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| One of many great meals last week |
Days we love: oysters
again, a
recurring theme. Add crab, shrimp and Caipirihnas and the afternoon is made; three hour lunches in the midst of business negotiations
isn't the best way to get things done is great. Oysters are known for their reputed aphrodisiac powers and have always been linked with love: when Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, emerged from the sea on an oyster shell (and gave birth to Eros) the word "aphrodisiac" was born. Roman emperors paid for them by their weight in gold. Click on image for more history.
2 comments:
One of my best 'isn't life hard?' stories concerns Janis and I in France around 1990 or 1991. We went to Chinon for breakfast but couldn't get in anywhere because Francois Mitterand was visiting town. Having seen Franc (as we like to call him) we drove around to find something to eat and the first place we came to was serving Oysters, so the first time we tried Huitre (as they are known in France) was for breakfast the day the French President came to town.
Until Victorian times they were part of the poor people of S.E England's diet because they were so easy to raise off the Essex coast that they were sold virtually everywhere.
very good. Of course you need to adjust the story to we were introduced to oysters by the French President.
Re your last paragraph I touched on this a previous post (see 'recurring theme' link. The oyster beds in the UK were vast, as you say, especially in teh SE, and more especially Kent (Kentish Flats/Whitstable beds had been used since Roman times. "In the early nineteenth century, oysters were very cheap and were mainly eaten by the working classes - disease, pollution and hence non-availability were the reasons for the change in 'clientele'."
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