Oyster Blog

Last weekend 22-year old Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti, a professional eater from Chicago, consumed 35 dozen oysters in 8 minutes to win the Acme World Oyster Eating Championship in New Orleans. Read the AP article here for a glimpse into the weird world of competitive eating, and check out the Chicagoist for an up-close picture of Deep Dish.

That's a lot of tree. The giant 'cookie' came from a four hundred year old Douglas fir tree that fell down a long time ago. A big flood washed the tree down the canyon and left it serendipitously in a hayfield. We cut the cookies off the log about four years ago; they've been curing in a woodshed ever since. In the picture below, you can see that the tree nearly died when it was about 20 years old. Something damaged the bark on one side of the tree--either a bear ate it, or another tree knocked it off. The living side...

The ideal oyster is cup-shaped with a wide, fluted edge tapering towards the hinge. Healthy, growing oysters are very fluted and frequently very colorful, whereas an oyster that's starting to atrophy will have rounded, colorless edges. The oyster above was one of three dozen in a package we shipped to California yesterday. In our humble opinion, April is the friendliest oyster month: the water is still cold enough so that the oyster meat is really firm, but it's starting to warm up just enough to let them feed and grow. These are amazingly beautiful, right? Even to people who aren't...

Underside of a sea star, up close. The entrance to the mouth is covered by a mass of tube feet. The mouth opens up into the mobile cardiac stomach, which leads to a fixed stomach, which leads to the anus, which is on the top of the star. Tube feet suctioned onto a rock. Read more about sea stars here.

Spring is taking its sweet time getting here.