I was invited to go to a farewell feast at my father’s shortly before I was to leave so I decided to do this a few days beforehand. They thought it would be amusing to come up with an outrageous set of dinner courses that I may not have ever tried before. These were classic New England dishes, seafood to be exact, and although I was aware of this I still didn’t really prepare for what was coming.

There before me in a bowl was a set of “steamers” or little necked clams as the stores called them. I must have given off quite an expression of repulsion although I was trying desperately to do the opposite. I don’t make a habit of offending the cook. Wendy must have picked up on this as she started to immediately tell me I didn’t have to eat them. Well, they were cooked, who cares if I was plucking the remains of their cousins off the beaches of Maine just a few weeks ago.

I opened up the little shell and there was this gelatinous completely alien-looking piece of flesh staring up at me. It had a rubber band like “body” a bulging soft “stomach” and a hard brown “neck.” None of these labels struck me as being particularly anatomically correct but who am to say? This creature was utterly strange and seemed to be composed entirely of just a digestive system in a shell. I bit into the belly, it was delicate in flavor and texture and honestly wasn’t that bad. Texturewise it was most like a scallop but a lot smoother and softer. A pile of green goo that must have been its last meal spilled out onto my plate. Oh, look at that, the stomach might actually be a stomach. I couldn’t eat the fibrous ribbon-like body, just touching a piece of it with my teeth almost resulted in me ralphing all over the table but hey look! At least I can say I tried!

The next course was rice and shrimp. I have always loved shrimp, but currently I was keeping one as a pet. I mentioned this and Wendy immediately spat out an apology, but it wasn’t necessary, I thoroughly enjoyed the dish.

The next dish was lobster. This I expected.  I snapped mine’s tail off with a loud crack and pulled out its meat with a fondue fork. I devoured the tasty morsels in butter and moved on to its claws were it soon lost a thumb with another loud crack and then to add insult to injury we took a nutcracker after the lower claw. I was told all the legs come right off in a clump if we wanted to eat the guts in the main body… I didn’t… I still ripped mine off… more green goo… I sucked on the little ant-like legs with a morbid sort of glee, maintaining this was the most amusing part of eating lobster.

I was past full but there was more. Now it was two slices of seedless watermelon which was so good. Then I was given fresh raspberries on top of a canned pear, everything swimming under home-made whip cream. Now that is a dessert I can appreciate, simple and delicious! More watermelon. Then marshmallows, the big ones, toasted on the fire in the drizzly rain.

I showed Wendy that you could peel and eat the big marshmallows numerous times. I also dropped a marshmallow on the coal and watched it turn into a giant blob of white lava ooze. Wendy was horrified and fascinated, guess she’s never done that with a marshmallow. Her reaction amused me.

I also visited the horses while I was there and checked up on their three wee poodles, all so much better behaved than my mothers. SIGH. All and all we had a fantastic dinner, good conversation, and nothing was too awkward as it sometimes can be.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!