Maybe you were having root canal surgery, maybe you live on a deserted island, or maybe you're just crazy. But in case you missed it The Table Set had a Pool Party and you were invited.

But if you were busy advising President Obama about the gridlock crisis in Washington and just could not get away, I have good news. There's a video. Of course there is. And you can watch right here right now.

The Table Set is a podcast produced by the Home Fries Podcast Network and is available for download on iTunes. I co-host with Andy (@windattack) and Nathan (The Chocolate of Meats). We talk about parties. Your parties, our parties– parties we’ve been to. Parties we’d like to throw. Parties you want. Parties you need.

But to prove we're as much business as we are bluster, we figured we better throw an actual party. We decided on a Pool Party because it was the subject of our first episode and well, it's summer. An après-ski event just seemed wrong! See– more proof we know what we're talking about.

California abalone has a certain mythological allure for me. It’s a delicious mollusk, tender and succulent. It tastes like the sea only sweeter. I have enjoyed it many times at restaurants in my life, but I had never attempted to make abalone at home.

Which is really surprising to me. You see when I was a kid, long before I ever moved to California, I read an adventurous and beguiling book called Island of the Blue Dolphins about a young Chumash girl left to fend for herself on one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara.

I used to daydream about that book. Her house was made of whalebones and her meals were from the sea, including abalone.

By the time I moved to Santa Barbara myself, abalone had become a delicacy that was being eaten right into extinction. It got so bad that commercial harvest of the creatures had to be banned completely so that the wild population would have a chance to rebound.

But abalone is just too good to do without. So naturally, enterprising folks began experimenting with farmed abalone. And I am happy to say those experiments proved valid and California now has multiple abalone farms that have flourished and helped prove that environmentally friendly aqua farming procedures can be financially and deliciously successful.