What horror stories! Perhaps I have been lucky in my brief raw oyster eating career.
It is one of a very few foods that I LOVE but can eat in moderation. Gimme a dozen oysters and I am cool. I usually get a piece of cornbread to round out the meal -- it is a specialty at The Pearl.
I am a coastal snob I guess because I won't eat raw shellfish, or even much seafood at all for that matter, once I get as far inland as western Massachusetts.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington
Nothing is better than oysters with lemon, it's my favorite seafood ever
Oysters are a special case. If properly trained in their youth, they live a long long time out of water for transport. That was the foundation of the early American oyster industry - they could be placed in barrels, loaded onto ships and trains, and safely sent long distances.
By properly-trained, they have to be raised in the right conditions - gently sloping tidelands - where they learn to clamp down and conserve their moisture when the tide is out. (Yes, I live amongst oyster farmers, I could go on forever about the intricacies of the herding process, and the need to move them to the upland mountain grasslands in the spring, but....).
A fascinating book about the early oyster industry in the NY region:
I love oysters only because they produce pearls--repeatedly, if they're lucky.
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