busy hosting their own party to spend too much time lingering in one spot. However, we did get to see them on a fairly regular basis. Despite living a few hours away from each other, they used to stop by our house quite often. You see there was a high quality livestock auction just down the road from my house where specialty swine could be bought and sold at reasonable prices. Whenever my aunt and uncle were in town on official pig purchasing business, they used to pop in for a quick visit prior to acquiring their new piggies of course. These sometimes surprise visits were always a pleasure and the whole family was always excited to see their car turn into our long, bumpy driveway. The thing that I remember most about the two of them was their hearty sense of humour. They were always so kind-hearted and they both shared a contagious kind of laughter that could completely fill a room. I can appreciate this, because my own laugh often comes out at a ridiculously loud volume. It doesn't happen all the time, but if I find something particularly hilarious, you can easily identify my ear-splitting ha-ha-ing from half a mile away. Some people I have known have found this trait of mine to be a bit overwhelming, but my best friend has always been a fan of my king-sized chuckles. The way she sees it, it always makes her look like the most entertaining person in the entire joint.
This very same aunt and uncle who knew how to laugh and graciously doled out clams every single September, also taught us how to be complete corn snobs. I never purchase ears of corn at the grocery store, not without totally regretting it, and please do not bother to offer me any kind of hog corn. Just because it's yellow and it comes wrapped in a bright green husk does not mean it is fit for human consumption. If an ear of corn wasn't freshly harvested the very same day it was to be eaten, my aunt wouldn't touch it. I grew up to practice and enforce the same strict corn policy in my house. In fact, we still import our corn from the nearby farmlands of Pennsylvania as I have yet to discover a single high quality ear of corn anywhere on the whole of Long Island. Despite the fact that there is a fairly active farming community out east, the farmers there must save all the good corn for themselves. They pawn off their lousy, old field corn onto the city billies who don't know any better but I'm no green horn when it comes to corn. Therefore, I will continue to smuggle my freshly picked Pennsylvania sweet corn across state lines.
Upon moving to this area, I was shocked to learn that when hosting a summer shindig in this neck of the woods, it is common practice to only prepare a single piece of corn per invited guest. I learned this the hard way after accidentally consuming someone else's ear of corn at my neighbor's backyard barbecue. My embarrassing faux pas wasn't even worth it. The first ear was lousy and I was hoping it was simply a dud and that the second one would prove to be delicious. No such luck. I tried to explain to the guy whose ear of corn I had accidentally pilfered that I had just saved his palate from being assaulted by corn that was only fit for animals to eat, but it was no use. I have now been forever labeled in our neighborhood as the local corn hog over an icky old ear of hog corn that I regretted ever bringing to my lips after the very first bite. Instead of being able to discretely dispose of the slightly nibbled bit of compost-worthy corn, I was forced to eat the whole stinking ear. The already awkward situation would have been made even worse if I had stolen some guys highly-anticipated singular ear of corn and then heartlessly chucked it into the trash bin after only consuming three crummy kernels. I would like to go on record among the corn connoisseurs of the world, that I would have rather eaten a well buttered napkin than that rotten old ear of field corn, but I had little choice in the matter.
Back to the family clam bake, where delicious, fresh-picked sweet corn was always served up in abundance. I could hardly contain myself in anticipation of this annual family gathering. I couldn't wait to get my hands on a few ears of that super yummy corn, chow down on some clams, and hang out on the farm. You might find the third and final part of that statement to be slightly out of character for me, as I am not typically a huge fan of the whole farm scene. I grew up practically assaulted by agriculture as nearly every third student in my class lived on a farm and my dad actually sold and repaired farm equipment for a living. One of my older, city dwelling cousins used to tease me by saying "Hey, Farmer!" every time that I saw him. It instantly infuriated me because I was NOT a farmer, nor, for everyone's information, did I ever plan on becoming one at any point in the future. Luckily, when you are five, blind seething rage is only sustainable for about two minutes. After that, you just get over yourself and scurry off to play with your Barbies. By the way, despite our extremely rural locale, I want you all to know that my Barbies always spent their afternoons having lunch at trendy restaurants and going to museums. Not once did they ever milk cows, muck stalls, ride horses, bail hay, or put up vegetables. (For those of you who may not be familiar with that expression, that's country talk for canning the stuff that you grow in your garden.). Despite not being a big fan of all things agricultural, I truly couldn't wait for this clam bake. It wasn't the farm itself that made the event, but it did provide loads of entertainment options and my dad's family was always a rowdy, fun-loving crowd.
