Mussels, Barnacles, and More

In recent weeks and months, I have gotten back into the routine of not only cooking, but also blogging.  I am averaging about a post a week, and, I have a healthy number of posts in the works.  I hope to be cooking even more and posting even more, even though I probably will never return to the number of posts that I was doing back in 2011 or 2012.  

But, I am taking this brief break to blog about another interest of mine ... photography.  It may not show in the pictures of the various dishes that I make, but I like to take pictures.  Setting aside my family, who are the subject of a majority of my pictures, the rest are generally of food, animals or landscapes. 

Recently, I was working on a wine review.  For that review, I went back to find some pictures of the vineyard. The pictures were from my honeymoon with my beautiful Angel.  We spent a little more than a week in Oregon.  The trip started in Portland, worked its way through Willamette Valley and ended on the coastline in Pacific City. 

While we were in Pacific City, we walked the coastline.  I was amazed by the wildlife that was exposed by the low tide.  Mussels, barnacles, starfish, crabs, and so much more. I took a lot of pictures during those couple of days.  Lots and lots of pictures.  

So, as a break from what I have been working on and posting on this blog, I have decided to post a few pictures of the wildlife that lives around the coastline near Pacific City, Oregon.  As I write this post, I have been thinking about how this wildlife could be harvested and find its way onto a plate.

Picturing a dish of mussels is fairly easy. I have made quite a few of them. Some of those dishes have made it to this blog, such as Malabar Mussels, Curried Haddock and Mussels, and Green Mussel Soup.  The great thing about museels is that the dish does not even have to be fancy or complicated.  Just put handfuls of mussels in a steam pot along with a heaping helping of minced garlic.   Wait a couple of minutes and you have a very basic and very delicious meal of steamed mussels. 

Picturing a dish of barnacles is far more difficult. Barnacles don't line the shelves of the grocery stores around where I live.  They also don't grace the menus of the restaurants of where I eat.  (If either was the case, I would have probably tried to cook them and eat them by now.)  However, I do know that barnacles -- or at least gooseneck barnacles -- are edible.  I know that because I watched an episode of Bizarre Foods, in which Andrew Zimmern went foraging for gooseneck barnacles in Oregon.  

A quick Google search also produces some recipes for gooseneck barnacles.  Another google search provides results for places where you can purchase the barnacles online, such as La Tienda, a store that I trust that sells the barnacles by their Spanish name, percebes.  Unfortunately, I am not willing to wait two weeks for a delivery of percebes; and, moreover, I am not willing to part with over $100 for the ingredient.  While I am sure I could find barnacles cheaper elsewhere online, I don't want to think about where those barnacles may have been.  

While I can almost guarantee that there will be more mussel recipes on Chef Bolek in the future, I hope that maybe someday there will be a barnacle recipe too.  Only time will tell.  Until then...

ENJOY!