Michael Pollan deals with this issue briefly in The Omnivore's Dilemma as he spends a week on a chicken ranch, but never resolves it entirely, instead becoming inured by the repetitive nature of the task at hand. But the act of taking a life to sustain our own (rather than leaving it to someone else) embodies the sentiment expressed by chef Greg Atkinson, who admonishes us to be be present to be able to be genuinely connected to life.
Standing at the outside sink, I take mucky native littlenecks from their bucket of seawater and scrub the sand and seaweed off. And at the moment I put that clean clam into the pot with some onion and celery ends, it goes from being a fine example of Puget Sound fauna to being our supper.
Joy of Cooking (the new 75th Anniversary edition, which restores much of the charm lost in the last update) did give me the option of hulling the clams raw; I chose the cowardly method, putting them in a covered pot on the stove and letting steam do the dirty work. In truth, I wanted to use this method because I knew it would provide me with excellent stock for the chowder, but I was not entirely oblivious to the psychological benefit.
Since I had orchestra rehearsal last night, I left cleaning the geoducks to Darling Husband. As I was leaving, he was placing a call to his fishing Sensei to come help him. He tells me that Sensei dropped by, giving him and both our sons a lesson in not only cleaning the beast, but in thanking it for contributing to our meal and respecting its life by not wasting anything. Indeed, before he plunged the knife into each geoduck's mantle, he said a solemn "thank you." We thanked him with a bowl of the chowder (which he pronounced excellent), for the opportunity to learn this lesson.
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