As previously mentioned, the farm where the yearly clam bake was held was located in northern Ohio, not too far from the bustling metropolis of Cleveland. Given the interior location of the venue, I am not entirely certain where they sourced their seafood, but I do know that they purchased a boatload of cherry stone clams or quahogs if you prefer to call them that. The preparation process was quite time consuming as the zillions of clams had to be fed cornmeal in giant plastic kiddie pools in order to ensure that they were clean and sand free. As a kid, there was a whole shroud of mystery surrounding the process of layering the food in a certain way in special pots with spigots so that the precious boiling hot broth could be carefully drained out of the pots and all the food was guaranteed to turn out amazing. Besides the main dishes provided by my aunt and uncle, the rest of the family members brought side dishes, dessert, or both. Since my dad's side of the family is chock full of amazing cooks, the table was always covered in delicious dishes and everyone usually brought their personal culinary specialty. What a scrumptious feast!! Even if you weren't particularly fond of seafood, it was guaranteed that you would never walk away from their house hungry on the day of the annual clam bake.
My dad has always been a fan of seafood, but unfortunately fresh fillets of ocean fish and other varieties of shellfish weren't always readily available when you were marooned in the middle of Ohio. Fortunately, in the early years of my parent's marriage, my dad did a lot of traveling for his job, so whenever he found himself in an area that specialized in seafood, he would readily partake. Another issue with the availability of seafood back in Ohio was that my mom didn't personally enjoy snacking on either snapper or shrimp. Growing up, every single Friday in my mother's house was fish night. She used to conveniently and discretely dispose of her foul fish bits in the joint where the leg of the dining room table met the underside of the table top. She lived in constant fear that this little hidey hole would eventually become so crammed full of fish flakes that she would be left with no choice but to actually consume the funky fish that was polluting her plate. Oddly enough, every week, the previous Friday's fish had mysteriously disappeared. They did not own any pets at the time, so where exactly that fish went continues to remain a mystery to this very day. Needless to say, when I was growing up, every Friday in our house was rechristened homemade pizza night. I've mentioned the cardinal rule of our family kitchen once before, but in case you missed it, the cook never has to serve any vittles that she herself does not personally enjoy, unless said dish has been requested as part of someone's favorite birthday meal, then it is an unavoidable requirement.
Given my mom's compete lack of interest in preparing any fish related foods, whenever my dad had the opportunity to get his hands on some quality seafood, he would jump on it, happily sucking down all sorts of salty, savory, sea creatures. This routine was repeated in countless cities across the eastern seaboard, until one day my dad's free pass to gorge himself on seafood unexpectedly expired. He happened to be flying on an airplane, when he popped some sort of little seafood snack into his mouth. Obviously, this was way back in the day before airplane food became unidentifiable, preservative-laden blocks of artificially flavored I'm not sure what. Anyway, shortly after ingesting this little snippet of seafood, my dad started to feel a bit funny, a little tingly. His throat grew scratchy and he developed a mysterious cough that he hadn't had just a few minutes before. While his symptoms were slightly concerning, they were about to reach a whole new level of frightening. As time slowly passed his symptoms grew worse and worse. His ears began to ring so loudly that he could barely hear and he began to see spots in front of his eyes before his vision suddenly went completely black.
Not sure whether he was having a stroke or if someone had slipped him a mick, my wheezing, totally blind, and nearly deaf father flagged down an air hostess and tried to act completely normal while he requested a shot of whiskey. Don't tell the lovely lady that you are in need of medical attention because you can't hear, can't see, and can't breathe because it feels like your windpipe is in a vice grips, just casually request a bit of booze. Excellent emergency plan. Perhaps she simply thought he had developed a bit of anxiety during the flight. Whether he thought the alcohol would help to ease his scary symptoms or whether he thought he would drink a toast to a life well lived in his last few moments over Earth is unclear, even to my father. Perhaps, in reality, it was a bit of both. Either way, the shot magically relieved his symptoms. By all medical accounts, this should never have worked as alcohol is a depressant that should have slowed down his system, keeping him wheezing, sightless and half deaf for even longer, but for whatever miraculous reason it actually worked. My father regained his ability to see, hear and breathe moments after throwing back a generous mouthful of throat-burning whiskey. This was long before the widespread availability of the Epi-pen, so people had to simply make due with whatever tools they had. If a swig of Wild Turkey kept my pop from unexpectedly expiring mid-flight, so be it.
