The Chowder Kids are my nearly 5 and nearly 7 year old children. They have been eating clam chowder since before they could hold a spoon. So their palette is highly refined at this point.

Last summer, when we were on school break, we wanted to encourage Chowder Girl to keep reading and writing over the summer. And the Chowder Journal was born.

Over dinner one night, we hashed out 8 areas of excellence (or, as the case may be, horribleness) and started keeping score. In no particular order, they are:

• Overall freshness of ingredients
• Quality of clams
• Quantity of clams
• Thickness
• Seasonings
• Potato texture and reliance on the potato
• Butteryness (this one has become a real issue because one member of the family seems to have a skewed view of how buttery it should be)
• Temperature (this was a late category, based on the time I nearly burned my tongue off and couldn’t taste ANY CHOWDER for days)

This past weekend, in celebration of the coming summer, we discussed the Chowder Journal with my parents and the idea of a blog was born. The only bone of contention is this.

Will we reveal our gold standard chowder?

There has been no official determination yet. In the meantime, I’ll start copying the reviews this evening.