I enjoy cooking. Thanksgiving gives me a chance to play in the kitchen, and this year to extend playtime a few more days with some fresh shellfish. Sure, the turkey was pretty good this year (thanks to my brother Mike for the smoked turkey tips), but the lure of fresh oysters and clams makes even good leftover turkey take a back seat.We spent Friday afternoon and evening with our friends, the Whites, digging razor clams down on the Washington coast. We didn't all catch our limits but my daughter Meredith (shown in picture) came close, and now has the title "clam whisperer". I'm a little off my game - the chemo has sapped my endurance and I get winded pretty easily, but I can't use that as an excuse for not making a limit - I just didn't see anything that looked like a clam this time out. So the student has now become the master. I did manage to catch a few, and insisted on photographic evidence, shown below as Exhibit B. That rosey glow and bright red honker is not my attempt to play Rudolph the Red-Nosed clam digger - yeah it's this week's latest set of side-effects (more later).
Exhibit B
Earlier in the day, I went up to Seattle with the Whites. While Susan watched their daughter march in the Thanksgiving parade, Tim and I hit Pike Place to track down a sampling of Pacific coast oysters (as promised in last week's post). The selection was limited to two varieties this time around, but that just means that we'll get to go back and try the rest later when they're more readily available. 
Tim is shown here picking out a dozen choice Kumamoto oysters.
Our verdict? We liked the Kumamotos a lot - an unusually sort of creamy texture and almost a little on the sweet side - we'd definitely have them again. The Pacifics were a completely different taste - very briny, perhaps more than we had expected. We go camping every year with the Whites (and a bunch of other folks -many are fellow NC Staters) and dig clams and oysters. We're used to a different kind of oysters - Quilcenes and whatever the monster oysters are at Duckabush Flats on Hood Canal. Now that we've tried a few more, it will be interesting to see what we think of them when we return next June. And the razor clams - we had them today along with the oysters as clam chowder, boiled shrimp, along with Tim's scallops & orzo and fresh sauteed Chanterelle mushrooms. A good and filling time was had by all.
Now the lowdown on this week's treatment. I was puzzled and perhaps a bit concerned last week because I still hadn't had a reaction to my last treatment. I did have an amazing set of itches that were not particularly pleasant (and still aren't). But nothing else until Friday afternoon. As we headed for the coast, my face started feeling hot - just like the first go around with the "nuclear option". Uh oh. The pictures above on the beach show it starting as the rosey red glow, which later felt like someone taking a blowtorch to my skin. I apologize to anybody who saw me today - I look like a cooked lobster (perhaps my penance for consuming and enjoying the seafood???). The rest of the rashy skin breakout is now starting as I write this. The Jekyll and Hyde transformation begins again... A warning to my coworkers - I may not be pretty on Monday - the setting looks like it's going for maximum ugly again. I can't wait to see what I look like in the morning.....
A Bird of Paradise at a flower stall in Pike Place.
