A Real Nice Clambake

This is a weird time of the year for transplanted New Englanders. On the one hand, Florida's balmy wintertime tropicality is the reason we came here. On the other, wintertime in Florida always feels like a bit of a gyp. We get a little home sick, and we know it's illogical but we can't help it.

The dear old Yanks at Kelly's Landing can help us by coming to our homes and making us our very own proper, New England clambakes, for parties of 20 - 150 people, and they'll cook in house or at your house. Now, unless you get specific with them, what you'll actually get is a "clam boil": the cooking of little necks, lobsters, chowder, and corn in a pot on a propane stove (they supply the stove). But if you've got land, and if you're willing to see it dug a little, part-owner Debbie Skinner tells me Kelly's is perfectly willing to clam bake the traditional way: by burying the whole mess of food via big, hot rocks underground.

For the New Englander, there is no better food in the world than the proper clam bake, and this is the optimal time to do it. Lobster prices are lowest at this time of year; come January, they'll begin climbing again. (And the variance is significant: Debbie tells me that a clam bake will run anywhere from $25 - $45 a head. Act fast.)

--Brandon Thorp