Feasting on the Cape
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2007
1
8
68
Trip End
Nov 08, 2007
Falmouth, Massachusetts
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Saturday, 18th - firstly Happy Birthday to Merv and Robyn!! (See we didn't forget)
Diana, Chris and I headed to Woods Hole. Intention was to visit the aquarium at the Marine Research Centre then have lunch in the lovely old town centre. Woods Hole is a very charming old fishing village that has retains most of the older buildings around a very small lake which is used as a marina - even has a drawbridge in the middle of town. Whole place is very picturesque and of course is very popular in the summer with weekend visitors. So the place was packed, not a parking space to be has, so after driving around for a while, we headed back to Falmouth.
The plan was to have a Cape Cod feast Sat night and not only was Ken coming down from Boston, Diana had invited another couple - Les and Ruth - to join us as well. Les and Ruth live on the Cape in the summer and down in Florida in the winter, but are very well travelled. In the early 50's Les (who was in the navy) was posted to Turkey and lived in Izmir for several years. They have also travelled many times to Greece and revisited Turkey round 10 years ago, so had lots of stories and information for us.
Chris and I had been hanging out for a lobster boil up, which Diana does perfectly. So dinner was planned around 1 lobster per person. We bought the lobsters live from a big tank of them at the Falmouth Sea Food Market. It amazes us that with so many lobsters caught and eaten here, or shipped al over the US, that there is still a thriving fishery - they don't seem to have suffered the decline in numbers that we've seen with the NZ crayfish - and that's with huge numbers more people catching and eating them!
Les and Ruth brought around fresh dug quahog clams - Les had gone out to the sands below their house and raked them up just before they came over. They are are large bivalve shell fish - the ones we had were about 2 inches diameter, with a very mild, meaty inside. You can get them even larfer, but Les says the large ones are a bit tough and best for making chowder. We sat outside on the deck at Diana's and Les expertly (he'd been doing this since he was 10 years old!) opened the quahogs for us and we just ate them raw with a squeeze of lemon (or a dab of Metaxa - really good Grecian brandy - in Chris's case). The quahogs were yummy and we ate heaps.
Diana did her expert boil up with the lobsters, which we ate with the traditional melted butter dip, along with some of the nicest fresh corn, a great fresh potato salad and a yummy tomato, mozz and basil salad. All accompanied by a very nice Prosecco that Ken had bought along. Finally for dessert (very late as we'd been too busy talking and too full to think of it) a home made coconut milk and ginger icecream. A truly great Cape Cod feast!
