A quahog is a clam but a clam isn’t necessarily a quahog. Steamers are clams but they aren’t always steamed, in fact fried clam strips can be made from steamers. Cherrystones are bigger than little necks but smaller than quahogs and they are all clams. If you aren’t from around here your head is probably spinning right now, and frankly we are sick of explaining it to people like you.

Locals forget that these sentences make no sense whatsoever to outsiders. We poke fun at tourists and washashores on this site but deep down we want them to enjoy their stay in our home. We wrote this post so that you, the locals, no longer have to explain clams to your visitors, you can just send them here to learn. So here we go…

Alright all you washashores, pay attention. The first thing you need to know is that there are two distinct types of clams that we eat here on Cape Cod. The soft shell clam and the hard shell clam. Both are bivalve mollusks but the hard shell clam is in the Veneridae family while the soft shell clam is in the Myidae family.

Soft Shell Clams

We will start with the soft shell clam, more commonly known as steamers.

Steamers are the most traditional Cape clam. Just like most local Cape Cod men they are known for their big penis… The neck that looks like a penis sticking out of the shell that is. Steamers are most commonly served at places called “Raw Bars” and traditional clambakes. Not coincidentally they are most commonly steamed open and served as a “bucket” of steamers alongside a bucket of the hot water they were cooked in and melted butter. When eaten in this traditional manner there are three basic steps you will need to know in order to enjoy your meal.

1. Make sure you peel the skin off the neck of the clam or you will be done chewing right about the time when Arabs and Jews start getting along.

2. Dunk your clam into the hot fresh water a few times to avoid getting half the beach in your mouth. Yes they are sandy, they don’t live in condos.

3. Completely submerge the steamer in the melted butter prior to eating, do not be timid. If the person across the table from you isn’t being blinded by the sun glistening off your greasy chin then you are doing it wrong, plain and simple.

Now let’s move on to the second type of preparation for soft shell clams, fried clams. You will mostly find your fried clams at “Clam Shacks” and “Shanties”. They will traditionally come either as a “plate” with french fries, cole slaw and tartar sauce or as a “roll” on a hot dog bun.

The most important thing to know about fried clams is the difference between “strips” and “whole”. Basically a “clam strip” has the gastrointestinal tract and “belly” removed. So if you don’t like eating the feces of an animal that lives buried in mud I would recommend the strips. If you like eating shit, then go for the whole clams with bellies. Nobody will ever put it more straight forward than that for you.

Hard Shell Clams

OK now you inlanders really need to pay attention because this is where things get a little more complicated.

Hard shell clams, also known as quahogs, have names based on their size. This is the basic rundown…

Count Neck: The smallest clam legal to harvest. They are tiny.

Little Neck: The smaller size of clam, sometimes eaten raw or cooked on the half shell.

Top Neck: A little larger, often found “shell on” in sauteed dishes.

Cherrystones: These make great chowder and casinos.

Quahog: These big guys are mainly used for Stuffed Quahogs.

Essentially, not unlike cows, the smaller the clam is the more tender the meat will be. This is why little necks and top necks will be most often served on the half shell and in many cases raw. Little necks and top necks are also the clams you will most likely find in sauteed dishes like linguine with clams or paella. They also have much smaller bellies than their big brothers, which means when eaten whole you will not be getting that aforementioned feeling of chewing on poop. Which is nice.

Cherrystones and quahogs are mainly known as “chowder clams” or for being chopped and used in “stuffed quahogs”.

Clam chowder done right is spectacular, but unfortunately and honestly it is very rarely made from scratch in most restaurants on Cape Cod. (except the high end expensive ones) Nine times out of ten when you order clam chowder on Cape Cod you will be eating Kettle Cuisine that came fully prepared in a bag. It’s a bummer, but it’s the reality, and this site is called The Real Cape for a reason, we aren’t here to lie to you. The good news is that Kettle Cuisine chowder is actually not terrible, it’s nothing special, but it’s not bad either.

