Long, long ago, there lived a girl and a boy. They had recently discovered that they shared certain feelings of mutual affection and admiration for one another. And so the boy asked the girl to accompany him on a day-long excursion to the coast.

If you aren't from Oregon, you may not understand what "going to the coast" means. It does not involve frolicking in the ocean or sunbathing or even wearing bathing suits at all, most of the time. It means walking hand in hand down a sandy beach in the blistering wind and contemplating the glory of the ocean crashing to the land (or perhaps wading in the frigid water, if you are brave). It means collecting shells and rocks. It means browsing through little downtown shops on the bayfront and buying loads of salt-water taffy from the mom-n-pop candy store. And it means warming yourself up with a lunch or dinner of delicious seafood from one of the local restaurants.

And for this particular girl, "going to the coast" meant eating clam chowder in a bread bowl from Mo's.

Mo's is an Oregon institution, and their clam chowder is legendary. Please note that this girl did not even like seafood, at all, in other forms. But hot, potato-y, creamy clam chowder from Mo's with a pat of butter melting on top of it, served up in a thick, hollowed out round of sourdough bread, did not fall into the same category as other types of seafood. Clam chowder in a bread bowl was something special.

And so our two young lovers found themselves seated at Mo's, perusing a menu, with the girl swiftly setting hers aside. "I'm going to have clam chowder in a bread bowl," she said.

"Oh, that sounds good," the boy said. "Maybe we can share."

The girl paused. She contemplated her broad-shouldered 19-year-old boyfriend, a strapping lad who spent his days in hard physical labor as an ironworker. She thought about just how much of her favorite treat she was likely to actually get to eat, should she split her bread bowl with him. And even though she knew the servings at Mo's were hearty, and even though she knew she likely wouldn't eat the entire thing herself, she did not like the idea of getting only a few spoonfuls of creamy goodness and only a few bites of delicious bread.

So she refused.

"No, I'm not sharing," she said.

And that was the end of that.

The boy did not dump her in shock at her unlady-like greed, but instead has stuck with her throughout the 12 years of life that have so far followed that moment. He ordered something else and did not ever again suggest sharing her meal. But he has not ever let her live it down, either. (In fairness, he says I misunderstood him. He wasn't suggesting that we split a single bread bowl, but rather that we should each order something different and share portions of our meal with each other).

This is all just background to help you understand how excited I was when I saw a friend post the following on Facebook last month: "Home-made bread bowls and clam chowder for dinner tonight."

This blew my mind. It had never occurred to me that I could make my own clam chowder and bread bowls! Why, I don't know, since I like to cook and I make all kinds of other soups and bread. But this one seemed so special. So unique. Could I really do it?

The answer, my friends, is that I can. And I have. On two occasions now. And goodness, is it fantastic. Maybe not quite as good as Mo's. I don't melt butter on top of mine, and my bowls are not sourdough, because I've never managed to get a good sourdough starter going at home. But it is a delicious, delicious dinner. And it makes a big enough batch that everyone in our family can have their own and still have leftovers for the next day.

And no one has to share. Especially not me.

The recipe for the bread bowls is at Allrecipes.com under Italian Bread Bowls. I make them exactly as the recipe says, except that I substitute 2-3 cups of wheat flour for some of the white flour called for in the recipe, and I don't bother doing an egg wash on the outside. Other than that, I just follow that recipe, so I won't bother re-creating it here. Go, print it out yourself, and give it a try. You'll like it, and you could use these for any kind of hearty soups. And bonus: fewer dishes to clean up afterward. After you eat the soup, you just eat the bowl too!


The clam chowder one is adapted from a recipe I found in the Taste of Oregon cookbook. It's a little more complicated than the one my friend used, but I like it because it has bacon. Mmmm, bacon. The original recipe calls for both bacon and ham! But I just use bacon in mine. If you want a really meaty chowder, you could use both, though.



Clam Chowder


1/4 pound bacon, diced
2 cups chopped onion
2 Tb flour
5 cups diced potatoes
2 cans of clams, undrained
3 cups of milk
Salt and pepper to taste


1. Saute the bacon, drain off most of the bacon drippings, and save. 

2. Add the onion to the bacon, saute until the onion is limp.

3. Stir in the flour. Pour enough bacon drippings back into the pan to fry the potatoes. Add the potatoes and fry, stirring constantly, about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.

(Note: during this process, I usually get a pretty good layer of browned bits cooked onto the bottom of the pan. And also, my bacon dripping don't seem to be of a large enough quantity to cook the potatoes very well. To fix this, I add a small amount of water--maybe 1/4 cup or so? to deglaze the pan. It gets the drippings up off the bottom of the pan, and mixes with the flour to form a roux/sauce type mixture in which to cook the potatoes. I add more water as needed if the potatoes seem to start sticking to the bottom of the pot again. If I didn't add this extra moisture, I think I'd have a very browned bottom of the pot by the time my 15 minutes of potato-cooking was up).


4. Add the clams with liquid and cook 5 more minutes. Add milk; season with salt and pepper to taste. (I'm pretty generous with my salt and pepper).

The only problem at all with this recipe is that at the end of it, you wind up with this: a bag of bread-bowl innards. What to do with the extra bread?



If I were more ambitious, I could season it and chop it up and toast it and make croutons. But we don't really eat croutons. Or if I had a food processer, I could process it into bread crumbs and save the crumbs for other recipes. But I don't have a food processor. The best thing I've come up with is what I did today when my kids asked for a snack: slap some jam on top and let them eat it like a biscuit. A big, soft, crustless biscuit. Which they actually liked quite a bit, since they pick the crust off their bread anyway. Win-win!