Scientists have fossil records from 164,000 years ago confirming humans’ willingness to consume oysters and clams in large enough quantities to make a measurable impact: midden heaps of bivalve shells where they really don’t belong.
While this information usually intrigues only geologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists, we can personalize this scene. Picture an early modern (wo)man sloshing about bare-footed in tidal pools, seeking supper. S/he picks up an oyster, looks it all over, and says, “I could eat this.” Specialized tools to facilitate opening the shells of a plate of oysters delivered to the white-clothed table of a modern fancy restaurant are still well in the future. Removing the beastie from its secure, sharp-edged home therefore involves some Pleistocene swearing and vigorous bashing with a rock. The question likely arises as to whether it is even worth it to obtain a small morsel of slimy, glistening sea-snot liberally seasoned with crushed shell. However, someone with courage pops that puppy into a gaping mouth and, after one or two efforts to bite down, probably just swallows hard. The tradition of raw oysters on the half shell has been born.
Once you start considering how we got to where we are now in terms of what we consider food, speculative questions come to mind. Who decided to use a pointy stick to grub up early dandelions, peeled back the bitter root, and tossed those greens into a birch bark pail to boil with some wild hog bits? What made someone decide to slither down recently flooded river banks to pluck muddy, tightly coiled, emerging ferns from their peculiar crusty brown skins to make a fiddlehead dinner? It can’t all have been starving Confederate belles falling on a lone carrot in a plowed-over field, swearing to the heavens that they will never be hungry again. What gives?
Fast forward to present day. While dandelions, fiddleheads and even wild hogs are likely to be rich in vitamins and minerals that do a winter-weakened body good, foraging in this day and age is cleaner and more convenient, if not more fun.
All you really need to do is to show up at the Presque Isle Farmers Market at Riverside on a Saturday between 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. with your shopping bags or baskets. Forage among the wares of local farmers who planted their high hoops much earlier this spring to be able to deliver fresh green lettuce, spinach, beet greens and chard on opening day June 2, and who replant regularly to refurbish the supply right through the summer. Add grass-fed meat, cage-free eggs, freshly baked bread and pastries, and a special blend of locally roasted coffee to brew, and you got yourself a meal.
Add fresh air and (hopefully) sunshine, not to mention family fun “hunting up dinner,” and the world is your oyster. See you there.
The Presque Isle Farmers’ Market president for the 2018 season is Deena Albert-Parks of Chops Ahoy Farm in Woodland. For information about participating or visiting the market, contact her at hoctrainer@aol.com.