Stuffed Quahogs on the other hand? People still take pride in their stuffies around here. Traditional Cape Cod stuffed quahogs contain a mix of stuffing, linguica (traditional Portuguese sausage) and chopped quahogs and make for a great appetizer or small meal. Almost every local Cape restaurant still makes their own hogs. The ones that don’t? They get them from one of the local, small batch stuffed quahog companies who also take pride in what they do (ie: Chad’s). When you have a stuffed quahog on Cape Cod you can rest assured that you are eating something you can’t get anywhere else but here.

So there you have it, a crash course on clams on Cape Cod. We will end the lesson with our top 5 clam dish power rankings. As with all lists, this is a completely subjective process. If you don’t agree then you can kindly go make love to yourself.

5. Steamers – love the necks, hate the bellies

4. Fried clam strips – delicious but greasy

3. Clam chowder – bonus for a bread bowl

2. Linguine with clams – two words, mangia bene!

1. Stuffed Quahog – The Portuguese immigrants greatest gift to Cape Cod may just be linguica for our stuffies. Just a perfect combination.

P.S. If enough people share this we won’t have to waste half of our lives explaining this to outsiders.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

CapeCodOnine.com — The Falmouth Department of Marine and Environmental Services responded to a suspected case of elver poaching Saturday, saving about 35 pounds of the young and valuable eels.

The department received a tip when a driver near a herring run saw two men who quickly left in a truck when the passer-by tried to engage them, department Deputy Director Chuck Martinsen said.

The suspicious activity prompted officials to investigate and they found a school of elvers, also known as glass eels, condensed in a fish way, making it hard for them to migrate, Martinsen said.

“We found this tremendous natural resource,” he said. “The run was loaded with them and there was no possible way within that tide cycle or following tide cycle they would be able to move through.”

The department is not releasing the location of the fish way, to protect the eels from future poaching.

The department, along with Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and Environmental Police, moved the eels to the undisclosed pond where they were migrating, according to a Facebook post by Department of Marine and Environment Director Gregg Fraser. If the poachers had sold the eels they would have netted about $28,000, according to Fraser.

The young eels are sold to Asian markets as an aphrodisiac, Martinsen said.

$28,000?!?!? For those keeping score at home that is $800 per pound. That sound you just heard was the crackhead in your basement dropping the copper pipes he was about to steal and running out of your bulkhead to go eelin’! They probably should have kept their mouths shut on this one, we’re gonna have Cape derelicts crawling the banks of every pond on the peninsula like some kind of aquatic zombie apocalypse.

This is why we need to resurrect the American car and electronic industries. We are struggling to make ends meet and meanwhile Asians are paying 50 bucks an ounce for a slimy little snake just to get horny. As if they weren’t already rubbing our faces in it buying up our bluefin tunas for more than we earn in a lifetime ($1.8 million for a single fish), now they are buying 35 pounds of tiny eels for more than me pay for a Toyota!

P.S. Insane Tony’s wife Loopy Lucy better brace herself. Tony already notified me that he read this story and he was last seen running through the woods with waders on, bucket in hand. Looks like Lucy is gonna get some eel fueled lovin’ tonight.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

CapeCodOnline.com – In May on the Cape and Islands, bizarre birds from faraway places often will show up and enliven an already lively scene. In this vein comes a report with photos of a couple of mystery birds, sitting on the beach at Great Point on Nantucket last Sunday. A couple was out for a drive down this very scenic area to enjoy the fine weather and see the sights. As they pulled up near the point, there were two very odd looking birds standing on short legs on the beach. Realizing they had never seen anything like these birds before, they managed to get some pretty good photos at close range.

They sent out an email to a friend inquiring about the mystery birds. The birds they photographed on the beach at Great Point on Nantucket on the afternoon of May 4 were adult brown boobies. The immature and adult brown boobies look very different, and most sightings have been of immature birds. Boobies are comical-looking seabirds that live in the Caribbean and up until a few years ago were unheard of in Massachusetts.

This article is pretty much the exact reason we started this website. You just can’t write what you are really thinking when you work in conventional media. How can any human in this day and age write this article without one single joke? It must be absolutely excruciating to not be able to refer to the demographics of Nantucket being 88% white when you mention the rarity of Brown Boobies on the island.

The headline alone is enough, but then the writer throws this sentence in? “The immature and adult brown boobies look very different, and most sightings have been of immature birds.” How do you write that and not say anything about how unbelievably funny it is? Something along the lines of preferring MILFs comes to mind. The possibilities are literally endless.

