If you are looking for a way to liven up a party menu, serving seafood hors d'oeuvres may be the way to go. Recipes made with seafood seem somehow more exotic, more elegant and more "gourmet." When you serve seafood recipes at your party, guests feel that you went to a lot of extra expense and work on their behalves, and they appreciate it. The truth is, though, that there are many simple seafood recipes that signal elegance and that extra little something without breaking your budget or consuming too much of your party preparation time. Here are a few simple, delicious and flexible seafood hors d'oeuvres that will dazzle and impress your guests.

Shrimp Canapes

To make this simple recipe, simply mix softened cream cheese with whatever flavorings you like. For example, you can mix in fresh lemon juice and/or lemon pepper, garlic and/or dill dip mix, shredded cheeses, tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, paprika or other seasonings such as thyme. As far as flavorings, get creative and experiment with those flavors your family or guests will like. Once you have developed a cream cheese mixture you enjoy, fold in cooked baby or medium shrimp. You can serve the mixture atop fancy crackers sprinkled with rosemary or dill weed. My favorite way to serve this dish however, is to spread the mixture on a flour tortilla, then roll it up lengthwise and slice it into rounds. I then sprinkle the rounds with paprika, dill weed or some other garnish, depending on the ingredients I have used in the cream cheese mixture.

Crab Quesadillas

This recipe is so easy, yet so delicious, that I have even made it for lunch when there was not a party guest in sight! Simply combine fresh cooked crab meat (or imitation crab meat) with a variety of shredded cheeses and season to taste with lemon, garlic, pepper and/or onion. Then, you are going to cook the crab quesadillas much as you would a simple grilled cheese sandwich. Butter a tortilla and place it butter side down in a skillet over medium to medium high heat. Then, cover the tortilla with the cheese and crab mixture. Place another buttered tortilla on top of the mixture, butter side up. Cook the quesadilla for a couple of minutes on each side, until golden brown. Remove the quesadilla to a plate and slice as you would a pizza. Have condiments such as lemon wedges, lime wedges and seafood cocktail sauce available for guests. You may substitute other seafood for the crab meat.

Other Seafood Favorites

There are a number of other favorite seafood recipes that make great hors d'oeuvres as well. Serve chilled shrimp with a variety of seafood cocktail sauces and garnishes, such as lemon and lime wedges. Serve marinated shrimp--this shrimp dish requires only that the shrimp be marinated in one or more of a variety of simple sauces available at your grocery store, such as oriental marinades or spicy hot marinades. Serve popcorn shrimp for a more casual event, or for a more formal event, try a hot crab newburg dip in a sourdough bread bowl with toasted chunks of bread and crackers for dipping. Another idea is to liven up your regular stuffed mushroom recipe by adding crab or shrimp to the stuffing.

I really do love shrimp. Shrimp can be cooked so many different ways, and just about every variation is good. Boiled, sautéed, fried, or grilled, shrimp tastes good. One of my favorite movie scenes is in "Forrest Gump" where Bubba names all the different ways to cook shrimp. He goes on and on, naming off scores of shrimp dishes. There is a restaurant chain called Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. that borrows some of Bubba's shrimp dishes. Although there's not one in Texas where I live, I've eaten at one on Navy Pier in Chicago and at Pier 39 in San Francisco.

Bubba Gump's has incorporated many details from the movie "Forrest Gump" into the restaurants. There are videos of the movie playing all around the restaurants, and there are mottos from the movie, such as "Life is like a box of chocolates" in view. If a customer wants to get the attention of a waiter, he can hold up a paper fan that says "Run, Forrest, Run." I think the restaurants are fun for those who liked the movie, and they also have pretty good seafood.

Some of my favorite dishes at Bubba Gump's are the shrimp plates. They have shrimp appetizers like a jumbo shrimp cocktail and shrimp in a Cajun butter sauce, as well as boiled shrimp that have to be peeled. There's a dip that combines shrimp with spinach, artichokes, cheese and peppers, and also shrimp served with mango pineapple salsa. Yum! Yum!

