I’m sitting here in Garberville next to the Farmers Market eating fat little oysters as I write this.
Oysters South Fork Ernie:
Six medium oysters placed on a glass pie dish, arranged like a six petal daisy, so they hold the liquid. Put them in a microwave oven for four to six minutes, or until they steam and pop open.
While they are cooking mix two tablespoons of “Fred’s” fresh ground horseradish with two tablespoons Weitchpec Chile Company “Klamath River Red” Pepper Sauce and two tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon. Stir and place on the table. There will be enough for about one teaspoon full for each oyster.
Remove the oysters and let them sit for five minutes, then pop the tops being careful not to spill the juice, drizzle a teaspoon full of sauce on the top then fork it into your mouth. Then sip the juice and sauce out of the shell, then dive for the next one.
When they are all gone go get some more and do the same thing. When you get full, hide all of the empty shells and then you can tell your wife “Honey I made you some oysters”. She will think that you are just the sweetest thing, and life is good!
This same recipe is better if you cook the oysters in an enclosed wood fired barbecue, but it is not as convenient for lunch.
Hey Ern, I didn't know how to add a picture to your blog but here is a shot from my deck with the tide starting to go out. All those things out there that look like rocks are oysters.
Hood Washington
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Back in '02 Sis and I lived on Hood Canal in Washington and our house was on the beach. The water on high tide was about 10 feet away from our deck and on low tide we had a beach of sorts that extended out about 200 yards and was just mud and oysters. Sis would go out and get some every day for lunch and one time we went out and filled a 30 quart tote in 10 minutes. We did that cause we were going to a barbeque as in everybody get together, get drunk type of thing. I was there for the company and beer as I wouldn't feed an oyster to my dog. Don't get me wrong, I know everybody likes those things but not me. Anywho, anybody that likes those things would have loved my house in Washington.
Jim, you are a strange guy. I would be bloated like a poisoned pup if I lived in a place live that.
Your dad owned a dairy and you don’t like milk. You have a Corvette and you don’t drive fast.
Did anybody else there eat oysters?
Not to change the subject. But, while I was in the Virgin Islands I noticed that they didn’t make any provisions for the changing tide on the boat docks. I asked several people how high and low the tides got there, and they didn’t even know what a “tide” was. Can you Imagine that? I told them what a tide was and it was like “Oh yeah we read about that“. I told them that I had a cousin that lived on a boat tied to a dock that the water changed fourteen feet. They wanted to know how you kept you boat from getting tangled. I told them that you just have to stay sober. And the wind that kept trying to blow you away was the worst part.
To heck with the sober. Actually the tides ran about 18 feet every other week and the other weeks we had down to minus 4 foot tides with 19 to 20 foot high tides. So we had up to 24 feet of water back and forth every 6 hours.
By the way, I had a few girlfriends over the years and yes I like..........
My mouth is watering partly for the oysters and partly for the reminder that the Farmers Market will soon be here.
Adding a dash of Worcestershire sauce to the horseradish/chili sauce/lemon juice mix gives it an extra bit of zest.
-Frank
About the wind, one night it was blowing 95 mph and I lost $15,000 worth of canvas off my boat. The thing that always got my goat is they never named those little wind storms in Alaska. Another time a friend of mine was taking the Alaska Ferry to Metlakatla to see his girlfriend and as soon as the they turned South out of Tongass Narrows they turned around and came back to Ketchikan. Mike asked the captain what the wind was doing and he said 115 mph. I guess he should have taken a float plane.
I guess this isn't an oyster story, sorry.
The strange guy
Strange Guy, to hell with the oysters, they're better with wodcertershire sauce anyway. Tell me how you lost your canvas. If it good enough i'll put it on the front page.
Most poeple would last a minute on their own up there.
Well to make a long story short, the wind blew my canvas off. It just so happens that a couple days earlier I bought 50' of 3/4" deck line. I lived in a place called Refuge Cove which was not a good name when the wind blew. At the time I was working 87 hours a week and liked my sleep but on this night I did what they call an anchor watch, that is getting up and checking things. I got up to look outside and all I had left holding me to the dock was my bow line, Dang! I got dressed and went to the bow which was 6 feet above the dock, jumped off and went to my truck to get my new line and went back down and did the funny looking climb back up on the boat to tie off the line to the stern cleat go back to the bow and jumped of again and finally got the back of the boat pulled back and secured. This is at 3 am and raining like you have never seen, well maybe you did in '64. I was one drownded rat I tell ya but I made it to work on time and never noticed till I got home that my canvas was destroyed. My memory is not good these days but I remember the days of the wind in Alaska and I have a few. That night in Refuge Cove was an easy one as I was at a dock. I have a few hair raising nights hanging an anchor in high winds I wish I could put in the forget pile.
Strange Guy
Strange Guy, being born and raised in Humboldt County should have made you used to getting wet. Back in the sixties some of us even grew webs between our toes and fingers. My gills finally went away in the early eighties.
I bet you miss getting up in the middle of the night to save your butt from blowing away.
Welcome back to civilization!
Oysters are a big deal on the Hood Canal and people guard their tiny strips of beach carefully. There aren't places where the general public can go get oysters there, you have to have access (meaning ownership of bordering land) to the canal to gather them.
I cannot imagine the luxury of having more oysters than I could eat!!! I still eat them even though I don't have a spleen and have been told that it is too risky for me.
I'd rather die from eating oysters than be taken out by a drunk (or old) driver, though.
McKris
Growing up on Cape Cod, we would harvest oysters in the winter. We ate them raw with cocktail sauce. I have made Oysters Rockafeller before - delicious!
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