Call me immature, but if laughing at a bird named the Brown Booby isn’t cool then then you can call me Poindexter.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

Congratulations Grumpy’s Pub on your 2014 Cape Cod Dive Bar Tournament Championship!

This thing has garnered a response we couldn’t have imagined. There were well over 100,000 votes cast over the life of The Cape Cod Dive Bar Tournament. People have been happy, people have been pissed, but we’ve always said, love it or hate it, as long as you are reacting to it we are doing something right.

Some people bitched that Grumpy’s was actively sharing this to their Facebook page which would result in a lot of votes quickly. Well, newsflash, most of the bars in this tournament were doing the same thing. We didn’t make that against the rules on purpose, this is for fun, we want people involved. If you don’t have anything better to do than bitch about a good natured friendly competition, then nobody wants to have a beer with you anyway.

Many bars could have won this thing and would have deserved it, but not a one of them deserves it any more than Grumpy’s. The place is legit legendary on The Upper Cape. No joke, I have been drinking there since I was 17 years old. Things like that don’t happen anymore, but as divey as it is now, it was downright despicable back in the day.

So a huge congrats to Grumpy’s, we are in talks with them now for when we will have the celebration party and trophy presentation and we will keep you posted. Also we will be tallying the total votes per town to decide which bars will be on our Cape wide school bus dive bar crawl. We will let you know as soon as we know.

Thanks to all of you! We are pretty sure it’s safe to say that this has been the most thorough Cape Cod dive bar tournament in history. (yeah probably the only one too, whatever) Until 2015 everyone!

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

CapeCodToday.com – On this day in 1957 Massachusetts Governor Foster Furculo issued a state of emergency because of a giant forest fire advancing towards Cape Cod. The front page of the New York Times screamed this headline:

Forest fires raged in seven Northeastern States and a province of Canada last night. At least 30,000 acres of tinder-dry woodland was blackened. Massachusetts declared a state of emergency and Maine imposed restrictions.

Then Massachusetts Governor Foster Furculo ordered 200 National Guardsmen, 200 state employees and convicts from state prison out to fight the fire.

The fire which started in the Miles Standish State Forest and quickly raced towards the canal and Cape Cod, was called “definitely arson” by the Plymouth Fire Chief.

Ah the good old days. Don’t have enough people to fight a fire? Send in the convicts! Imagine if you tried to do that today? The governor would be sued so fast his wallet would have to enter the witness protection program. It makes perfect sense though. If you are going to have a system that imprisons the most people per capita in the world, you might as well get some civil service out of them.

I say we start by having an entire crew of gentlemen from The Barnstable County House of Correction do all of the landscaping at Rep. Michael Costello’s house in Newburtyport. Then they can head back and finish out the day working at the oyster farm in Popponesett Bay right in front of Charles Clough’s house.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

There is a ton going on at The Beach House on Saturday. Starting at 5 p.m. there is a party in memory of the legendary and sorely missed Pat Grant. The Bruins game will go on the big screen at 7 followed by Fennario taking the stage around 9.

Fennario is a Grateful Dead cover band (video below) that will put you right into that mental space that only the Dead achieve. Pat loved The Dead so this is a tribute to him. The night will also be a send off for long time Beach House sound guy Chris McGilvray. Unfortunately Chris was recently diagnosed with cancer and is going to be taking a leave of absence after Saturday night. Chris is definitely one of the good ones, so make sure to wish him well. Remember though, it’s not goodbye, we fully expect him back in record time.

Essentially what we are saying is you might as well just park your ass for good at The Beach House Saturday, because it’s going to be partying with a purpose.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

By now everybody has heard the story of Newburyport Rep. Michael Costello and his shady move to block a Mashpee oyster farm proposal. This has been reported by quite a few outlets (the best being this article) so we aren’t going to beat a dead horse. He did this for money, plain and simple, but a greedy politician is nothing new. We just want to point out that he is also a total fucking hypocrite.

It seems that he is a supporter of local business and the shellfish industry in his own district, just not one that is 100 miles away and has nothing to do with him whatsoever.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony