21 September 2024 (an oyster shell)

an oyster shell

left on the oldest headstone

island cemetery

17 February 2022 (hunger moon)

hunger moon

ice plates shift with the tide

above oyster racks

May 8: Seasonal

Rainy day diet:

one dozen raw oysters,

steamed fiddleheads.

Posted with Blogsy

June 29: Oysters

Shucked raw oysters--

it's like eating the ocean

one bite at a time.

Posted with Blogsy

February 11: Oysters

Tonight we went out to a raw bar with friends, and the four of us got at least a half-dozen each. I love oysters. There's the obvious sensual appeal of slurping the salty fleshy scrap of mollusk off the gritty half-shell. And there's also something deliciously elemental about eating this fruit of the sea--it tastes like the very ocean made tangible. We were enjoying Pemaquid oysters, grown locally not far from the very waters outside the restaurant windows. A medium-sized tasty oyster, made in Maine, they're one of my favorites. Confronted with an open oyster bar, I have been known to consume several dozen Pemaquid oysters in a minutes. I've never found myself too full of oysters.

I've been fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit several times an amazing private collection of 17th-century Dutch paintings, which includes such classics as a Brueghel winter village tableau, an Averkamp skating scene, and a van Ruisdael landscape with windmill. But the one I really enjoy looking at up close is a beautifully detailed still-life of food on a table by 17th century Flemish painter Osias Beert. I can't tell you what other food items make up this tableau--a peeled lemon, maybe?--because front and center is a plate of oysters on the half-shell that look so real you want to just reach out and grab one. Now that's a work of art!

Oyster: sea made flesh
slides easily down the throat,
mouthful of ocean.