I know Mom made a great oyster stew. When she and Dad moved to RI they had it quite often. I never thought to ask her how she learned to make it. We did have it, but rarely, in Brattleboro as I grew up. You are probably right; the events thing made me more aware of it. Neysa ----- Original Message ----- From: Darrell A. Martin To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 11:36 AM Subject: Re: [VERMONT] Oysters On 3/6/2011 9:09 PM, Neysa wrote: > I am amazed at all the references to oysters in these old papers. I am kind of surprised at this. Were oysters easy to obtain? Inexpensive? Any ideas on this? > Neysa Neysa: Oysters do seem to have been plentiful, once the railroads made it possible to ship them away from the ocean. However, there is another factor to consider. It appears that, for whatever length of time it was true, it was "in vogue" to feature oysters at social events. These are exactly the kind of events that are most likely to be reported by local newspapers. So what you get is an extremely imbalanced view of how often oysters were actually consumed. Growing up in Springfield, our family had oyster stew exactly once a year, every Christmas Eve. Other than tradition, and the "oyster crackers" that we seldom got at other times, I don't know what the attraction was. The "stew" was just a warm milk broth, salty with a light seafood-ish taste to it. We all seemed to like the stuff (although nobody but Dad wanted anything to do with the actual cooked oysters). Maybe it was the excitement of knowing tomorrow was The Big Day, or maybe it was because we were allowed to dump so many crackers in that they just barely got wet -- we *did* like those crackers. Regardless, it is a fond memory. Darrell *************************************** List Guidelines: http://home.sprynet.com/~darrellm/list_rules.htm Visit the Gateway to Vermont Web Site: http://www.rootsweb.com/~vermont/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message