#Oysters June 17

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Eating OYSTERS with friends is a happy place for me.

I have been invited to a number of OYSTER Roasts in my life.

Friends like Tony and Tina Jenkins have hosted some memorable ones. Two other people are Ken and Shannon Ransom.

The second Saturday in January the Ransoms bring the holiday season to a close with an OYSTER Roast and White Elephant Gift Exchange. The attendees are mostly people that attend church together. It is a great evening of laughs, food, drink, and of course gifts that everyone is trying to dump off on someone else. The picture below is from the 2018 event when everybody posed for a picture with their gifts after the OYSTER Roast was finished.

Many times while eating OYSTRS with friends a number of questions will come up. What is an oyster life cycle like? How many oysters get harvested from North Carolina? Why do oysters from different parts of the country have different flavor?

Diving into a pile of OYSTERS and offering opinions or facts to the questions below is always fun.

Oysters are bivalve mollusks that can live up to 40 years and grow up to eight inches; however, most N.C. oysters are harvested at three years of age, at the minimum harvest size of three inches. In the early stages of an oyster’s life, it is carried about by currents. As it matures, the oyster sinks to the bottom. To survive, the oyster must land on a hard surface. That is why they are found growing together in clumps or rocks.

There are over 200 species of oysters in the world, but only a few species are commonly used for food.

Since oysters feed by filtering the surrounding waters, the taste will vary (e.g., salty, earthy, etc.) and reflect the unique conditions of the waters in which they live and the season of harvest. For these reasons, oysters are commonly marketed with names associated with their harvest location or region. For example, in the United States along the Eastern Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico the common species Crassosteria virginica, may be sold as Wellfleet Oysters (from Cape Cod), Blue Point Oysters (from New York and Connecticut), Chesapeake Bay Oysters (from Maryland and Virginia), Apalachicola Bay Oysters (from Florida) and SW Pass Oysters (from Louisiana).

An OYSTER roast is more than just eating. It is a fellowship event that makes me happy.