Spaghetti Alla Vongole Prep

I probably should talk about Saturdays football and the United vs Spurs result, but my despair for years over Michael Carrick and frustration at Sir Alex not finding a replacement for Paul Scholes by now, means I won't. It is 07:25 Sunday and I am just going to watch the MotD re-run to torment myself.

This is a totally accidental shot taken Saturday afternoon before it all kicked-off. I quite like the oddness of it, as well as the curving horizon. It shows my Cockle Quality Control Monitoring Station (MrsB) set up in the middle of the Blue Flag Beach at Red Wharfe Bay in Anglesey. Her job was to grade and check for duds (bogus ones just filled with sand but clamped shut by suction that can ruin a meal if not spotted in time).

It was a beautiful, but windy day today, but we got about 200 big dobbers in under 2 hours. Half of these went on to form a magical Spaghetti Alla Vongole for Saturday night with Malcolm and Shona coming for dinner. Delicious.

But where did our hunter gathering obsession first start? I often wonder. I do distinctly remember one holiday on the Outer Hebrides in 1997 when before we left, I bought every listed condiments from the recipes in Rick Stein's Taste of the Sea book. I then spent every day on holiday with MrsB and J trying to dig or catch the main ingredients to go with each recipe. What we failed to catch we bought in one big shop at the fishmarket in Stornaway. "Don't you have fish where you come from?" the fishmonger asked us looking perplexed.

It was Rick Stein who also first introduced us to the seductive notion of hunting for Razor Clams, though he forgot to mention the need for being aware of local tide times, and the fact they could only be found at extreme 'Springs' low water. It took us about 5 years hunting (and Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall) for the penny to finally drop. After that, there was no holding us back.