Sea foam and fish cakes

Christmas in Oregon offers alternatives to the traditional snowy white version. My first experience of sea foam drifts offered loud, crashing ocean waves and spouting jets of sea water.

We were on the Captain Cook Trail at Cape Perpetua Scenic Area south of Newport, Oregon in the Siuslaw National Forest. The contrast between the white foam and the jagged black volcanic rock was stunning.

A Cape Perpetua visitor unaccompanied by a toddler could do some philosophic contemplation about permanence and transience, creation and destruction, our little moment of time in geologic history. With a toddler that person might just sing the Opposites Song--black/white, soft/hard, wet/dry, loud/quiet...

When my mom used to make sea foam punch for birthday parties, the recipe was lime sherbet, ginger ale, and pineapple juice. She would make the shaped fish cake from the Baker's Coconut cookbook. My brother got all those pirate and fish theme parties mateys. Aarrgghh.

The recipe for real sea foam is more complex. You needs waves and wind and water, of course, plus salts, proteins, fats, and decaying organic matter from algae die-off. This is not Johnson's baby bubble bath! For some people and animals it can cause respiratory problems.

We watched a sea lion surfing around these rocks, but I didn't get it in the zoom photo.

The Spouting Horn is pretty impressive, and more frequent than Old Faithful. Pooooooofffffff!

It was time for a sustaining lunch of crab burgers, steamed clams, and fish and chips at the South Beach Fish Market.

You can read about this character-loaded joint on Michael Stern's Roadfood. The crab burger did not knock my socks off, but the toddler gobbled the steamed clams and played open/shut with the shells.

Opposites. Om.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder