Recipe for a Cape Cod Clambake

Ingredients

2 coffees and 2 bagels from the Dunkin’ Donuts near your mom’s house that you stop at before you get on the highway. You’ll be looking forward to the Cape but you always enjoy the quiet ride catching up with your mom and drinking your coffee. Add 1-2 coffees if your brother Denny and his fiancee Ari drive down with you.

1 pang of dread when you pass the highway exit to Water Wizz and catch a glimpse of the upcoming traffic trying to get over the bridge. Why does the Cape only have two bridges to get onto it? You keep meaning to look it up but always forget. If you’re being honest, you didn’t realize there was more than one bridge onto Cape Cod until you were in your late teens. Your mom always took the Bourne Bridge, and everyone refers to either bridge as just “the bridge”, so you thought there was just one. Crossing the Sagamore Bridge for the first time was a revelation.

1 pulse of delight when you finally roll off the bridge and into the rotary* that has the giant hedges on the far edge, always carefully tailored so that they spell out “Cape Cod”. You’re still in traffic but you’re almost there.

5-6 coffees and 2-3 donuts from the Dunkin’ Donuts ten minutes away from the Cape house. Your morning coffees are long gone and your mom is hankering for another one. You’ll text the whole family when you’re fifteen minutes away to see if they want anything. Your aunt and nana will ask for the other coffees, your youngest cousins will ask for the donuts.

1 bright white Cape house with the deep blue shutters and the bright pink flowers. You heard whispers among the adults when you were in eighth grade that Nana was thinking of selling it, so you wrote your initials and the date on the wallpaper right behind a bedpost so that you’d always stay with the house and it’d always stay with you. Every year now, the first weekend she goes down, your aunt sends you a text with a picture of the wallpaper accompanied by a fist-shaking emoji and a heart. No one has scrubbed it away yet.

10-12 aunts, uncles, cousins, fiances, and boyfriends who all come flooding out the front door and the back gate when your car pulls up. You’re always the second-to-last to arrive. Be prepared to receive 10-12 hugs and kisses while you try to balance your bags and whatever food you brought this year.

1 Nana, the family matriarch. You forget how tiny she is until you give her that first hug. She’ll make a comment about you never coming home that will feel like a scold, but the tightness of the hug reminds you that’s just her way of saying she misses you and she’s glad you’re here.

An unfathomable number of decorations, all meticulously chosen and artfully laid out by Auntie DeeDee. Everything should be red and white and feature little illustrations of lobsters and crabs. You’ll ask where she got the decorations from and how she sets everything up so perfectly. She’ll say they’re from Home Goods or Marshall’s and wave her hands, saying it’s no big deal. You’ll wish, not for the first time or the last, that you had her eye for detail and her dedication to making sure everyone has a good time.

12 bags of prepared clambake specials from Swan River, the restaurant down the street which everyone seems to have gone to except you. Specials should be individually wrapped in neon red netting. Each bag should consist of 6-7 steamers**, 4-6 mussels, sliced bits of one potato, and two halves of a corn on the cob. No one will look at the corn until they’re too full to eat it. Auntie DeeDee will put it in a tupperware in the fridge for later, but no one will remember it until it’s time to leave and you’re filling up a trash bag of old food to drop off at the dump.

10 bright red lobsters, intact. Delivered in a styrofoam container so that all the steam is released at once when you crack the lid. Save the tomalley*** from each lobster for Nana. Every year someone will claim they’re brave enough to try it this time, but no one ever will. That’s fine with Nana. More for her.

2 tubs of melted butter, supposedly for the lobster but to be put on absolutely everything.

1 dozen oysters, as a bonus. Enough that everyone can have one, although only three of you will. You’ll have one just to try it, your cousin Melissa who is much more worldly than you will have a few, and Nana will enjoy the rest. It tastes like the ocean took a sneeze on a shell. You’ll think you like it. Maybe.

1 prepared crab dip with 1 bag of pita chips, made by Auntie NeeNee. You’ll eat more than you intended to and go back to it after the lobster is done, it’s just that good.

1 package of hotdogs and 1 package of hamburgers that Uncle Leo will throw on the grill for your youngest cousins, but most of you will grab one too. You and your Auntie NeeNee will tease your youngest cousin Michael about the condiments he chooses. He’ll give the teasing right back to you without skipping a beat.