To be fair to my dad, it is a well-known fact that we don't always make the most logically sound decisions in times of extreme crisis. Even my own mother, who is normally quite a rational lady, fell victim to extreme panic and illogical actions when she found herself in a moment of danger at one of the family clambakes. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen inside my aunt's farmhouse and I belief she was helping to prepare an enormous batch of coleslaw to be consumed by the hungry masses, except for me, as coleslaw is the one thing on Earth that I abhor. In fact, I am comfortable admitting that I would rather starve than put a single spoonful of that putrid stuff into my mouth ever again for as long as I live. Anyway, after successfully shredding no less than sixteen bags of carrots using an old school box grater without slicing off a single fingertip, my mom was feeling particularly proud of her work. After shredding the final carrot into the big bowl of slaw, she absentmindedly popped the last remaining bit of carrot into her mouth as it was getting too risky to shred it anymore without inadvertently removing the whorls of her fingerprints. Her happy little toss must have been slightly more vigorous than she initially intended as that little piece of carrot had suddenly become unexpectedly lodged in the back of her throat.
My mom knew better than to excuse herself from the room, but she did not let any of the thirty-five other ladies crammed in the kitchen around her know what was happening. She never made the international sign for choking. She never beat her fist on the table to get someone's attention. She never jumped up and down and waved her arms in the air to alert the other women that she needed help. She never attempted to give herself the Heimlich maneuver over the back of a chair. Despite carefully lecturing each of her own children on what to do if they ever found themselves choking and in need of help, she just stood there frozen in disbelief over the fact that she was about to tragically expire in the middle of the annual family clambake. She hoped she didn't take out that colossal bowl of coleslaw that she had just spent three hours making when she collapsed to the floor. Seconds before she was about to lose consciousness, her final plan of action was to fruitlessly attempt to yell for my father. Nevermind that even if she had been able to squeak out any sort of sound, my dad was a quarter mile away helping to tend the coals with the rest of the guys over at the clam pit. Miraculously, in her voiceless attempt to shout my dad's name, the little chunk of carrot that had been clogging her airway was forced to move along and she was finally able to breath again. Although it didn't make sense, it did save her life. I wouldn't recommend her technique to anyone else anymore than I would recommend a shot of Jack to cure an allergic reaction to seafood. She might as well have been relying on good old silent Clyde to alert my dad to the fact that she was about to choke to death on a leftover chunk of coleslaw carrot.
My mom's controversial, yet successful, anti-choking technique was a one time event. Not once did I ever hear her recommend it to anyone else. Unlike Mom, my dad continued to attempt to manage his adverse reaction to shellfish with a little nip of alcohol for many years. The truth about my dad's questionable treatment plan was that he did not initially attribute that medical emergency on the airplane to a seafood allergy. In fact, in what may have been a new-agey attempt at practicing mind over matter (or complete and total denial), my dad continued to consume small amounts of seafood over the years in the hopes that eventually his food allergy might magically resolve itself. It did not, as evidenced by the hearty clam cough that he developed at the end of every summer while indulging in shellfish at the annual family festival of all things clam. My mother was personally not a fan of this technique nor were we kids. It always started with fits of sneezing so loud that you could easily hear them all the way across the farm. While standing inside the house in my aunt's kitchen, surrounded by a gaggle of chatty female relatives who were busy preparing party food, my mom could clearly her my father's colossal, clam-induced ker-choos. His highly-amplified, serial sneezes were followed by a wheezy asthmatic cough and yet my dad continued to consume a few more clams undeterred. Not only did this ongoing little dance with the devil irritate my mother, it made no sense to her whatsoever as she herself was no stranger to allergic reactions.
As a tiny baby, my mother used to break out in mysterious hives from head to toe. The origin of these itchy bumps was unknown for quite some time. It happened so often that my grandmother and the doctor were in constant contact. Finally, through the process of elimination, it was discovered that my poor mother was highly allergic to wool, a material that babies were constantly surrounded by back in those days. When she was eventually old enough to require bandages for boo-boos, it quickly became apparent that she also had an allergy to latex. Point being, she was well versed in her own allergic reactions and her method of dealing with them was to avoid the substances that causes her to develop intensely itchy sores and bumpy rashes like the plague. Not once did I ever come home from school to find her covered in a box of band aids from head to toe, wearing latex gloves on each hand, while tightly wrapped in wool blankets in an attempt to overcome the physical weaknesses that caused her to be allergic to said items. But unlike my mom, for decades, my strong-willed dad refused to give up hope. After thirty years or so, he has finally accepted that he does indeed have an allergy to shellfish. He is now the proud owner of injectable epinephrine in case of emergency, a more effective, yet admittedly far less enjoyable, alternative to taking a great big slug of firewater.
