The Geoduck Meal

Geoduck pronouced “Goo-ee-duck”, scientific name of Panopea generosa, is a big saltwater clam with a long siphon which can easily grow to a few feet, the siphon would be its mouth where large amount of water is suck in to be filtered for plankton as food. Chinese call the geoduck the "elephant trunk clam" for obvious reason.

Looking at it through an aquarium, one cannot imagine how such a weird looking creature can be eaten. I suppose being at the top of the food chain helps us to be adventurous.


Not available locally, Geoducks are imported from the US or Canada and in this case from Mexico. It is known to have a long life span of more than a century, speculated to be because of its sedentary lifestyle of not experiencing much wear and tear in addition to having few natural predators as in the wild it lives by burrowing itself into the sea bed sheltered and protected, people would be its biggest predator I would think.

The local chef recommends that it be eaten almost raw with a short dipped in a hot boiling broth. It taste exactly as you would imaging it would taste like, slimy if too raw, leathery if overcooked with a strong flavor of clams. Some of my friends compare it to abalones, for me it is far from the unique taste and texture only abalones can have.

Wasps

A wasp is defined as an insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita, making it neither a bee nor an ant. I believe the wasp photo I took is from one of the Scoliid Wasp species.

Species of wasp comes from two main categories, solitary wasp or social wasp. The name itself is self explanatory, with the solitary wasp generally living alone while the social wasp lives in colonies and in nests.

Wasps have also been documented to play an important role in natural biocontrol with almost every pest insect species having at least one wasp species that is a predator or parasite upon it, which helps to keep pest insect species population in check.Wasps like bees have modified ovipositors which they use to sting and inject venom.