>aloha!
>	last wednesday i biked on down to the santa cruz farmer's market
>and <snip> oyster-mania!!!  as i approached to purchase my first oyster

Whoa! Hold the phone! The Bodhster has discovered oysters. There's no
stopping him now. Tierra True et al had better watch out, they'd better not
cry...LOL at my own joke (there's nothing like being immature for making
one feel young again)

>i didn't ask about the
>toppings, just where the oysters grew.

And where, pray tell, did they grow?

>	curiosity overcoming my general aversion to aquaculture ("fish
>farming" ("oyster farming"))

You wouldn't likely have much "problem" with or aversion to oyster farming
procedures. Indeed, such an occupation seems almost noble, like beekeeping
or harvesting dulse ala Maine Coast Sea Vegetables. Wild oysters grow old
fixed to something (like a rock) and filter feed on stuff in their
immediate water. Farmed oysters grow old fixed on something (like a stick
or a rope or even an old tire--the last being a Thailand special) and
filter feed on stuff in their immediate water. By selecting a place with a
decent current and away from pollution (to the degree possible) an oyster
farm can get fat plumpy oysters in less time than most wild ones would
mature. There are lots of different methods for attaching the sprat (from
starting them in salt water tanks to just putting a lattice of wooden
sticks in the water in an area where wild sprat will attach themsleves) but
the main food for cultivated oysters is exactly the same as for wild ones.
Watch for a method invented by an oyster farmer in Russel (Bay of Islands,
New Zealand) to become the standard: oysters are reomoved from their
attachments and layed willy nilly in plastic "pans" (kinda like the bread
trays used in some bakeries) and the resulting oysters are beautifully
shaped as a result.

(There are apparently exceptions where oysters are grown in special ponds,
but I have only heard of this in regards to some expensive European
oysters.Even so I'm not sure they would necessarily be bad for eating,
perhaps the opposite if pollution levels where better and the food was
still "natural")

When oysters are raised in lattices which rest on the bottom of tidal
estuaries there is some environmental concern about silt build up (mostly
from abandoned operations.

Otherwise, oyster farming is a _real_ and demanding job which is somewhat
attractive to this old fellow. An acre permit of oysters went for about
$10,000 last year in New Zealand. If they ever get their export stuff
ironed out those prices will likely skyrocket when the Japanese start
payoing a buck+ for imported NZ osyters. But one "red tide" and you are
bust for the season, which is why they have a hell of a time getting any
help loan-wise. Still, for about an hour messing about in the mud, Melisa
and I could gather 200-300 or so free oysters on a Saturday and feast all
week on them w/o any need for refrigeration... for the record: September is
the oyster fesival in the Bay of Islands in Northland NZ. One hears much
more about the wild "bluff" oysters from the extreme south of NZ, but they
are limited--because of over-harvesting--and very expensive.) Australia (or
at least Sydney) has the absolutely absurd law that the oysters can only be
wholesaled already shuckedand "washed"!!! Leave it to the ozzies, eh? ;)

>i peeled off my dollar bill and sampled a
>barnacle-clad medium oyster.  tender!  salty!  but good!  underlying the
>salt-rush i could detect a more delicate deliciousness.  mm-mmm.

There are indeed about a thousand flavors in oysters and it varies with the
season, the oyster, the slurper. You will grow old and still discover new
oyster flavors, including the incipid BLAH flavor just after they spawn
usually in the summer: yuck.

>	meeting up with another friend of mine, we walked to an atm where
>i procured yet more frn's.

You will no doubt soon be interested in shucking your own and saving big
bucks. An osyter knife (or screwdriver if you are sure-handed) is all you
need. Don't worry: seafood is great for proper platelet development so the
bleeding overcoming your early learning cuvre will not be fatal...;)

>he couldn't believe that i'd just eaten so
>many oysters... not to mention that many *raw*!  i felt superd &
>stupendous

You've only just begun I suspect. I would eat as many as 10 dozen or more
at a sitting in my early years of instincto. (This probably has to do more
with how mis-nourished and nutritinally "needy" I was than anything else.)
Of course such feasts were regulated to situations where oysters were
reasonably inexpensive. I have bought them in Puerto Mont/Ancud (Chile) for
$US10/approx 150-200 oysters. They also have to most incredible clams in
southern Chile and urchin roe (my absolute _fave_!!), all absurdly cheap.
Even in Seattle it is not uncommon to buy them at $3-4/dozen. I consider a
quarter an oyster to be a fair bargain. Melisa and I have several times
bought a four or five dozen from  Pike Street Market and brought them out
back for some shucking and slurping on a ledge overlooking the parking lot,
freeway, port etc. A strangely satisfying urban scenario to participate in
with such shellfish. Many Japanese tourists have a knowing smile for us,
but otherwise people think we are a bit loony. If they only knew...

But alas, my days of 100+ oysters per meal are history. I get stops at a
dozen or two these days, and considering I have found no 25 cent oysters
here in southern CA this is a welcome event.

Oh, there's so much more I could say about oysters (the horribly polluted
tastes in many easy coast oysters, the bigger strong-flavored Pacific
oysters found in the Puegot Sound area which probably are wild and cheaper
than the smaller milder ones which meet the modern pallette; the many
hundreds we ate from a very human fecally polluted oyster farm in Thailand
at five different occasions with great pleasure and no ill effect at all;
the time in northern Columbia when some young locals brought me out in a
canoe to the mangroves and showed me how to dive for these dime-sized
oysters which grew on the trunks--though I soon left it to them and shucked
and slurped in the canoe; the strange rocklike oysters which I bought from
some northern coast Peruvian gatherers which had to be opened with a mallet
and where much more globular in shape than flat; the time in Miama when a
"fast-food-type" seafood restuarant had a promotion going of 99 cents/dozen
and I went twice a day for the three days I was there--the workers sure I
was going to drop dead for eating so many; the "raw bar" near Cape
Canaveral which sold 5 dozen shucked and heaping for $10.95 and where we
bought a glove-like thing which saves one's left hand from the worst of the
shucking injuries; and the discovery that urchin roe was about ten times
tastier than oysters....)

Thanks for the memory, Ombodhi, and say goodbye to the chances of zinc
deficiency.

Cheers,
Kirt (trying hard not to worry about ocean pollution levels and getting
homesick for NZ)