Ah;-
   The thing about the Coquina is its travels up and down the beach. It will thrust itself up when expecting a shore wave. Will then be taken up or down and embed itself in the sand until it senses the approach of another wave. It must be a most alert creature---as there are two tides a day. I wonder when it sleeps. I never take live Coquina---as they have enough to contend with in their own world. But the abandoned shells can be quite lovely.
      Art
>
> From: John Timmerman <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 2004/02/05 Thu PM 09:47:27 EST
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: San Francisco Bay (Donax)
>
> In a message dated 2/4/2004 10:48:31 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> Matter #1: In South Carolina, everyone knows about "Coquina stew" or "Coquina
> soup"---but I never met anyone who tried it. They're fingernail sized and
> would take a whole heap to make a decent soup. Better to buy Campbells tomato.
> My sister, a good friend and I ate home made coquina chowder years ago. We
> did it while on vacation in North Carolina. We lived in New Jersey at the time.
> We had never seen enough of them in NJ to even think of this. You're correct,
> it took hundreds to yield us each a cup of chowder. In retrospect making a
> meal out of these clams must not have been very good for the local coquina
> population. I have eaten them off the half shell while walking the beach, too. Go
> for the "giants" when doing that.
>
> I can't remember where we got the specific idea to make chowder out of such
> but many books allude to the use.
>
> John Timmerman
> Wilmington,  North Carolina
>
>

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