# Is that a geoduck in your pocket?



## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

I hope this works, i saw this on TV a couple months ago. I had this sushi style as a amuse at Le Bernardin.

Funny stuff:roll:


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

OMG!! Why did he have to try to eat the guts?

So now I know what to do with a geoduck and how to break it down. I'll leave the more artistic comments about this bivalve to others. :blush:


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## oldschool1982 (Jun 27, 2006)

I gotta get out more!. Too much time spent playing with the new house, model trains.... That was not only hilarious but also quite informative. I had once hear about geoduck but have actually never seen it. Not a big sashimi/sushi fan. Well except for the wasabi, pickled ginger, pickled japanese radish and those california rolls.


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## kuan (Jun 11, 2001)

Why is it spelled geoduck when it's pronounced gooeyduck?


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Same reason ghoti spells "fish". :crazy:


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Don't ask me about spelling, old timers know what I mean


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## phoebe (Jul 3, 2002)

Yikes! I'm with Mezz on that one.
As with so many other critters, I have to ask: who was the first person to look at this thing and say, "mmm, mmm, good eatin'!" :lips:


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

It's a giant clam. That's not hard to imagine as good eating, at least to me.

Artichokes is the one that baffles me, as good as they are. How on earth would you figure out to eat that? Let's go eat that spiky tough thistle!

Phil


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## kuan (Jun 11, 2001)

Heh...  You crack me up!


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## aprilb (Feb 4, 2006)

Who on earth thought: Gee...it's a relative of deadly nightshade, the flowers are poisonous, the leaves and stalks are poisonous...we'll just dig it up and eat the big bulbous root.

Or vegemite? I swear it was invented on a bet by two pissed Aussies in a bar. Black Salty Fermented Vegetable Paste? <Nar...YOU try it...Nar YOU try it...> I'm guessing that the first bloke who tried it got a few free rounds.

April
:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:


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## ishbel (Jan 5, 2007)

Nope - those Aussies weren't daft, they merely copied the British foodstuff Marmite. They knew the dangerous food tasting had been done before they decided to copy....

Yes, I'm a marmite fan!

http://www.marmite.com/


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Hey, I thought that if it isn't about food, don't post it here.

Oh yeah, it isn't about food.


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## panini (Jul 28, 2001)

Are there male and female goeducks?


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## chrose (Nov 20, 2000)

Thank you very much!  That's a visual I didn't need running around through my head! :blush:


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

That guy in that clip was thinking something along those lines. His "Magnum!" comment seems to be a comparison to "large" sized prophylactics.....


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## panini (Jul 28, 2001)

I like dirty jobs, in fact, we don't really stay much from that channel. Love mythbustersa also


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## mikelm (Dec 23, 2000)

Really great video! 

We lived in a house on Puget Sound for four years and undoubtedly had hundreds of geoducks in the sand-flats in front of the house. They were greatly prized for chowder but hardly used at all because they were so hard to catch.

You went out at low tide in the wet sand flats and looked for the telltale mark in the sand above the top of the geoduck neck. As soon as the clam felt the pressure of your footsteps, it retracted the neck down about four feet - you saw the "real" length of the neck in the sheath they pulled out of the ones in the video.

Then you had to dig down the four feet or so of slumping, wet sand to get to the clam itself. If you succeeded in reaching through the sand to grab the neck and pulled, the neck just broke off, so you had to do the full dig. It took about fifteen minutes (ideally with two people) to finally get deep enough so you could lie down on your belly in the wet sand and run your hand through the sand and get it under the body of the clam, and then pull it up. There was a geoduck-hunter in Seattle who famously said "I'm going to be the first person ever to discover a geoduck with teeth." The hole was big enough to serve as a foxhole.

Very few had the energy or patience for this, and geoduck chowder was a rare, prized dish. There are a lot more easily-available clams and oysters within easy reach.

As we were leaving Seattle in 1971, an entrepreneur invented a way to harvest them. A diver in scuba gear went down from a boat with a high-pressure hose and washed the sand away in the geoduck beds and picked them up. They became a seafood commodity. I saw estimates that there were millions of them in Puget Sound.

I don't know if that kind of harvesting is still permitted - it doesn't sound very eclogically sound to me - but I believe thay are generally available, if not exactly a commonplace seafood. I see them from time to time here in the Midwest, where they are certainly not native.  

Mike


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