Reid and I decided to take a day to celebrate moving in together by having an(other) oyster picnic.
We have a whole extra kitchen set now so I took one stainless steel pot out to make into a pot we could use on the grill. It came in really handy for a pound of clams we bought.
We followed the basic instructions provided by the girl at Hog Island Oyster farms:
* Melt butter in a pot.
* Cook chopped shallots in butter
* Add some beer or wine (we used Red Stripe, a lager)
* Add parsley (optional -- we didn't have any)
* Put unopened clams into pot, not too crowded, and make sure the liquid covers them
* Cover pot and cook until clams open
* Eat with fork (and bread) and give a little happy sigh because it's the middle of the week, you're taking time to enjoy your life, and it tastes so damn good.
It was a wonderful day.
ADDENDUM: I completely forgot that we had some near-misses with exploding chestnuts during this picnic -- always slice the skin of your chestnuts before putting them on the grill, unless you want them to go off like shotgun shells in a poof of powdery chestnut.