1 cooler of alcohol. No one will drink except you, your brother, your older cousins, and maybe Auntie NeeNee and your mom. It should all be seltzer or malt drinks. Today you won’t need it, but you’ll appreciate that it’s there. You’ll debate with NeeNee about which seltzer flavors are best and laugh over stories of past nights out. You’ll laugh with NeeNee about everything and anything.

1 blueberry lemon cake that you made in mom’s kitchen the night before and carefully packed up for the drive down. You’ll be so excited to finally have a place to bring it. Reserve the lemon glaze and attempt to elegantly drizzle it on the cake sometime in between when the clams are cleared away and when the rest of the dessert gets brought out.

2 tubs of ice cream, 1 container of sprinkles, 1 bottle of hot fudge, and 4 cans of whipped cream, divided. Reserve some whipped cream for the sundae bar. The rest should be used in the game your cousins brought, where everyone takes turns twisting a knob until a pulley releases and someone gets a face full of the whipped cream. You’ll miss a glob on your nose when you wipe off your face but no one will notice. Everyone’s laughing too hard, waiting for the next person to get splattered.

1-5 different “somethin’-somethin’s”, a surprise delight to be enjoyed by the group. The nature of the “somethin’-somethin’” is entirely up to you. Previous big hits include headbands with lobster claws on them, a surprise bouncy house, and giant inflated boxing gloves. Uncle Leo will walk out of the basement with the boxing gloves on and challenge your cousin to a fight. They’ll both win.

1 Spotify account and speaker. Doesn’t matter whose it is. As long as you can find and play “Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey” in the middle of July loud enough for the whole group to get up and dance, it’ll do.

4 pool floats. The shed they live in smells like chlorine and musty fabric but the floats seem like they’ll last forever. Two of them will float aimlessly in the deep end, unused. The other two will be the day’s companions for your cousin Nicholas. He would stay in the pool all day if he could, and his squeals of delight as he moves through the water will be the soundtrack of the day.

1 tiny TV that Nana bought in the ‘80s. It’ll stay turned on in the living room for most of the day, tuned to the local news or to whatever kid’s show the youngest cousins are watching these days. You and your brother will sneak into the living room at some point to check your phones and take a moment away from it all. You’ll catch part of some segment about a shark off the coast or the weatherman pacing back and forth across a screen scattered with clouds and suns.

3 cars that everyone will pile into around sunset to head down to the beach. Your youngest cousins will try to fly a kite while your aunts and mom sit on the beach wall. You’ll walk down to the waves to put your toes in and try to have a deep thought while looking out to sea, but then seaweed will graze your foot and the ensuing panic will snap you back to solid ground.

4 pizzas your uncle orders for everyone at 9:00PM, when it’s been long enough since the clams that everyone’s hungry again but recent enough that no one can stomach another piece of seafood.

1 puzzle that you’ll find in the corner and start doing at 11:30PM at the kitchen table while your mom and Nana start dozing off on the couch. Your aunts will come over and help you put together the edges.

1 dash of guilt that you moved to the West Coast and only made it back home a couple times over the last couple years. The reason you’ll tell everyone is that you didn’t want to catch COVID on the flight there and get anybody sick. That’s true, but the reason you don’t say is that you’ve isolated yourself so much that you’re not sure how you could be around anyone anymore. That nagging feeling won’t go away, but at least at the end of today it’ll feel silly.

3 bright pink bedspreads, found in the bedroom you’ve always slept in. The bunk bed is so old that no one has dared to try the top bunk in a decade, but Auntie DeeDee will take the bottom bunk and you’ll take the single bed on the opposite wall. You’ll sleep better than you have in months.

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together in time for a sunny July day. Serve with love at the Cape house.

Recipe Notes

*A rotary is also known as a traffic circle or roundabout. The word is used most often in Massachusetts and other parts of New England.

**Steamers are small clams with brittle shells. Pronounced “steam-ahs” by almost everyone at the Cape house.

***Tomalley is the liver and guts of a lobster, found in the body cavity below the head and above the tail. The bright green color seems off putting but Nana swears it’s the best part.