My favorite shrimp dish at Bubba Gump's is the Dumb Luck Coconut Shrimp. The sweet taste of the coconut and the Cajun marmalade served with the shrimp are just right. Other shrimp plates include boiled shrimp with French bread to dip in the spicy broth, grilled shrimp and steak skewers, shrimp that is steamed in beer with potatoes and other veggies, fried shrimp, New Orleans-style shrimp, a couple of shrimp and pasta dishes, and stuffed shrimp. There's also a dish that combines shrimp, lobster, and fish; it's called Bucket of Boat Trash. There's also a shrimp po'boy for those who want a sandwich.

Seafood other than shrimp is also served at Bubba Gump's. The grilled mahi mahi with Bourbon sauce is good, and the mahi mahi with shrimp and mango pineapple salsa over rice is also pretty tasty. There are also salmon plates and a fish and chips basket, and calamari rings and clam chowder are on the appetizer menu.

Besides seafood, there are lots of good ole Southern dishes at Bubba Gump's. Southern fried chicken, baby back ribs, steaks, and pork sandwiches are some of the goodies available, and there are many specialty drinks with names from the movie. My favorites on the dessert menu are Jenny's Strawberry Dream, which is a luscious strawberry shortcake made with pound cake, and Mama's Cinnamon Bread Pudding, which just slides down the throat. There's also Key Lime pie, a Dr. Pepper float, and a chocolate chip cookie sundae.

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is a fun place to eat, and they have good food. The restaurants have little stores where customers can buy all sorts of merchandise with mottos from the movie, like T-shirts that say "Run, Forrest, Run" and even boxes of chocolates. They also sell shrimp and chocolate cookbooks and lots of other products. For those who don't live near a Bubba Gump's restaurant, they have a delivery service and ordering online is easy.

by Leanne Phillips

Clamming in Pismo Beach is so popular that the locals made a party of it. The Pismo Beach Clam Festival, held each year in October, is one of the top events in Central California. The festival features live music, marching bands, a parade, a carnival, a clam chowder cook-off and, of course, plenty of clam digging.

Clamming is still fun and popular, even when it's not clam festival time. But today, to preserve availability of the clams and allow clams to grow to full size, commercial clamming has been outlawed, and restrictions have been placed on private clamming.

When early settlers arrived to the Pismo Beach area, they found clams that were much larger and more abundant than those found in other areas. In part because there were not a great deal of sea lions in the area at the time, or human beings, other than the Native Chumash Indians, the clams were not overly harvested and so were able to grow to larger than usual size.

Word spread about the amazing Pismo clams, and they became quite famous. They were so abundant that one early settler took his team of horses and his farm equipment onto the beach to harvest the clams.

Because commercial clamming for the Pismo Clam is prohibited, local seafood restaurants in this popular beach town often have to import clams from other areas, including the east coast. The Splash Cafe, for example, famous for its clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, and the winner for many years in a row of the Pismo Beach Clam Festival's clam chowder cook-off, makes about 10,000 gallons of its gourmet clam chowder each and every year. The restaurant is also famous for its steamed clams and its "Bucket O' Clams." Despite the fact that the restaurant is located in one of the seafood capitals of the world, however, this popular restaurant has to ship its clams in from New York.

If you want to go clamming for Pismo Clams, here are some things to keep in mind. First, anyone who goes clamming is required to have a valid, California salt-water fishing license. Clams must be at least 4-1/2 inches in diameter, otherwise they must be returned to the hole in which they were found. Each clammer may bag a limit of only 10 clams per day. Clamming is restricted to the beach south of the Pismo Beach Pier and is limited to the time period from 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset.

The best thing to use for clamming is a tool called a "clamming fork," which is similar to a small rake and often comes with a caliper attached to it, used to measure the diameter of the clams to make sure they are legal. If you do not have a clamming fork, a small, hand-held rake or similar utensil will work just fine. Make sure that, whatever you use, the prongs are about 12 inches long. Bring a bucket along and fill it part way with sea water so that you can keep the claims in the bucket after you harvest them. Once in the bucket of sea water, the clam shells should begin to open, at which point you can try to remove the clams from their shells. Whatever you do, do not try to remove the clams while the shells are closed, as this will cause the clam to clamp tightly closed, hence the term to "clam up."

Copyright (c) 2005 by Leni Leanne Phillips