Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

… need to be in before Monday, November 24th for two-day delivery, and before Tuesday the 23rd for overnight delivery.

This past weekend we drove down to Portland to serve oysters at the Northwest Food and Wine festival. The event was packed with happy people and delicious food.

Our booth was conveniently located next to Willamette Valley Vineyards, whose Pinot Gris has won Oyster Wine Awards two years running. We also saw our friends from Mt. Townsend Creamery, discovered Heirloom Orchards, ate LaLoo’s goat milk ice cream, and enjoyed a spicy Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend from Adamant cellars, in Walla Walla.

The shucking crew, busy concentrating on not shucking their wrists, and having difficulty staying ahead of the horde.

Oysters are stocking up on good karma. Recently Louisiana researchers discovered that a fatty substance found in oysters may cure cancer. (Eat up, folks!)

The sneaky bivalves have also been transmitting messages from on high… or at least answering the financial prayers of a North Carolina man who found this shell, saw the Virgin Mary, and auctioned it off for $135.00 on Ebay.

…include the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish. We found a dead one washed up on the beach a couple of nights ago.

The Lion’s Mane lives in the cold waters of the northern oceans. In the Arctic it can grow to tremendous size: the largest recorded Lion’s Mane had tentacles 120 feet long… longer than a Blue Whale.

The Lion’s Mane’s appearance is not deceptive: these guys can sting. We notice them most during shrimp season, when their tentacles occasionally get entangled with shrimp lines. It’s really, really fun to get a splattering of Lion’s Mane tentacles in your face as you tend the mechanical pot puller.

Here’s a real, live Lion’s Mane:

Save on half-gallons of medium oysters (to stuff your bird)

and on all flavors of smoked oysters (to stuff your guests).

The catch? You need to order before Nov 21st.

The ratfish is a ridiculous creature. It has the body of a shark, the tail of a rat, the eyes of a lemur, and the face of a rabbit. We found a sorry looking specimen out on the tideflats a couple of nights ago. It was alive, but not at all lively.

Ratfish don’t have scales, live between 40 to 300 feet deep, and eat like an ancient dachshund: they use their teeth to mash up shrimp, worms, clams, and fish.

This particular fish had a strange growth on its forehead. It looked like a little worm. We couldn’t find anything about it on the internet. Any thoughts?

Because a Ratfish’s body is supported by cartilage, it goes limp when removed from the water. But still, it was a little disturbing to see this fish looking so helpless. We found it lying on the oyster beds and put it into a slough still filled with water from the outgoing tide.

The next morning, after doing some research on the ratfish, we learned this from Wikipeia:

They also have a venomous spine located on the front of their dorsal fin.

the ratfish is able to inflict a mildly toxic wound.

So the next time we attempt to rescue a ratfish in distress, we won’t use our bare hands!

Ratfish, chin up.

In the winter, the tide is low at night. This means that the oyster pickers and clam diggers work through the night, in every kind of weather except lightning storms. Last night we caught up with Dan and Dave at 9 pm on their way out to pick oyster singles. They ended up working until 1 am.

Here they are rolling a tub around on the beach. Working on the tideflats at night is cold, and dark, and quiet, save for the sounds of seals, gruntfish, and the occasional car on the highway.

Attention Seattle oyster lovers! Head down to the Flying Fish restaurant tomorrow Oct. 25 for the Oyster Frenzy, and if that still isn’t enough, stop by Elliot’s Oyster New Year on November 1st.

We’ve been celebrating fall by giving away deliciously tart and pesticide-free locally-grown apples.