Not surprisingly, my father wasn't the only one in the family who was allergic to seafood. My parents were always concerned that one of their children would develop an allergy to shellfish as well. One of my dad's little sisters always served one of those fancy shrimp cocktail rings at her holiday parties. I loved the taste of shrimp and it was never served in our house because my mom disliked it and my dad wasn't supposed to eat it. While my dad would have happily slurped up shrimp drenched in cocktail sauce anyway, my mom preferred that he continued to breathe freely. So, given the lack of shrimp in our house, I used to eat all the shellfish I could hold whenever it was available. I wasn't aware until I was much older that my aunt was actually allergic to the seafood that she so graciously served. So allergic, that one time my uncle gave her a little kiss shortly after he had snuck a morsel of seafood off the freshly prepared shrimp platter. My aunt quickly discovered the rat when her lips swelled up to twice their usual size due to the shrimp laced smooch my uncle had planted on her moments before the guests arrived. If Botox lip plumping injections had been all the rage back then, she would have had a much cheaper, albeit somewhat risky, alternative! Although if you're willing to risk it all in the pursuit of beauty and youth, I suppose exploiting your own allergy to seafood might be a shade better than willingly injecting rat poison into parts of your face, but that's just my opinion.
What you may not realize about seafood allergies is that they often develop later in life. The compounds in seafood that cause allergies gradually build up in your system over time. While you once might have been able to polish off pounds of lobster, shrimp, crabs, and clams at your local seafood buffet with nary a wheeze, eventually your condition gradually worsens until you can no longer tolerate seafood at all. My brother spent his formative years by taking a weekly trip to the local dairy isle with my grandparents. A dairy aisle is a little seasonal snack hut that serves various types of ice cream along with little paper-lined baskets of fried food. Before indulging in an after dinner ice cream cone, my brother would stuff himself with a heaping, red, plastic basket of crispy, breaded, deep-fried shrimp. He often jokes that if he had known he would one day develop a shellfish allergy, he would have paced himself more carefully, not realizing that he would ingest his predetermined lifetime quota of shrimp before the age of nine.
His seafood allergy became apparent after munching on a tainted fish stick in our school cafeteria. Obviously somebody at the fish processing factory was sleeping on the job as some shellfish must have accidentally slipped into the giant vat of fish flakes that were carefully formed into little logs and flash frozen. This means of preparation allowed those unfortunate, land-locked folks in the Midwest without access to fresh fish to "enjoy" the day's fresh catch in the form of frozen fish sticks. Shortly after chomping one of those crispy cylinders of compressed cod bits, my brother began to feel funny, a little tingly. His throat grew scratchy and he developed a mysterious cough that he hadn't had just a few minutes before. While his symptoms were slightly concerning, they were about to reach a whole new level of frightening. As time slowly passed his symptoms grew worse and worse. His ears began to ring so loudly that he could barely hear. He began to see spots in front of his eyes before his vision went completely black. Since he knew the story of my dad's first allergic reaction, he knew what was happening, and he knew exactly what to do to save himself.
Unlike my father's incident on the airplane, shots of alcohol were scarce in the school cafeteria. It was common knowledge that one of the Math teacher's kept a secret flask hidden in his desk drawer, but attempting to obtain it would be too risky and drinking after Mr. Super Cigarette Breath would be too gross. It might save his life but them he would probably fail Algebra and his life would be over in a completely different way. He would also need a lip transplant after sharing a flask with Mr. Chronic Mouth Stink. Seeing no alternative, he calmly turned to one of his pals at the lunch table and said, "Look, I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily but I've just gone blind after eating one of these fish sticks, could you do me a favor and guide me down the hall to the nurse's office without making a big scene?" Even under duress, no one wanted to be forever remembered as that unfortunate kid who got carted out of the cafeteria on a stretcher. After an emergency phone consult with Mom and Dad, the nurse knocked him out with a dose of Benadryl and sent him home. My brother and I are super sensitive to medication so Benadryl totally turns us into Rip Van Winkle. My brother probably slept for at least a week before finally coming around. Unlike my father, after that incident, my brother no longer dabbled in shellfish or fish sticks ever again. In fact, by the time I started school, fish sticks had been removed from the school lunch menu entirely. Some nasty rumors were circulating that they had made a kid go blind a few years back which greatly reduced their popularity among the lunch purchasing population.
