Steamed Clams (Or Mussels or both)

One night my dear friend Lily Darais invited our family over for dinner.  She opened the door and let us in to the most delicious smelling kitchen.  I told her it smelled divine and asked what she had prepared.  Steamed muscles she said because she thought they were so kid friendly, and then proceeded to serve a mound a steamed mussels with delicious broth into bowls in front of us and our children.    Well, I have never considered mussels kid friendly, until that point.  Everyone devoured them and asked for more.  Tonight, I went to Harmons to recreate that amazing meal, but sadly Harmons has stopped stocking them…you now have t0 call ahead to special order them.  They did have clams, so I settled for those.  I asked them to package up all the rest of the rest of the clams they had (which was about 4 lbs).  Then, the guy right behind me in line at the seafood counter was like, “wait were those all your clams, that was what I was after?” and looked totally downhearted.  I felt terrible and since my 4 lbs of clams were neatly packaged in two boxes, I gave him 1 of my boxes and went home with only 2 lbs of class, but a cheaper grocery bill.  However, all my kids complained over dinner about how I shouldn’t have done that when they had devoured all the clams and hadn’t got their glutenous fill.STEAMED CLAMS/MUSSELS

Ingredients:

• Fresh clams or mussels
• 5-6 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4-1/2 stick of butter
• white wine (I use cooking wine since in Utah you have to go to a liquor  store to buy wine!)
• Fresh minced parsley

Directions:

1. Satuee garlic in butter for a couple minutes on high heat.
2. Add clams/mussels.
3. Fill pot with white wine to 1/2-3/4 the way up the clams/mussels.
4. Cover and steam until clams/mussels open up.
5. Sprinkle with fresh parsley.

*Serve with crusty bread to lap up all that delicious juice!