It’s oyster season.
Beholding your first oyster, it’s hard to imagine who might have been courageous enough to pioneer their consumption. The packaging ain’t all that appealing. In its unexposed state, this vulnerable bivalve
It’s oyster season.
Beholding your first oyster, it’s hard to imagine who might have been courageous enough to pioneer their consumption. The packaging ain’t all that appealing. In its unexposed state, this vulnerable bivalve is protected by a shell masquerading as an impenetrable rock. What inside could possibly be worth the effort of denuding?
Not anything that looks like that, certainly.
Photo Courtesy: Rupurt Jeffries – Morguefile
The oyster itself is a soft alien being. A throwback to prehistory. A creature that inspires squeals of disgust and unfriendly comparisons from the uninitiated. But to those of us in the know, the oyster is one of the planet’s great culinary delights.
The beauty of the oyster is truly in the eye of the beholder.
Historically, human beings have been gobbling up this magnificent mollusk even long before the ancient Romans began shipping oysters overland from the British Isles in carts filled with ice, and selling them for their weight in gold. Nomadic American Indians ate oysters by the ton, leaving behind mounds of discarded shells. Early colonists were sometimes sustained by oysters and other seafood over those first harsh New World winters. As the United States expanded, oysters were often shipped west by stagecoach.
Oysters are good for you. They’re low in fat and contain high levels of zinc, protein, iodine, and iron. Vitamins A,B,C, and D are also present.
Food this healthy gets the blood flowing, so…
The oyster’s reputation as an aphrodisiac ranks right up there with champagne, chocolate, and expensive gifts. The passion-arousing potential of oysters has been celebrated for thousands of years. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love herself, rose from the sea on an oyster shell and presented her ally Eros to the ancient world. Casanova swore by oysters and is said to have eaten fifty every morning while bathing with whichever paramour was currently in favor.
Photo Courtesy: © Bettmann/CORBIS
For a hundred years or more, the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore was the oyster capital of the world.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, Charles Nash and his son moved their Kent Island seafood packing house to the northeastern Kent Narrows peninsula, where Pete Baxter had also started an oyster shucking business. Eventually there would be up to 14 packing houses, usually owned by entrepreneurial watermen, on that side of Kent Narrows and the area grew into one of the Eastern Shore’s economic hubs.
Kent Island icon Melvin Clark (1922-2008) once told me, “Back in the old days you were either a waterman or a farmer. There was an abundance of oysters but no money. We’d sell to the shucking houses and sometimes you’d sell two bushels for a quarter just to get rid of them.
“Contractors across the bridge liked to hire Eastern Shoremen because they knew they would work hard. Only problem was they knew they’d loose them in September come oyster season. Oystering got into your blood. You were independent. You could go out when you wanted and come i