Back in Our Winter Digs

After an absolutely food filled extravaganza in Cedar Key, we pulled back into our winter spot.  Cedar Key is known for its clam farming and more recently oyster farming.  We have never before taken advantage of that fact, even though we took a tour of one of the farms there.  This time we vowed to change that and get a bunch of clams and oysters and go crazy.  We did!

Our view out the front window

The gorgeous sunrise

The Southern Cross Clam Farm is right next door to the cool little campground we were staying at, Low Key Hideaway, so we walked over our first morning and bought 100 Topneck clams and 50 oysters.  We carried our purchases back to the campground and then ran into town to buy a clam knife, something we thought would be easy to get, wrong, no one had one, I guess everyone around here eats their clams cooked. 

What 100 clams looks like

It was lunch time when we got back, so we attempted to open some oysters and a few clams.  Jan got the knack on the oysters right away, I had more trouble at first, and then without a clam knife we tried and tried to shuck a couple clams, ha.  No way we could get into the clams.  

Jan had the knack for the oysters!

We then cranked up the grill and put a few oysters on so they could open by themselves, although both of us much preferred the cold raw ones to the grilled ones.

So after warming up with the oysters, we got out the clams to grill.  We grilled them until they opened and then put them on a tray, and poured a white wine, butter, and garlic sauce over them, and enjoyed them along with some crusty bread, and completely splurged with a Guinness!

Delish!

After recovering with a nice nap:-)  We contemplated dinner and decided to have stuffed baked clams and a salad.

Making the stuffing

Getting ready for the stuffing and then stuffed before going in the oven

The finished product

That finished our first day, night, night.

Our next and final day, we started with raw oysters, and amazingly we had exactly 24 left and by now we could both shuck them pretty easily.  So our lunch was oysters on the half shell, yummy!

So that left one more dinner and we opted for linguine in white clam sauce.  

So that's all folks, what fun we had doing all this.  I will say the clams and oysters from Cedar Key are wonderful, clean and great tasting.

So now we are settling into our site for the winter, lots to do to make it our own again.  I will catch up later with a recap of our year's travels and then soon after get into our myriad of projects for the winter.  Bon Appetite!