Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway

As all of us website-surfing, blog-reading, iPhone users know that, in this digital age, it is almost too easy to stay in touch with Mom. Since I moved to New York City six months ago, not a day has gone by when my mom and I have failed to exchange text messages, emails or a quick phone call.

But this does not starve off homesickness. I’m grateful I can call my mom when I’m standing in a crowded Trader Joes on Monday night and ask her what to buy. But then she’ll tell me she’s in the middle of taking salmon off the grill or putting a chicken in the oven, and I’ll wish I was back home at the kitchen table. People say you can find anything you’ve ever wanted or needed in New York City, but I can’t find my mom’s cooking.

So, on this beautiful sunny weekend, with summer right around the corner, I felt a pang when I checked my email and saw a picture sent from my Mom of one of our oldest family recipes: Rhode Island Clam Chowder. The newspaper article shown above, published in May of 1965 in the New Haven Register, features my Grandmother talking about her family tradition of making clam chowder based on of her own mother’s recipe.

Both of my grandparents grew up on the island of Jamestown, RI, where they had to take a ferry to school everyday. They grew up clamming, and then raised my mom on clams. Some of my earliest beach memories involve holding on to the floating bucket for my mom and grandfather, wishing I were big enough to handle the clam rake. I’m big enough now, but I still have never raked as many clams as my Mom. It requires a certain type of patience that I don’t have.

After raking comes the clam count, and the careful process of dividing up the clams. The small sweet ones are grilled with cocktail sauce. The medium-sized ones are reserved for pizza, pasta and fritters. The large clams are set aside for chowder.

Our family clam chowder recipe is the simple, clam-juice broth kind, of Rhode Island origin — not the creamy kind typically found in most New England restaurants. The key is to grind up the potatoes and clams. There is nothing more disappointing than having a huge spoonful of clam chowder and discovering it’s all potato, you know? And, according to my mom, and her mom, this allows the flavor of the clams to distribute evenly.

This clam chowder is salty, clammy and delicious. To me it tastes like a summer night, sunburned on the back porch, surrounded by family.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I can’t wait to make chowder with you this summer!