Shellfish intolerance is more common than you might realize. A close friend of mine also suffers from a serious allergy to shellfish. One of my favorite shellfish disaster stories happened to her when she was enjoying an evening out at a really lovely restaurant. The gentleman she was seeing ordered a serving of crab legs. She mentioned in passing that she was allergic to them but as long as he didn't force her to eat one, she should be just fine. They had been enjoying a delicious dinner together until the evening came to an abrupt halt after what would have been disregarded as a minor dining mishap under normal circumstances. In the middle of their lively conversation, in an over zealous moment of crab cracking, a tiny bit of liquid from inside one of the crab legs shot directly across the table and hit my friend square in the eye. Aside from stinging a bit, it was nothing that a few quick dabs with her napkin couldn't fix. No biggie. Until rather suddenly, it became a really huge biggie, as in her eye exploded to three times its normal size, after which the entire right side of her face became hideously contorted. Not exactly the kind of impression she was hoping to make and her date felt terrible for inadvertently causing her to become temporarily disfigured. It's hard too look cute and act flirty when you have unexpectedly morphed into the likes of Quasimodo.
Knowing all of this is starting to make me ever more leery of consuming shellfish. I love it and I live on the water, so it is readily available. At least once a week in the summer, I can be found wielding a pair of tongs and wrestling a bunch of angry, feisty crabs into an enormous pot of boiling water. I've been lucky. I have yet to have one of them escape and run around my kitchen threatening to pinch my toes off, but I am sure that it is bound to happen one of these days. After steaming them, my husband and I sit down to enjoy our fresh caught feast. He dives right in and begins chomping on crab bits, while I am always a bit more tentative. It's not the business of crab cracking that slows me down, rather it's those little annoying questions in the back of my mind. Is my throat getting itchy or am I imagining it? Am I developing the crab cough or did I just swallow down the wrong pipe? Are my lips getting tingly or did I just get a little carried away with the Old Bay Seasoning? So far so good, but I am ever on alert for those sneaky symptoms, wondering if I'm about to crash though my crab, shrimp, and clam quota never to be able to enjoy shellfish again for as long as I live. Will one too many childhood clam bakes take me out of the seafood game early? Only time will tell. In the mean time, on any given night, if you were to sail past my house on your boat, you could clearly hear me laughing like a hyena, while I crack crabs and shuck clams at my dining room table. I'll be reminiscing with my husband about fond family memories like clam bakes on the farm of my aunt and uncle, hoping to successfully avoid the dreaded clam cough passed down from previous generations before me.
While I don't currently own an Epi-pen, we do keep a bit of Benadryl on hand in our medicine cabinet just in case. I would only rely on it in an extreme emergency though, as I'd hate to turn into Sleeping Beauty and lose an entire week of my life over a false alarm in the food allergy department. Don't worry about me though. I assure you that I have learned from the error of my parent's ways. If one unfortunate day in the future my ears start to ring and my throat gets all tingly after chowing down on a bunch of shellfish, I promise to actually seek some sort of medical attention. I won't just blindly stumble across the kitchen in order to suss out a bottle of booze from the bottom shelf of the pantry despite the fact that I hear, while somewhat unorthodox, it's a fairly effective cure for the dreaded clam cough. And, if I ever find myself choking on a morsel of food while standing in the middle of an entire flock of close friends and family members, I will actually let someone near me know about my near death dilemma. I will forgo silently attempting to yell for help, despite the fact that my husband is out of earshot and I am unable to speak in favor of life saving measures that have been proven to work in a choking emergency. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the fact that my parents have taught me an amazing amount of essential life lessons that have kept me on the straight and narrow for decades. However, by my parent's own admission, not every bit of parental guidance is a keeper and hindsight is always 20/20. In retrospect, the alternative treatments of food allergies and choking are probably not techniques that my mom and dad would recommend that their offspring attempt to replicate in the future. Therefore, I will be filing these two questionable emergency response techniques into the old "Do as I say, not as I do" category of parenting. In these two particular cases, I feel fairly confident that this decision will not bother my parents one little bit.
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